Submitted by SHABDA - Preceptor on
Origins and Nature of the Sufis
Robert Graves (from his introduction to Idries Shah’s “The Sufis”)
The Sufis are an ancient spiritual freemasonry whose origins have never been traced or dated; nor do they themselves take much interest in such researches, being content to point out the occurrence of their own way of thought in different regions and periods. Though commonly mistaken for a Moslem sect, the Sufis are at home in all religions: just as the “Free and Accepted Masons” lay before them in their Lodge whatever sacred book—whether Bible, Koran, or Torah—is accepted by the temporal State. If they call Islam the “shell” of Sufism, this is because they believe Sufism to be the secret teaching within all religions. Yet according to Ali el-Hujwiri, an early authoritative Sufi writer, the Prophet Mohammed himself said: “He who hears the voice of the Sufi people and does not say aamin [Amen] is recorded in God’s presence as one of the heedless.” Numerous other traditions link him with the Sufis, and it was in Sufi style that he ordered his followers to respect all People of the Book, meaning those who respected their own sacred scriptures—a term later taken to include Zoroastrians.
Nor are the Sufis a sect, being bound by no religious dogma however tenuous and using no regular place of worship. They have no sacred city, no monastic organization, no religious instruments. They even dislike being given any inclusive name which might force them into doctrinal conformity. “Sufi” is no more than a nickname, like “Quaker,” which they accept good-humoredly. “We friends” or “people like us” is how they refer to themselves, and they recognize one another by certain natural gifts, habits, qualities of thought. Sufi schools have indeed gathered around particular teachers, but there is no graduation and they exist only for the convenience of those who work to perfect their studies by close association with fellow Sufis. The characteristic Sufi signature is found in widely dispersed literature from at least the second millennium B.C., and although their most obvious impact on civilization was made between the eighth and eighteenth centuries A.D., Sufis are still active as ever. They number some fifty million. What makes them so difficult to discuss is that their mutual recognition cannot be explained in ordinary moral or psychological terms—whoever understands it is himself a Sufi. Though awareness of this secret quality or instinct can be sharpened by close contact with Sufis of experience, there are no hierarchical degrees among them, only a general undisputed recognition of greater or lesser capacity.
Sufism has gained an Oriental flavor from having been so long protected by Islam, but the natural Sufi may be as common in the West as in the East, and may come dressed as a general, a peasant, a merchant, a lawyer, a schoolmaster, a housewife, anything. To be “in the world, but not of it,” free from ambition, greed, intellectual pride, blind obedience to custom, or awe of persons higher in rank—that is the Sufi’s ideal.
Sufis respect the rituals of religion insofar as these further social harmony, but broaden religion’s doctrinal basis wherever possible and define its myths in a higher sense—for instance, explaining angels as representations of man’s higher faculties. The individual is offered a “secret garden” for the growth of his understanding, but never required to become a monk, nun or hermit, like the more conventional mystics; and he thereafter claims to be enlightened by actual experience—“he who tastes, knows”—not by philosophic argument. The earliest known theory of conscious evolution is of Sufi origin…