Read an Excerpt
Sufism and the Way of Blame
Hidden Sources of a Sacred Psychology
By Yannis Toussulis Theosophical Publishing House
Copyright © 2010 Itlaq Foundation
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8356-0864-0
CHAPTER 1
The Sufi Mystique
The first part of this book is devoted to addressing certain biases that affect Sufi studies, contributing to what I will call a "Sufi mystique," which is based upon a series of questionable assumptions found both inside and outside academia. Foremost among them is the assumption that Sufis have to be either Islamic (in a parochial sense) or universalists who exist outside of any particular religio-cultural context. If Sufis are universalists, goes the assumption, then they can't be mired in any one particular tradition. The distinction lost in this formulation, of course, is that one can be grounded in a particular tradition without becoming rigid or doctrinaire.
A contradictory position holds that all Sufis are, more or less, orthodox Muslims, bound to a particular region or culture, and that "authentic" Sufism must therefore conform to the doctrines of a particular school or interpretation of Islam. As this book will show, historically this has not been the case even though, on the whole, most Sufis were (and still are) followers of Sunni Islam. Exceptions nevertheless abound, and in almost every case many classical Sufis ran afoul of religious authorities (whether Sunni or Shi'i).
What is certain is that most, if not all, Sufis tend to embrace a certain form of universalism. How and why they did so will consume the bulk of this book. Suffice to say for now that the universalism most Sufis embrace is not the same one presupposed in the popular imagination. The mass media (which "bodies forth" the popular imagination) has been influenced by a number of renderings of Sufism, and some of these form a part of what is envisioned as a "New Age" form of spirituality.
Since a number of spokesmen for this eclectic (and mostly secular) form of spirituality have adopted Rumi, what better place to start than with him? Critiques of "occultist" and academic "traditionalist" sources will be postponed for later chapters.
Throughout the 1990s, it was widely rumored that the most-read poet in the United States was Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, a revered Sufi mystic; yet most American readers negated the fact that Rumi was also a devout, practicing Muslim. In fact, as noted by Ibrahim Gamard, a translator of Rumi, most popular American renderings of the latter were not what they appeared to be. Instead, they were mostly New Age reinterpretations of Rumi's Islamic metaphysics.
These contemporary renderings avoided Rumi's specifically religious moorings, and this seemed to appease the desires of a largely secular readership. At the same time as serving a popular need, however, the original Rumi was becoming distorted in the interests of promoting an overarching universalism that fit contemporary expectations. Even the venerable New York Times was not immune to characterizing Rumi in such a simplistically reductive manner.
A 1998 article in the New York Times travel section reported that "although [Rumi] used a religious vocabulary, he scorned the rituals and dogma of established faiths. He believed that truth is to be found in each human heart and proclaimed himself 'not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen.'" Contradicting this article, a closer reading of Rumi would show us instead that he never mentioned Hinduism or Buddhism per se, although he did refer to the practices of the "Hindustan." Thirteenth-century Seljuk Turks also knew nothing of Zen, and the assertion that Rumi "scorned the rituals and dogma of established faiths" reveals an ignorance of the real Rumi, who carefully kept to the five pillars of Sunni Islam. It is true that Rumi extended complete respect to the rites of neighboring Christians and Jews throughout his lifetime, but this was dictated by traditional Islam. Noticeably absent from this article—and most modern renderings of Rumi—is the idea that the latter could be at the same time a Muslim and a universalizing mystic. Sadly, the Times article mirrors some common myths and assumptions held in the popular press in the West: a mystic such as Rumi couldn't be compatible with Islam—or so it seems. In the meantime, Islamic scholars scratch their heads and wonder which Rumi was being read.
A survey of the contemporary scene would show that several well-selling interpretations are available in English: There is the Rumi of Reynold A. Nicholson, scholarly but dry; there are those of Kabir and Camille Helminski that are accurate, but more accessible; there are those of Coleman Barks and Robert Bly, both of whom are creatively innovative and make it clear they are offering "interpretations" of Rumi. There is also the Rumi of Andrew Harvey, who appears to be both spiritually ecstatic and (homosexually) erotic; and finally there is Deepak Chopra's Rumi—according to publicists, "even more languid, poignant and personal" than the rest.
It didn't seem to matter to mass promoters that the real Rumi disliked poetry and had written instead, "You have seen nothing but yourself.... Become selfless and be delivered." Instead, media pundits like Chopra opined that the Sufi poet expressed "the transcendent intimacy that's the source of the divine." Reading Chopra attentively it would seem that the "source of the divine" can be found in "transcendent intimacy," and not the other way around. The implication, here, is that the "source" of God can be found in any form of intimacy that takes you beyond yourself. And this is a contradiction of what the actual Rumi had often opined. Of course a transcendent form of intimacy can happen in romantic love, but unfortunately such love can also still remain largely narcissistic and egocentric—a condition well known to classical Sufis. (And here, increasingly, I will make a distinction between "traditional" and "classical," though the two may coincide. The "classical" tradition conforms to the greatest Sufi writers such as Rumi and others like him, most of whose works were composed between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Some "traditional" Sufis, on the other hand, have varied in their adherence to the classics, often adhering instead to more ethnocentric folkways.)
During the Rumi craze, the premises of Sufism were almost completely reversed in the interests of spiritual consumerism. In the process, the actual discipline of the Sufi path was utterly neglected, replaced by a more marketable sentimentality that fit New Age expectations.
This turn of events seemed to shock the sensibilities of a number of Persian- and Turkic-speaking Sufis in the greater Middle East. At the same time the merchants of the bazaar didn't seem to mind. They were elated that the Rumi craze had provided the city of Konya (in Turkey) with a new source of revenue. For centuries, Konya had been a place of pilgrimage for traditionalist admirers of Rumi. As Westerners and Middle Easterners comingled, Mevlana (lit., "our Master") was being rapidly transformed into an object of religious kitsch and New Age tourism. The article in the Times had this to say:
Every year around this time, the streets of Konya are decorated with images of whirling dervishes, the Islamic mystics who seek to commune with the infinite through ecstatic dance. From lampposts and bus shelters, they look beatifically down on the throngs bustling along cold streets.
These images mark the annual festival commemorating Jalaluddin Rumi, who conceived the dervish dance as part of his lifelong quest for religious rapture....
This annual event is Konya's main tourist attraction. Dozens of shops sell porcelain dervishes, dervish necklaces, dervish tie clips and cigarette lighters bearing what is supposed to be Rumi's portrait.
What lessons can one derive from this? According to the New York Times, Rumi had "conceived the dervish dance as part of his lifelong quest for religious rapture," but this, too, was somewhat fallacious. The dervish dance (Turk. sema) of Rumi was never ritualized during his lifetime.
For Mevlana, movement was a spontaneous occurrence. The Mevleviyya (alt. Mawlawiyya), "those who follow the Master," were established as a Sufi order by Rumi's son Sultan Valad. Only then did a form of rhythmic turning become part of the Mevlevi Order's repertoire. Such "dancing" had been a spontaneous expression of many Sufis before Rumi, yet none of those Sufis had "conceived" or invented such movements. Instead, they found themselves overtaken by a mystical ecstasy that caused them to move in particular ways that occasionally included whirling. Rumi did not "quest for religious rapture." Instead, he sought spiritual knowledge of a direct and sapiential quality that moved him to such rapture. Ecstasy, for Rumi, was secondary to intuitive knowledge, or better yet, gnosis. And this knowledge was called by other Sufis a "knowledge by presence" (ilm al-hudhur) or a knowledge given directly by God (ilm laduni). Though not limited to it, the God envisioned in this case was nevertheless shaped by the Qur'an. In a similar vein, the love envisioned by Rumi was not a species of romantic love.
It is true that Rumi said, "Love's folk live beyond religious boundaries," but the term ishq (sometimes translated as "love," but more exactly "ardent desire") can be problematic for those first encountering Sufism. To be sure, great gnostics like Ibn al-Arabi have often exclaimed, "My creed is Love," and numerous other Sufis were renowned for pursuing a devotional path to gnosis. At the same time, the love that these Sufis speak of can only be seen as a by-product of something else—and that "something else" is a continuing closeness to, and longing for, an Ineffable God. It is not desire of the human form, nor of any concepts and imaginal constructs, no matter how dearly held; in fact, Rumi says, "Renounce the love of form. Love of faces and forms is not love."
The latter saying needs to be repeated. According to Rumi (and others like him), if you love the face or form of anything this is not the love of which he spoke. Such love cannot, therefore, be sated in egocentric, romantic love; nor can it be discovered in New Age faddism or by conformity to legalistic or literalistic forms of religion. Instead, according to the great eleventh-century metaphysician of love Ahmad al-Ghazali, love "blames" such things, and such blame has three faces: "One towards the world of creation, one towards the lover, and one towards the beloved."
Al-Ghazali illuminates these three faces of blame by saying that in the first case, blame "consists in keeping the lover from paying attention to things other than the beloved"; in the second case, "it consists in keeping him from paying attention to himself"; and in the third case, "it consists in making [the lover] take nourishment from nothing but love." This is an arduous form of love, indeed, and it far exceeds the romantic or New Age conception of it.
These faces of blame disallow the lover from finding satisfaction in any form, image, or concept, including himself. To take nourishment from nothing but love means to release oneself from attachment to anything love blames or from anything love finds insufficient to resolve itself in union (ittihad). Here we come closer to classical Sufism and not to the Sufism of popular imagination.
At the same time, however, al-Ghazali presents an affront to some forms of absolutist traditionalism. Such union can never be established as a permanent "station" (maqam), for to do so would be to claim it as the permanent achievement; as al-Ghazali puts it, "He who thinks of union [wisal] as 'coming together' and feeds himself on this state does not realize the true Reality of love." Such love, in other words, can never be captured in any formulation whatsoever, whether orthodox or not.
Al-Ghazali offered this prayer to what we may call the "really Real": "Since I seek nothing in this world from you except love, Union with you and separation are the same to me. Without your love my being is in disorder. Choose as you may: union or separation!"
This radical indigence is a hallmark of classical Sufism, and anything that fails to emphasize the contingency of human beings is not a part of the same tradition. Again according to Rumi, "Lovers pitch their tents in the desert of Non-Existence." The core of Sufism, then, is to discover one's nonexistence in the face of something more convincingly real. And this conviction can only be found through "tasting" (dhawq) and not through derivative knowledge of any kind. But to taste requires a discipline and dedication not normally found in those who merely dabble in spirituality in order to enhance their own narcissism. Nor can such love be found by the nominally religious who adhere to rigid forms of whatever kind.
To love is not to have an excessive desire for some thing or for someone; it is a by-product of a deeper "remembrance of the heart" (dhikr al-qalb). This remembrance is something that re-members fragmented human beings by reconnecting them to their source; and the source of one's being, according to Rumi, can only be found in "the desert of Non-Existence."
To "non-exist" is to love. Sufis invite this death or annihilation (fana), but only when their consciousness has been sufficiently purified through dedicated practice: meditation, contemplation, and spiritual companionship. If consciousness is still overly attached to or overly identified with anything outside of itself—or, to put it another way, if consciousness is overtaken by anything other than a bare attention to awareness itself—it cannot find the source of love as "Love."
We are advised by the author of the Times article that "kernels of spirituality are still to be found [in Konya], but they float on a sea of kitsch and political controversy." No doubt this is true not only in Konya, and it is certainly not limited to Turkey alone. Unfortunately, it is a characteristic of most of the greater Middle East as well as of the West. The real, rather than the fabricated, Rumi had this to say in his own day: "I have studied the learning of the day and took great pains to be able to offer precious, precise, and wondrous things to the erudite, the clever and the seekers of truth who come before me." He then added, "Discernment is faith, and lack thereof is infidelity."
Today, it seems that most of the world, both East and West, has forgotten an intuitive form of discernment, and this is much to the detriment of Muslims and Sufis, who themselves have been partly complicitous. Simply put, Sufism cannot be reduced to Islamic formalism, nor can it be reduced to the effusive romanticism that accompanies a sentimentalist form of mysticism, nor encapsulated within New Age wishful thinking.
The "creed of love" is not a free-floating, universalistic form of mysticism. Sufism is a complex phenomenon that includes a number of irreducible cultural, political, and psychological elements as well as spiritual ones. My contention throughout this book will be that Sufism is a multiplex phenomenon and that the essence of Sufi spirituality can not be fully examined outside of its varying interpretations and sociohistorical contexts. Since this is often overlooked, I find it necessary to reexamine and critique the various ways Sufism has been presented to the public. Unfortunately, in doing so, I find I have problems with the general approaches to Sufism currently available, particularly after having been an insider to that tradition for several decades.
One of the most important problems facing Westerners—and, increasingly, more volatile younger Muslims—is that Sufism has become encased in its own ongoing mystique, accentuated at times by mystagogy. It is time for a more thoroughgoing reappraisal, some of which I hope to provide in this book.
THE ELEPHANT IN THE DARK
Several men are invited to examine an elephant in the dark. One man feels its trunk, another its hoof, another its tusk, and yet another its tail. The next day, each of them is asked to describe an elephant. Naturally, each faithfully describes the piece he had felt. None of their accounts are similar, and none of their renderings fully describe an elephant. In the mid-1960s, Idries Shah used this old tale from Rumi to illustrate how no one in the West had an adequate grasp of Sufism.
Despite years of additional research, the elephant still remains partly obscured, and of all the spiritual traditions brought to the West, Sufism remains the most puzzling. Is Sufism a universal tradition transcending all religious forms, or can it be understood and practiced only within Islam? Over the last thirty years an array of contradictory answers has been given. Even more perplexing is that many of these answers seem to be issued by authoritative Sufis themselves. Here is a small, but representative, sample: Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) once remarked that "Sufism has never had a first exponent or a historical origin." More recently, Idries Shah (1924–96) claimed that Sufism is "the inner, 'secret,' teaching that is concealed within every religion." Javad Nurbakhsh, the head of a more traditional Sufi order, disagreed by exclaiming, "Outside Islam, Sufism does not exist." Expanding on this theme, Seyyed Hossein Nasr asserted, "Sufism cannot be practiced outside of Islam even if self-styled 'masters' in the West using the name of Sufism say otherwise."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sufism and the Way of Blame by Yannis Toussulis. Copyright © 2010 Itlaq Foundation. Excerpted by permission of Theosophical Publishing House.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
