Sufism : Journey Towards The Truth

"Sufi is made one with all,
Like breath in veins,
What he achieves he discloses not,
To dislose is a sin, by this he abides."
.......Bhitai [sur Yaman Kalyan]

"I follow the religion of Love,
Now I am sometimes called
A Shepherd of gazellas
And now a Christian monk,
And now a Persian sage.
My beloved is three-
Three yet only one;
Many things appear as three,
Which are no more than one.
Give her no name,
As if to limit (her to) one
At sight of Whom
All limitation is confounded."
.........Ibn El-Arabi (1165-1240)

"Whoever theorizes his religion offends
against the Way of God, and peace. Heretic!
Deviate toward the Law! Don't complicate.
All that's forbidden. All this learned talk is ignorance.
Station and state discard it.
Its not discussion: Religion's what my Lord
said or what he said - the master guide, the envoy
(and peace be his) - for he said not a word!
..............Muhyiddin Ibn El-Arabi

"Saar-i sik-a sabak-u shariyat-a sand-o suhni,
Tariqat-a tikho wah-e Haqiqat-a jo haq-u,
Marifet-a marak-u assul-u aashiqan khay."

"Oh Suhni! first devoutedly learn the lesson of Shariat,
The stage of Haqiqat far excells that of Tariqat,
Maarifat is ultimate goal of God's lovers,
Achieving knowledge of God, privileged are such seekers."
.........Bhitai

For years I had been wandering, here and there, far and wide, everywhere in search of Truth. What is the Truth? Who is the Truth? Who am I? Where did I come from? Where will I go to? Why am I here? These questions, and many more have continuously and perpetually haunted me and followed me wherever I went. My earnest desire to know about Sufism and to be amongst the Sufis - the seekers of Truth - is to quench my thirst for the knowledge of the Unseen, who is Ever-Present. Hazrath Imam Ghazali says, "The company of eminent Sufis (mystics) will yield very good results. You grasp the words which emanate from the mouths of such people for they will utter only words of very high quality chosen from their mystic knowledge and experience they have acquired."

Reciting some incantations with a rosary is common in many religions. The pious will turn so many beads each day. Saaeen Jethmal Parsram relates a story that provides an interesting commentary on this ritual. He says that many anecdotes are given about ShahLatif Bhittai. One day, it is said, he was meditating rosary [tasbiih] in hand, in a grove of trees by the village well, when at dusk two girls came to fill their water vessels.

After they had filled them, they fell to gossiping; Latif awakened by this time from his meditation. One girl said to the other: "Have you met your sweetheart?" "A dozen times," replied the other; "how many times have you met yours?" The former replied: "Oh sister, does one keep account of meetings with one's sweetheart?" The two girls went away, merrily laughing, gracefully balancing the jars on their little heads.

Shah Latif had heard the latter part of their dialogue. "Ah," he soliloquised, "the simple woman with a simple village lover is so full of him that she keeps no accounts, while I, a lover of the most Beloved One, am here counting the beads of my rosary." He gave up the use of rosary after this. Bhittai sang in his poetry thus:
"Body their rosary,
Mind their beads.
Their heart is the harp,
The threads of longing sing in utter unity.
The One, the only One, is the song within.
They whose sleep is prayer,
Wake even in sleep."

What is mysticism then? It has been defined as, "an endeavour of the human mind to grasp the Divine essence of actual reality of things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual communion with the highest." Thus, a mystic is one who has had experiences of direct approach to God. He is, therfore, initiated in Divine knowledge which he then tries to pass on to rest of the mankind, especially to his devotees and disciples. he believes that, "All that is, is God", rest is all illusion and deception.

Mysticism, therefore, is the doctrine of belief that direct spiritual apprehension of truth or union with one's Creator. This can be obtained through contemplation or insight in the ways inaccessible to the senses or reason. This leads to the experience of such direct apprehension of truth or union with God. The word mystic has a hidden, secret, engimatic, and esoteric meaning. Mystic, therefore is an enigmatic, spiritually symbolic, and esoteric person, who yearns for the Divine and seeks union with deity through contemplation, reasoning and meditation. He belives in spiritual apprehension of truths beyond understanding. A mystical experience transcends the limitations of time and space, and the furthermost horizons of human thought. Such an experience can be experienced, but it cannot be expressed adequately in words.

The mystic believes firmly that God alone exists absolutely. This firm belief leads him to conclusion that the soul of man has emanated from His Divine Essence - it has been separated from its originfor some time but will ultimately be united with it. This re-union will bring the human soul the highest happiness. According to the earlier mystics, to achieve this goal and to bring about a perfect re-union, the mystics has to severe all connections, form no attachments of any kind, and guard himself from being fascinated by the worldly charms. This has to be achieved through contemplation of the perfect Divine attributes of love and beauty expressing their significance in mystical terms. He had to live a life of longing like the burning candle weeps and awaits the morning to be extinguished. These mystics, therefore, lived a life of ascetism and self-abnegation, practising self control and patience. A Sufi believes that the first thing in religion is the gnostic knowledge of the One and Only - the Creator of the Worlds - and this knowledge is known as Maakrifatullah.

Islamic Mysticism - Tasawuf

The Islamic mysticism or Tasawuf, has its origin in the Holy Qur'an...click and Hadith...click. Allah says in the Holy Qur'an, "Iam closer to man, than his jugular vein." There is also this oft quoted verse of the Holy Qur'an, "We are from God, and to God is our return." But, Islam does not ask those in its fold, to completely shun the world and live a life of isolation. It lays great emphasis on man's submitting to the Divine will, contemplating on the Divine attributes, and cultivating them in one's personal life. Sine Allah is one and uniwue, man's spiritual evolution can only bring about his 'increasing approximation to the Divine Life.'

The word sufi is derived from the term sahafa. In the times of the Holy Prophet Hazrat Mohammed (peace be upon Him), the message of Islam was spreading far and wide by missionaries and conquests. The sahafa was one band of men who were totally devoted to prayer and meditation. Worship and search for spiritual perfection was their only aim. Over the centuries the sahafa became those holy men who are now called sufis.

The beautiful land of Sindh is known as ‘the land of 124,000 saints and dervishes, both Muslim and Hindu. It is because of the sufis that Sindh is called the cradle of love and peace. The sufi saints have large following among Muslims and Hindus of every strata. A number of Hindus come from India and other parts of the world to pay homage to different shrines.

There is no place for religious differences among Sufis- and hasn't been since the centuries old link between the people of Sindh and Sufism.

This spiritualism offers a world without sectarian, ethnic and communal difference. It is due to this hold of mysticism on Sindh culture, there is hardly any religious or sectarian frenzy in the interior of Sindh as compared to other parts of Pakistan.

Sufism has no room for fundamentalism or fanaticism because it has challenged the institution of the mullah. Thus we see that the clergy and the rulers joined hands to crush the world of religious and social co existance, which existed in Jhoke Sharif under Shah Inayat Shaheed.

In sufism any form of intoxication is strictly forbidden. Some magazine articles have printed the misconception that bhang, charas or other form of drugs are acceptable for meditation.

Reading further into the chapter on mysticism in her translation of the selected verses from Shah Jo Risalo into English we learnt from Madam Khamisani that, in the aerly history of Islamic mysticism, only that person was considererd to be a sufi, who sought God's nearness by adhering to the tenets of Islam as revealed in Quran...click and Shariah. Sufi is the one "who has reformed and chastened himself, forsook comforts, kept his mind unsoiled like a mirror, who was apathetic to wordly vicissitudes and indifferent to the material fascinations and who always strove and yearned for union with Allah". Sufis, therefore, were the means of revitalising Islam...click among the masses who in turn held them in great esteem for their piety and self-abnegation.

Changes occuring in the world of science, education, environment, manifest themeselves into changes in attitudes and beliefs. The Islamic mysticism also changed. Sufis now, started including Pantheism as part of their faith according to which God and nature are one, thus obliterating the distinction between the Creator and the created, in contradiction of the words of the Qur'an that God is "Unique", He is supreme and He has no equal. They also did not follow the ritual of five prayers and placed emphasis on intention rather than observance, with the result that they drew upon themselves the wrath of the orthodox. A further change was brought up in sufism by Ibn Arabi, an Islamic scholar, who considered "all Being as essentially one and the existence of the created things as nothing but the very essence of the existence of the Creator." This later product of sufism is termed as 'monism.'

Indian Mysticism - Vedantic Philosophy

Sufism in India was influenced by the later Vedantic philosophy, as we can see its traces in the poetry of Shah Bhitai during his early mystic stages. According to it, "the only reality in the universe is Brahma and that the only relationship to the world of the senses, Maya, is inexpressible. The individual soul, atma, is simply a manifestation of Brahma.....liberation of the soul can be achieved only through full realization of the oneness of atma, and Brahma" and that "there are many paths to salvation." Atma is the soul and Brahma, "the universal, unchanging, everlasting spirit which is behind the ever changing physical world."

The Monist school dominated later centuries of the Vedantic philosophy. Although Latif passed through the various stages that a sufi comes across during his journey in search of the Supreme Being, his mysticism, according to Madam Khamisani, "is pramarily Islamic mysticism or Tasawuf." Frequent references are made, by Latif in his Risalo, to the primal covenant that throws light on man's relation with his Creator as Qur'an says when God created the souls, He asked them "Alast-i bi rabikum" (Am I not your Lord?) and the souls replied "Qaloo bala" (Verily Thou art). This makes clear the relation between man and God that he is the Creator and man the created, hence man can only reach God's approximity by obeying the Divine will which becomes the law for him. Sur Marui opens with these very words from Qur'an, and in Sur Suhni they are repeated four times at various places. The absolute necessity for obedience to Divine Law and the seeker's quest...click in his journey to the Divine Being, Bhitai expresses beautifully in just three lines:

The journey continues....Sufism : In Search Of Truth

Bhitai's Journey Towards The Truth

Rumi : The Ocean That Has Many Harbours

Sufism and Love : One And The Same

Sufism in Sindh : A Way of Life

The One Alone : Meaning Of Our Existence

What The Seeker Needs : Essays On Spritual Practice

Know Thyself, Know Thy God

Sufism And Breath

The Beautiful Poetry of Maulana Rumi

Sufism And Islam

The Great Sufis From Afghanistan