Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study by Idries Shah

Author:Idries Shah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ISF Publishing
Published: 2017-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

And so we have the famous saying in a celebrated poem by the thirteenth century teacher Rumi that the Sufi is ‘made wise by the Truth’, for he is not ‘a scholar from a book’. The book, for the Sufi, is something which fills an instrumental, not an informational or mental exercise role.

Failure to observe the secondary, what I have called lower-level stabilisation of the study and action of Sufism, as ‘water finding its own level’, is the direct (and, to the Sufi, as probably to the anthropologist, plainly observable) cause of the theologised, formalistic, mechanical and quasi-academic versions of so-called Sufism in both the East and West. This is most easily demonstrated in the work of orientalist, religiously didactic and ecstasy-oriented individuals and groups whom the late twentieth-century upsurge of interest in our subject has stirred into a frenzy of propaganda and publication; not to mention the also secondary but understandable phenomenon of vituperation directed at those who try to redirect attention to the customary approach which, after all, is abundantly documented in a large number of the extant Sufi classics, upon which both scholarly – derivative – research and ‘dervish exercises’ – mimetic behaviour – are allegedly, but in the event highly selectively, based.

But if by Sufi definition (and surely we must listen to it) the real development of Sufism and its applications is not to be found in academic work or in random or uninstructed experimentation; and if Sufism is to be absorbed by such a judicious process as might be comparable to the working with a master of an art rather than a profession, what of the other widespread and – to some – quite attractive alternative? After all, there are in the West and always have been in the East large and small groups of people and plenty of vociferous individuals as well, who maintain that Sufism, being grounded in experience, and not being available through static scholasticism or automatistic piety, should and must be cultivated by means of overrunning the emotions, by listening to or playing music, by dancing and wearing strange clothes, by changing one’s name, and by slavishly following what the participants imagine to be the literal instructions of some preferably ancient and revered but long-dead teacher. Such people, in the nature of things, have far greater social visibility than the often much more inhibited scholars: they and their works are to be found in a larger and much more animated constituency. Because of this, many ordinary people lump them together with all the other cultists, members of esotericist groupings with dauntingly formidable names and even greater pretensions. They call them ‘nuts’ and politely avoid them. I, for one, would not blame anyone for concluding that they are dealing with just another yogic, Hindu, Zen or similar group. Perhaps, though, they are not strictly similar. But it is equally true to say that such coteries are not Sufi ones in the sense that ‘Sufi’ is employed by the traditional teachers or by contemporary Sufis who maintain a wider tradition and more comprehensive approach.

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