INTRODUCTION
Sufism is truth without form.
Ibn El-Jalali
THE JOURNEY FROM SEPARATION TO UNION
Sufism is a mystical path of love in which God, or Truth, is experienced as the Beloved. The inner relationship of lover and Beloved is
the core of the Sufi path. Through love the seeker is taken to God. The mystic seeks to realize Truth in this life and God reveals Himself
within the hearts of those who love Him.
The mystical experience of God is a state of oneness with God. This unio mystica is the goal of the traveller, or wayfarer, on the mys-
tical path. Within the heart, lover and Beloved unite in love’s ecstasy. The wayfarer begins the journey with a longing for this state of
oneness. The longing is born from the soul’s memory that it has come from God. The soul remembers that its real Home is with God
and awakens the seeker with this memory. The spiritual journey is a journey that takes us back Home, from separation to union. We
have come from God and we return to God.
The mystical journey Home is a journey inward, to the very center of our being, where the Beloved is eternally present. He whom we
seek is none other than our own eternal nature. Saint Augustine said, “Return within yourself, for in the inward man dwells Truth.” The
mystic experiences that the Beloved dwells within the mystic’s heart, not as a concept but as a living reality. In the depths of the heart
there is no separation between the lover and the Beloved. Here we are eternally united with God, and the mystical experience of union is
a revelation of what is always present.
The greatest obstacle that keeps us from experiencing this eternal state of union is the ego, our own personal identity. In the state of
union there is no ego. In this moment the individual self ceases to exist and only the Beloved exists. The Sufi says, “The Beloved is liv-
ing, the lover is dead.” Thus the Sufi aspires to “die before death,” to transcend the personal self and experience our transcendent di-
vine nature. The eleventh-century Sufi, Ansârî, expressed this very simply:
Know that when you learn to lose yourself, you will reach the Beloved. There is no other secret to be learnt, and more than that is not
known to me.
The mystical journey leads us away from the ego towards the Self, from separation back to union. Turning away from the ego and
turning back to God, we are led deep within ourself, to the innermost center of our being, what the Sufis term the “heart of hearts.” This
is an individual journey of the seeker back to the source, of the “alone to the Alone.” Yet there are stages on this journey, “valleys of the
quest,” through which each traveller passes. The Sufi masters have provided us with a map describing these stages and also the diffi-
culties and dangers of the path. Having reached the goal, they are able to help other wayfarers by recording what may be expected along
the way.
Sufism also provides certain techniques to open us to the inner world and keep our attention focused on our invisible goal. Fore-
most among these is the practice of remembrance, for the Sufi aspires to remember God in every moment, with each and every breath.
This is not a mental remembrance, but a remembrance of the heart, for it is the heart which holds the higher consciousness of the Self.
The Self is the part of us which is never separate from God, and the consciousness of the Self is a quality of knowing that we are one
with God. The practice of remembrance is a way of awakening the consciousness of the Self, and thus becoming aware of our inner
union with Him whom we love.
If you love someone you always think of him, and when the soul’s love for God is awakened within the heart, the lover’s attention is
turned towards the Beloved. The moment of spiritual awakening is tauba, “repentance,” which the Sufis describe as “the turning of the
heart.” The moment of tauba is always an act of grace, a gift from the Beloved, but Sufism has developed techniques for keeping our
attention on the soul’s love for God, on the heart’s remembrance. One of these techniques is the dhikr, the repetition of one of the
names of God. Through the practice of the dhikr the attention of the lover is turned towards God and the whole being of the lover be-
comes permeated with the joy of remembering the Beloved.
The Sufi path helps to make us aware of the divine consciousness of the Self that is found within the heart, and at the same time
guides us away from the limited consciousness of the ego. The journey from the ego to the Self is the eternal journey of the soul, of the
exile returning Home. In this world we have forgotten our real nature and identify with the ego. The journey Home frees us from the
grip of the ego and the illusory nature of its desires. We are led to the real fulfillment that can only come from knowing what we really
are, tasting the truth of our divine essence. When one Sufi master, Dhû‘l-Nûn, was asked, “What is the end of the mystic?” he an-
swered, “When he is as he was where he was before he was.”¹
Every spiritual path leads the sincere seeker to the truth that can only be found within. The Sufi says that there are as many roads to
God as there are human beings, “as many as the breaths of the children of men.” Because we are each individual and unique, the jour-
ney of discovering our real nature will be different for each of us. At the same time different spiritual paths are suited to different types
of people. Sufism is suited to those who need to realize their relationship with God as a love affair, who need to be drawn by the thread
of love and longing back to their Beloved.
THE ANCIENT WISDOM
Sufi is a name given to a band of mystics who are lovers of God. There is an ancient story about a group of lovers who were called
“Kamal Posh” (blanket wearers), thought by some to be early Sufis. Their only individual possessions were their single blankets, which
they wore during the day and wrapped around themselves at night. They went to every prophet. No one could satisfy them. Every
prophet told them, do this or that, and they were not satisfied. One day Mohammed said that Kamal Posh men were coming and that
they would arrive in so many days. They came on the day he said and, when they were with him, he only looked at them without speak-
ing. They were completely satisfied. Why were they completely satisfied? Because he created love in their hearts. “When love is created
what dissatisfaction can there be?”²
Sufism is the ancient wisdom of the heart. It is not limited by form, by time or place. It always was and it always will be. There will
always be those who need to realize God as the Beloved. There will always be lovers of God. The Kamal Posh recognized that Mo-
hammed knew the silent mysteries of love. They stayed with him and became assimilated into Islam.
Islam literally means “surrender” and, while the exoteric side of Islam teaches the outer religious law of surrender to God, there
developed an inner esoteric side which teaches of the lover’s surrender to the Beloved. A century after the death of the Prophet, small
groups known as “Lovers of God” began to emerge throughout the Muslim world. They were also known as “Travellers” or “Wayfarers
on the Mystical path,” reflecting a saying ascribed to the Prophet:
Be in this world as if you are a traveller, a passerby, with your clothes and shoes full of dust. Sometimes you sit under the shade of a
tree, sometimes you walk in the desert. Be always a passerby, for this is not home.
Later these “Wayfarers” became known as Sufis, possibly referring to their white woolen garments (sûf ), or as an indication of their pu-
rity of heart (safâ).
These small groups of Sufis gathered around their teacher, or sheikh. The inner teachings of the path are transmitted from teacher to
disciple. Each teacher guides his disciples according to the principles he has received from his teacher. The essence of the teaching is
not verbal, but a direct communion from heart to heart. The Kamal Posh stayed with Mohammed because he created love in their
hearts, and it is the inner communion of the heart that is the core of the Sufi path. The relationship of lover and Beloved is reflected in
the relationship with the teacher who guides his disciples, or murîds, with an openness of heart and an understanding of the mysteries
of love.
At the core of all Sufi practices is the element of love and devotion. Devotion is the inner attitude of the lover, and the nature of the
Sufi path is devotional. The Sufi aspires to give herself to God as a lover to her Beloved. Devotion is an opening of the heart to the
grace that flows through love. It is an attitude of surrender in which the ego and the mind are surrendered to a mystery beyond their
comprehension. In giving ourself to God we allow Him to take us Home, and the quickest way is through the door of love. In the words
of al-Qushayrî, “The inner reality of love means that you give all of yourself to the One until nothing remains of you for you.”³
It is said that there are two ways of attracting God’s attention. Either we make ourself perfect and then He has to love us, or we give
ourself to Him and then He cannot resist our need to be with Him. The attitude of devotion is an offering of our whole self to Him
whom we love. This inner offering is a dynamic state of surrender which attracts the higher energies of love. Just as in nature a vacuum
is always filled, so is the inner emptiness of surrender filled with His presence.
In the West we have tended to associate surrender with subservience and have lost touch with its hidden power. Surrender creates
an empty space within the psyche which allows us to experience the power of the Self without being overwhelmed or inflated. Sufi prac-
tices are designed to help us to surrender, and to realize that we are contained by something far beyond the limited horizons of the
mind and ego. Stepping into the inner spaces of our own being, we are able to experience the potency of His love for His servant.
Sufism has explored the ways of love and developed means to help the seeker travel this invisible and yet powerful path. Because
the purpose of the path is to reveal the inner essence of the wayfarer, Sufism stays attuned to humanity. The deepest nature of mankind
remains the same and yet surface changes take place. It is said that Sufism has stayed alive and preserved its dynamism through adapt-
ing and changing with the times and yet at the same time remaining true to the essence of the tradition. The essence of the tradition is
the inner alignment of the heart towards God, and the surrender of the ego that allows His will to be done. But outwardly, as society
and culture develop and change, so does Sufism respond to these changes.
EARLY SUFI SAINTS
Some early Sufis were extreme ascetics. Reacting against the growing luxury of life, they stressed the need to master physical desires.
Even before the time of Mohammed there were among the Arab tribes men who had renounced the world, choosing poverty rather than
riches. They believed that attachment to worldly goods and sensual desire leads to sin, and separation from them leads to the purifi-
cation of the soul. These principles were carried into early Islamic thought. Abû Bakr, the first Caliph, preferred “voluntary poverty” to
“compulsory poverty,” and the second Caliph, ‘Umar, practiced asceticism and austerity. For him seclusion led to freedom from evil.
Hasan of Basra was an influential early Sufi patriarch whose prescriptions for spiritual life were to sleep little, not complain of the
heat or the cold, not have a fixed abode, and always be hungry. For Hasan, fasting was a “training ground” and he believed that fear
should be stronger than hope, “For where hope is stronger than fear, the heart will rot.”⁴
Râbi‘a al-‘Adawiyya, one of the foremost Sufi women saints, also lived in Basra. Râbi‘a was an intoxicated lover of God who suppos-
edly never had a teacher. She was an ascetic who used a broken pitcher for drinking and for her ablutions, an old reed-mat to lie on,
and a brick for a pillow. Always looking towards God, she cared not for anything that might distract her attention from Him. Once
Râbi‘a was asked, “Do you love God?” She answered, “Yes.” “Do you hate the devil?” She answered, “No, my love of God leaves me no
time to hate the devil.”⁵
Râbi‘a became a model of selfless love for God. Nothing should come between her and her Beloved, and she longed for night so
that they could be alone together. In contrast to the religious man who strives to reach paradise, Râbi‘a’s prayer emphasizes the mys-
tical rejection of everything but God: “Oh Lord, whatever share of this world Thou dost bestow on me, bestow it on Thine enemies, and
whatever share of the next world Thou dost give me, give it to Thy friends—Thou art enough for me.”⁶
The ninth-century master Dhû‘l-Nûn was one of the first Sufis to develop a theory of fanâ and baqâ, the annihilation of the self that
leads to eternal life. He also introduced a theosophical doctrine of Sufism, speaking about tawhîd, or “Unity of God,” and formulating a
theory of ma‘rifa, intuitive knowledge of God, or gnosis. The gnostic knows not through religious faith, learning, or discussion, but
through being united with God:
The gnostics see without knowledge, without sight, without information received, and without observation, without description,
without veiling and without veil. They are not themselves, but in so far as they exist at all they exist in God. Their movements are
caused by God, and their words are the words of God which are uttered by their tongues, and their sight is the sight of God, which
has entered into their eyes. So God Most High has said: “When I love a servant, I, the Lord, am his ear, so that he hears by Me, I am
his eye, so that he sees by Me, and I am his tongue, so that he speaks by Me, and I am his hand, so that he takes by Me.”⁷
Dhû‘l-Nûn practiced self-mortification but knew of the supremacy of love. There is a legend that when he died there was seen written in
green on his brow, “This is the friend of God. He died in the love of God. This is the slain of God by the sword of God.”⁸
Most of the early Sufi saints regarded renunciation of everything other than God as the most important quality of the wayfarer. It
was the great ninth-century mystic Bâyezîd Bistâmî who stressed that love for God is the primary means for realizing union, and pre-
ceding our love for God is His love for us:
At the beginning I was mistaken in four respects. I concerned myself to remember God, to know Him, to love Him, and to seek
Him. When I had come to the end I saw that He had remembered me before I remembered Him, that His knowledge of me had pre-
ceded my knowledge of Him, that His love towards me had existed before my love to Him, and He had sought me before I sought
Him.⁹
Although Bâyezîd recognizes the primacy of love, he also values renunciation. But rather than the renunciation of the world, he speaks
of the renunciation of the self, the nafs. Pure love of God is only possible when one is free from the self. Bâyezîd says, “As I reached the
state of proximity with God, He said, ‘What dost thou desire?’ I replied, ‘I desire Thee.’ He said, ‘As long as there remains even one par-
ticle of Bâyêzidness in thee, that desire cannot be fulfilled.’”¹⁰
Bâyezîd was a God-intoxicated mystic who realized the essential unity of God and man: “I sloughed off my self as a snake sloughs
off its skin. Then I looked into myself and saw that I am He.”¹¹ He is known for his ecstatic utterances of divine union, “Glory be to me!
How great is my glory!” and “Under my garments there is nothing but God.”¹² He achieved this state of absolute oneness through se-
vere self-mortification and austerity, purging himself of himself until nothing remained. Yet he realized that all his efforts must be re-
nounced, for “through God’s help alone, I attained God.”¹³
In contrast to the ecstatic nature of Bâyezîd, the ninth-century master al-Junayd advocated a path of sobriety and the integration of
Sufism into ordinary life. Al-Junayd lived in Baghdad, the religious and spiritual center of the time, and later Sufis were deeply influ-
enced by his teachings on love, unification, and the surrender of individual will to the will of God. Al-Junayd stressed constant self-
purification and struggle, which lead to the passing away of the attributes of the lover as “the qualities of the Beloved replace the qual-
ities of the lover.”¹⁴ Al-Junayd describes how the stage of annihilation of the self, fanâ, leads to baqâ, the unitive life in God in which the
devotee just fulfills the will of God: “It is a stage where the devotee has achieved the true realization of the Oneness of God in true prox-
imity to Him. He is lost to sense and action because God fulfills in him what He hath willed of him.”¹⁵
Al-Junayd knew of the dangers that can come from publicly speaking of the mysteries of the path, which are easily misunderstood,
particularly by an Islamic orthodoxy which viewed the activities of the Sufis with growing suspicion. For this reason he rejected the
“drunken” mystic, al-Hallâj, who openly expressed in the mosques and marketplace of Baghdad the secret of divine love, the essential
unity of lover and Beloved:
I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I.
We are two spirits dwelling in one body,
If thou seest me, thou seest Him;
And if thou seest Him, thou seest us both.
The themes of love, loss of self, and union were dramatically played out in the life of al-Hallâj. For al-Hallâj love was the very
essence of God, “the essence of the divine essence.” What separates us from Him is the self, the “I,” which made al-Hallâj cry out:
Between me and You there lingers an “It is I” which torments me….
Ah! Lift through mercy this “It is I” from between us both!¹⁶
The awareness that his own self was the cause of separation from the Beloved made al-Hallâj pray for his death so that that obstacle
would be removed. Finally he realized his desire on the gallows, executed for proclaiming the mystical truth anâ’l-Haqq (“I am the
Absolute Truth”). Through his death, al-Hallâj became immortalized as the prince of lovers, as the one who was prepared to pay the
ultimate price for love, his own blood.
Sufis have always been lovers, longing to return to their primordial state of union, knowing that it is their own self which is the veil
of separation. They followed the Islamic law but inwardly their hearts opened to a truth beyond any form, to the limitless ocean of love.
A lover cannot be confined or contained, except by the pain of separation; and the only rule of love is to give oneself to the Beloved.
The sacrifice of oneself is the price that allows the devotee to realize God not as Lord, but as Beloved. Dhû‘l-Nûn said, “O God! Publicly
I call Thee ‘My Lord,’ but in solitude I call Thee ‘O my Beloved.’”¹⁷ Al-Hallâj’s crime was to make this most intimate relationship public.
His death made him love’s martyr, and brought into popular consciousness the secret of the soul’s love affair with God.
SUFISM AND THE RELIGIOUS LAW
Dhû‘l-Nûn, like many early Sufi mystics, considered it necessary to follow the sharî‘a, or Religious Law. He said that “The sign of the
lover of God is to follow the Friend of God (the Prophet) in his manners, deeds, orders, and customs.”¹⁸ But the execution of al-Hallâj
showed how Islamic orthodoxy was threatened by mysticism. Union with God cannot be reached either by the mind or by right behav-
ior. God reveals Himself within the hearts of those who have sacrificed themselves on the altar of the heart; in the words of Dhû‘l-Nûn,
“He reveals Himself to them in a way in which He is not revealed to any man of the world.”¹⁹
Although Sufism developed within Islam, its mystical wayfarers tread a path that can seem contrary to the outer law. For example,
Abû Sa‘îd ibn Abî’l-Khayr, the eleventh-century master of Mayhana, never went on the pilgrimage to Mecca, saying that the real pil-
grimage was around the Kaaba of the heart. Abû Sa‘îd ibn Abî’l-Khayr was a serious student of divinity until one day when, on his way to
the city, he met a dervish seated on an ash heap, who introduced him to Sheikh Abû ‘l-Fadl Hasan. The day after their meeting Abû
Sa‘îd was attending a lecture on the Qur’an when he heard the verse (6:91), “Say Allah! Then leave them to amuse themselves in their
folly.” The door of his heart opened, and when his Qur’anic teacher noticed this state he asked where he was the night before. Abû
Sa‘îd replied that he was with Sheikh Abû ‘l-Fadl Hasan. His teacher ordered him to go to the sheikh, saying, “It is unlawful for you to
come from Sufism to this discourse.”
Abû Sa‘îd returned to the sheikh, who recognized that he was drunk with divine intoxication. Abû Sa‘îd had tasted the wine which
devastates the mind with the mysteries of love. Wine is forbidden in Islam, but for the Sufi it is a symbol of mystical knowledge which
is always forbidden to the rational mind. For Abû Sa‘îd that sip of love’s wine, which he said came from the glance of Sheikh Abû ‘l-Fadl
Hasan, made him abandon his religious studies and take up the mystical path. He became one of the great masters of Sufism, stress-
ing the need to renounce the ego and cleanse the heart of desires. “If you wish that God should dwell in your heart, purify yourself from
all save Him, for the King will not enter a house filled with stores and furniture, He will only enter a heart which is empty of all save
Himself.”²⁰
The negation of one’s own self is combined with an affirmation of the heart’s longing for God. It is through the spark of divine con-
sciousness placed within the heart that the power of divine love is awakened, which opens the gate of unity. Then the negation of the
self becomes a realization that “all is He, and all is by Him, and all is His.”²¹
After his years of asceticism Abû Sa‘îd reached illumination. He did not preach outward renunciation, but a participation in daily life
together with absorption in God. For him:
The perfect mystic is not an ecstatic devotee lost in contemplation of Oneness, nor a saintly recluse shunning all commerce with
mankind, but “the true saint” goes in and out amongst the people and eats and sleeps with them and buys and sells in the market
and marries and takes part in social intercourse, and never forgets God for a single moment.
Real poverty, say the Sufis, is the poverty of the heart, a state of inner detachment that does not depend on one’s outer situation. Abû
Sa‘îd settled in Nîshâpûr, and, gathering disciples around him, he founded a khânqâh, or Sufi Center, where he was the first Sufi to
draw up rules for communal life. Before his death in 1094 he asked to have inscribed on his tombstone, Here lies one enthralled to
love.²²
Another prominent Sufi whose path led him from theology to mysticism was Abû Hâmid al-Ghazzâlî. Al-Ghazzâlî was a successful
professor in Baghdad at the end of the eleventh century. Unlike Abû Sa‘îd’s conversion from the glance of a sheikh, al-Ghazzâlî’s began
with the reading of Sufi books. But he plainly saw that these teachings cannot be learned from intellectual study:
… but can only be reached by immediate ecstasy and inward transformation. How great is the difference between knowing the defi-
nition, causes, and conditions of drunkenness and actually being drunk. The drunken man knows nothing about the definition and
theory of drunkenness, but he is drunk; while the sober man, knowing the definition and the principles of drunkenness, is not drunk
at all.²³
Sufism is a path of inward experience, and as another great Sufi, Jâmî, said, “Why listen to secondhand reports when you can hear
the Beloved speak Himself ?” Al-Ghazzâlî gave himself to the mystical path and to the purification that transforms the soul and leads to
secret communion with God:
Once I had been a slave: Lust was my master,
Lust then became my servant, I was free:
Leaving the haunts of men,
I sought Thy Presence,
Lonely, I found in Thee my company.²⁴
But although al-Ghazzâlî’s path led him from theology to Sufism, from mental knowledge to the experiences of the heart, his impor-
tance is in reconciling theology and mysticism. His greatest work, the Ihyâ’ ‘ulûm ad-dîn, “Revival of the Religious Sciences,” contains
forty chapters, forty being the number of days the dervish traditionally spends in seclusion at any one time. The Ihyâ’ can be seen as a
preparation for death, and the final chapter describes death both as the terrible moment that brings man to his eternal judgment, and
the longed-for moment that fulfills the lover’s deepest longing and brings him into the presence of his Beloved. The previous chapters
link these two threads together, teaching man to live in accordance with the inner meaning of the religious law, not just its outer form.
Al-Ghazzâlî understood that “people oppose things because they are ignorant of them.” Through his work he showed that Sufism is
not antagonistic to Islamic law, but rather that the Sufis follow its inner essence. Combining the life of the heart with an adherence to
the law, his work helped to integrate Sufism into mainstream Islamic thought.
IBN ‘ARABÎ AND JALALUDDIN RÛMÎ
The early Sufi sheikhs often left no writings. Their teaching was their own life, and although their sayings were collected by their fol-
lowers, there was no written doctrine. Al-Ghazzâlî was one of the first to organize his ideas into a mystical system. Half a century after
his death in 1111, one of the greatest exponents of Sufi mystical theory, Ibn ‘Arabî, was born in Spain.
Ibn ‘Arabî is one of the few Sufis who did not have a spiritual teacher, but instead was initiated, he said, by Khidr, the archetypal Sufi
figure who represents direct revelation. Ibn ‘Arabî left Spain in 1201 to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and then visited Baghdad before
settling in Damascus. He wrote a tremendous number of works, perhaps five hundred. Many of them are short, while Al-futûhât
al-makiyya, “Meccan Revelations,” has five-hundred-and-sixty chapters.
The core of Ibn ‘Arabî’s mystical teaching is expressed by the term wahdat al-wujûd, unity of being. Ibn ‘Arabî replaced the idea of a
personal God with a philosophical concept of Oneness. Only God exists. He is the One underlying the many and is also the many. He
is the cause of everything, the essence of everything, and the substance of everything:
He is now as He was. He is the One without oneness and the Single without singleness…. He is the very existence of the First and
the very existence of the Last, and the very existence of the Outward and the very existence of the Inward. So there is no first nor last,
nor outward nor inward, except Him, without these becoming Him or His becoming them…. By Himself He sees Himself, and by
Himself He knows Himself. None sees Him other than He, and none perceives Him other than He. His veil, that is phenomenal
existence, is a part of His oneness…. There is no other and there is no existence other than He.²⁵
Because there is no other than He, through knowing ourself we come to know God. “He who knows himself knows his Lord.” This
is not a philosophical concept but a mystical experience: “When the mystery—of realizing that the mystic is one with the divine—is re-
vealed to you, you will understand that you are no other than God and that you have continued and will continue…. When you know
yourself, your ‘I-ness’ vanishes and you know that you and God are one and the same.”²⁶ Fanâ, the annihilation of the ego, one’s “I-
ness,” is a state of realizing one’s essential oneness with God. Nothing becomes God or even unites with God because everything is
He.
What distinguishes man and God is that He is absolute while our being depends upon Him. Yet at the same time Ibn ‘Arabî sees
God and man as interdependent. Through our knowing God, God comes to know Himself. “God is necessary to us in order that we
may exist, while we are necessary to Him in order that He may be manifested to Himself…. I give Him also life by knowing Him in my
heart.”²⁷
The greatness of Ibn ‘Arabî is not in the originality of his ideas. The theory of wahdat al-wujûd, unity of being, was already part of
Sufi metaphysics. But Ibn ‘Arabî formally organized ideas that until then had only been expressed orally. Later Sufis valued the work of
“the greatest sheikh” for systematizing what they regarded as the real essence of Sufism. The unity which he describes is the unity
which His lovers know within their hearts. Love’s unity is beyond all form and embraces every form, as Ibn ‘Arabî writes:
My heart is open to all forms;
it is a pasture for gazelles
and a monastery for Christian monks
a temple for idols and the
Ka‘bah of the pilgrim
the tables of the Torah and
the book of the Koran.
Mine is the religion of Love
Wherever His caravans
turn, the religion of
Love shall be my religion
and my faith.²⁸
Ibn ‘Arabî became known as “the pole of knowledge.” Four years after Ibn ‘Arabî’s death in 1240, a meeting took place that was to
inspire some of the world’s greatest writings on mystical love. A theology professor was walking home from school when he met a
ragged dervish. The professor was Jalâluddîn Rûmî and the dervish, Shamsi Tabrîz. According to one story, Rûmî fell at Shams’ feet
and renounced his religious teaching after the dervish recited these verses from Sanâ’î’s Diwân:
If knowledge does not liberate the self
from the self
then ignorance is better than such
knowledge.²⁹
Shamsi Tabrîz was the spark that ignited the fire of divine love within Rûmî, who summed up his life in the two lines:
And the result is not more than these
three words:
I burnt, and burnt, and burnt.
Shams had awakened in him a fire that could only be satisfied with union, with the ecstatic loss of the self in the presence of the
Beloved. In his works he tells again and again the story of love and death, how the lover must die to reach his Beloved:
I would love to kiss you
The price of kissing is your life
Now my love is running toward my life,
Shouting, What a bargain, let’s buy it.³⁰
Rûmî and Shams became inseparable, lost to the outer world in the love they experienced in each other’s company. For Rûmî,
Shams was the divine sun that had lighted up his life. But one day Shams disappeared, possibly sensing the jealousy of Rûmî’s stu-
dents and family. Rûmî was distraught, but then he heard news that Shams was in Damascus, and he sent his son, Sultân Walad, to
bring him back. When Shams returned, Rûmî fell at his feet, and once more they became inseparable, such that “no one knew who was
the lover and who was the beloved.” But again the jealousy of Rûmî’s students and his younger son destroyed their physical closeness.
Again Shams disappeared, this time possibly murdered. Rûmî was consumed with grief, lost alone in the ocean of love.
But from the terrible pain of outer separation and loss was born an inner union as he found his Beloved within his own heart. In-
wardly united with Shams, the theology professor was transformed into love’s poet. Rûmî knew the pain of love and the deepest pur-
pose of this fire within the heart, how it empties the human being and takes him Home:
Oh, my everlasting heart! Toward the Beloved is a road coming from the soul.
Oh, you who are lost! There is a path, secret but visible.
Are the six directions erased? Don’t worry:
In the innermost of your being, there is a road to the Beloved.³¹
He had walked this road of annihilation, the sacrifice of the self that leads to union with the Beloved:
At an end of “myself”
He appears
That Face
Through these rags.³²
Rûmî’s greatest work is the Mathnawî, which Jâmî called “The Qur’an in Persian tongue.” Its twenty-five-thousand verses are filled
with stories and lyrics describing all aspects of the path of love, beginning with the song of the reed flute, the longing caused by its
separation from the reed-bed. Including both sublime philosophy and the realities of everyday life, the Mathnawî gives a spiritual
dimension to all aspects of life. For example, in the story of the chickpeas, the chickpeas complain of the heat of being cooked and try
to jump out of the pot, making the housewife (who represents the spiritual guide) explain to them how through suffering one can
evolve spiritually. In the middle of the housewife’s story the chickpeas are taught to sing the words of al-Hallâj, “Kill me, O my trust-
worthy friends!”—the words of the lover who knows that only the “I” separates him from his Beloved.
If Ibn ‘Arabî is known as “the pole of knowledge,” Rûmî shines as love’s pole. He radiated the light of love to the Persian-speaking
world and beyond. And today the many translations of his work have brought his song of the soul’s love for the Beloved to the Western
world, introducing many seekers to the Sufi way.
SUFI ORDERS, TARÎQAS
Rûmî is known not only as a poet but as the founder of the Mevlevî Order, often known as the Whirling Dervishes on account of their
mystical dancing. While the work of al-Ghazzâlî, Ibn ‘Arabî, Rûmî, and others like Sanâ‘î and ‘Attâr established a literature for Sufism,
the founding of the different Sufi orders, or tarîqas, was an important development in the practical application of Sufi teachings.
By the eleventh century the small groups that gathered around a particular teacher had begun to form into tarîqas, each one bearing
the name of its initiator. The essence of each order is the tradition transmitted from teacher to disciple in an uninterrupted chain of
transmission. Each tarîqa traces its chain of transmission through its founder back to the first Caliph, Abû Bakr, or the fourth Caliph,
‘Alî. Different orders can be distinguished by the basic practices and principles which they inherit from their founder.
The first order to emerge was the Qâdiriyya, founded by ‘Abd al-Qâdir al-Jîlânî (d. 1166) in Baghdad. ‘Abd al-Qâdir was an ascetic,
missionary, and preacher who became one of the most popular saints in the Islamic world, and his tomb in Baghdad is a place of pil-
grimage. The Qâdiriyya is irreproachably orthodox. In the Arab West the order is called the Jilâlah, and its sacred dances have declined
into trance dancing.
‘Abdu’l-Qâhir Abû Najîb as-Suhrawardî (d. 1168) was the founder of the Suhrawardiyya. Suhrawardî was a disciple of Ahmad Ghaz-
zâlî, younger brother of al-Ghazzâlî. Suhrawardî lived in seclusion and had many disciples, including his nephew Shihâbuddîn Abû
Hafs ‘Umar as-Suhrawardî, considered to be the real founder of the Suhrawardiyya. Abû Hafs ‘Umar wrote an important and widely-
read treatise on Sufi theory, ‘Awârif al-ma‘ârif. His doctrine was both mystical and highly orthodox, and spread into India and
Afghanistan.
At about the same time the Rifâ‘iyya order was founded by Ahmad ar-Rifâ‘î (d. 1178) and spread from Iraq through Egypt and Syria.
Until the fifteenth century it was one of the most popular orders. The Rifâ‘iyya dervishes were known as the Howling Dervishes because
they practiced a loud dhikr. They also became notorious for unusual practices like eating snakes, cutting themselves with swords, and
dancing in fire without being hurt.
In total contrast is the sobriety associated with the Naqshbandiyya, named after Bahâ ad-Dîn Naqshband (d. 1390), but started by
‘Abdu‘l-Khâliq Ghijduwânî (d. 1220). The Naqshbandis are known as the Silent Sufis because they practice a silent rather than vocal
dhikr. They do not engage in samâ‘, sacred music or dance, and do not dress differently from ordinary people. Another aspect of the
Naqshbandi path is the suhbat, the close relationship of master and disciple. The order was very successful in Central Asia, and spread
throughout India due to the work of Ahmad Sirhindî (d. 1624).
Another Sufi order, the Kubrâwiyya, was founded by Abû‘l-Jannâb Ahmad Najm al-Dîn Kubrâ, killed in 1220 during the Mongol inva-
sion of Central Asia. Najm al-Dîn Kubrâ’s mystical theories concern visions and ecstatic experiences as well as a detailed color sym-
bolism. His disciples had to follow a path which includes “constant ritual purity, constant fasting, constant silence, constant retreat,
constant recollection of God, and constant direction of a sheikh who explains the directions of one’s dreams and visions.”³³ Bahâ’ud-
dîn Walad, Rûmî’s father, was one of his disciples, as was Farîd ud-Dîn ‘Attâr, the author of The Conference of the Birds.
In addition to these Sufi orders there are many others, including the Chishtiyya, named after Mu’în ad-Dîn Muhammad Chishtî, a
thirteenth-century Indian saint. Sacred music and dance are an important part of the Chishtiyya meetings. Among other Sufi orders are
the Bektashiyya, noted for allowing men and women to meet together, the Khalvatiyya order, which believes in attaining spiritual perfec-
tion through seclusion, and Rûmî’s Mevlevî order. There are also numerous branch orders.
Each Sufi path can be likened to a spoke of a wheel that leads from the rim, the religious law, to the hub, the heart of hearts, the
Beloved. Each tarîqa has its own practices and principles to help us on this journey, to transform our physical, mental, psychological,
and spiritual make-up so that we are able to experience the Truth that is within our own heart. We are guided by the sheikh, the rep-
resentative of the tradition, and also by all those who have travelled this path before us, the superiors of the order, through whom the
power and presence of the tradition is passed.
THE SPREAD OF SUFISM AND ITS EMERGENCE IN THE WEST
Sufism participated in the spread of Islam, the orders adapting to the different peoples found in the Muslim world. Annemarie Schim-
mel describes how “large parts of India, Indonesia, and Black Africa were Islamized by Sufi preachers.”³⁴ They spoke the local language
rather than Arabic and lived out the basic obligations of Islam: simple love of, and trust in, God, and love of the Prophet and one’s fel-
low creatures, without indulging in religious hairsplitting.
The different orders also adapted to the different social levels within Islam. In North Africa, dervish groups were an important focus
for the spiritual life of the black slaves. In Turkey, the Whirling Dervishes were close to the rulers of the Ottoman empire, as well as
being associated with artists and poets. In contrast, the Bektashi order was linked to rural, village life, while the Heddâwa, which
claimed descent from the Qâdiriyya, was a beggars’ order.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sufi groups could be found throughout the Islamic world, from Indonesia in the Far East
to Bosnia in Europe. Then in some areas Sufism became suppressed, by Atatürk in Turkey (he banned the orders in 1925), by the
communists in Russia, China, and more recently in Afghanistan, where Naqshbandis and their sheikhs were assassinated by Russian
soldiers. But this century has also seen the spread of Sufism beyond the Islamic world into Western Europe and the United States.
While groups of Muslim immigrants undoubtedly brought Sufi mysticism into their Western communities, Hazrat Inayat Khan was
one of the first Sufis to make Sufism accessible to the non-Muslim West. A sheikh of the Chishtiyya order, he founded the Sufi Order of
the West, which stresses the universality at the heart of Sufi teachings. Other more orthodox Muslim Sufi teachers have come to the
West, bringing the traditions of their order. For example, the Ni‘matullâhî order, which was founded in the fourteenth century, was
brought from Iran by Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, while a Qâdiri sheikh from Ceylon, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, attracted a devoted following in
Philadelphia until his death in 1986.
The different Sufi orders that have arrived in the West have increased interest in the teachings of the Sufi tradition. At the same
time, translations of Sufi texts from Arabic and Persian have made its literature more accessible. Integrating Sufi ideas into Western
thought has also been helped by the scholarly work of Henry Corbin, who offers a psychological perspective on the theories of Ibn
‘Arabî, Suhrawardî, Najm al-Dîn Kubrâ, and others. Corbin was also a follower of Carl Jung and showed how Jung’s understanding of
the archetypal world of the collective unconscious is mirrored in Sufism. Corbin’s work has been very influential in certain schools of
Jungian psychology, in particular the work of James Hillman and his school of “Archetypal Psychology.”
Idries Shah, associated with the Naqshbandiyya in Afghanistan, also offers a psychological approach to Sufism. He suggests that
Sufi literature speaks about psychological states and processes that we are only just beginning to understand in the West. Translating
many Sufi stories into English for the first time, he has brought us the teachings and humor of this mystical tradition, including the ex-
ploits of Mullâh Nasruddîn. Nasruddîn’s folk wisdom is often very applicable today. The story of the Mullâh searching the ground in
front of his hut speaks directly to our Western, rational approach to many of our problems. When a passerby saw Nasruddîn bending in
the dust and asked him what he was doing, Nasruddîn replied that he was looking for a lost key. The passerby offered to help him look.
After fruitlessly searching for some time, the helper asked Nasruddîn where exactly he had lost the key, to which the Mullâh replied, “In
my hut.”
“Then why are you looking for it out here?”
“Because out here is more light.”
TRUTH BEYOND FORM
Whatever form Sufism takes, simple or scholarly, orthodox or universal, it speaks of a truth that is beyond any form. Rûmî says this
====
1. THE LONGING OF THE HEART
If the eight Paradises were opened in my hut, and the rule of both worlds were given in my hands, I would not give for them that single
sigh which rises at morning-time from the depth of my soul in remembering my longing for Him.
Bâyezîd Bistâmî¹
AWAKENING TO THE PAIN OF SEPARATION
The journey back to God begins when He looks into the heart of His servant and infuses it with divine love. This is the moment of
tauba, “the turning of the heart.” The glance of the Beloved awakens the memory of the soul, the memory of our primordial state of
oneness with God. The memory of this union makes us aware that we are now separate from the One we love, and so ignites the fire of
longing. The exile remembers his real Home and begins the long and lonely journey back to the Beloved.
Without the glance of the Beloved there would be no longing for God and no spiritual journey. It is only because He wants us that
we turn away from the outer world and set out on the ancient journey of the soul back to its source. Someone once asked Râbi‘a, “I
have committed many sins; if I turn in penitence towards God, will He turn in mercy towards me?” “Nay,” she replied, “but if He shall
turn towards thee, thou wilt turn towards Him.”
The moment of tauba can be the glance of a teacher, as when Rûmî fell at the feet of Shams. It is rarely so outwardly dramatic, but
the presence of someone who is spiritually awake can trigger a response of the heart, bringing into consciousness a hidden home-
sickness for one’s real Home. Then in an instant the inner orientation of the individual changes. A doorway to the beyond has been
opened, through which we glimpse the soul’s deepest desire. Once this desire is awakened we are left with a sweet and terrible longing
for what we have seen:
The world is full of beautiful things until an old man with a beard came into my life and set my heart aflame with longing and made
it pregnant with Love. How can I look at the loveliness around me, how can I see it, if it hides the Face of my Lover?²
For some their longing is awakened by a teacher, while others may be awakened by a dream, a saying, or a piece of music that strikes
the heart’s primal chord. It may be a moment in nature when, for an instant, the door between the two worlds opens, or even a shock
that momentarily frees us from the grip of the ego and the mind. In whatever way the Beloved wills, He comes to us, for this longing is
always a gift of God, sent to the exile inviting him to set out Home.
The awakening of longing is the initial awakening of the heart. We hear His call not with the outer ear but with the ear of the heart.
This call is always present because each and every atom sings the song of remembrance, every particle of creation desires to be re-
united with the Creator. His call is at the core of creation; without it the world would disintegrate. It is the centripetal pull which bal-
ances the centrifugal, expansive energy of creation. We feel this inner gravitational pull towards God as the magnetic attraction of love,
which is experienced as a desire for closeness and intimacy. Love always draws us closer and closer towards union.
Love’s call is at the very center of our being and we experience it reflected in human relationships. But we are not aware of its deep-
est purpose, we cannot hear its real message, until the heart is awakened:
Know that all will return to its origin. The heart, the essence, has to be awakened, made alive, to find its way back to its divine
origin.³
DIVINE DISCONTENT
For some seekers this initial awakening is experienced as a growing feeling of dissatisfaction, what Saint Augustine called “the Divine
Discontent.” In the innermost chamber of the heart we have seen His face but this is hidden from consciousness. The heart speaks a
language so different from that of the mind and the ego that we are not directly aware of what has happened. Instead we are left with a
feeling of the emptiness of our ordinary life. The painful side of spiritual awakening is that the world becomes desolate. We may try to
improve our outer situation, work harder, make money, or take a vacation. But we soon find that this is no answer. What is it that we re-
ally want? Why is the outer world losing its attraction? Friends and interests that used to be fulfilling can seem empty, and we are left
only with a discontent that we cannot satisfy.
We long for what our heart knows to be real, for love’s union which is hidden beneath the surface of our lives. When we are awak-
ened to this real love we can never be satisfied by anything else. This is why the world begins to lose its attraction, why we become dis-
contented. We have been given a glimpse of something else, the real substance of our own self. Longing is both a blessing and a curse.
A blessing because it takes us Home, and a curse because of the pain it brings. Nothing can satisfy us but union with God. Râbi‘a, who
knew the deepest meaning of love’s pain, expresses this in her usual straightforward way:
The source of my grief and loneliness is deep in my breast.
This is a disease no doctor can cure.
Only union with the Friend can cure it.⁴
THE CRY OF THE SOUL
Within the heart, a sadness has been awakened that can never be healed by the outer world or the most meaningful human rela-
tionship. The soul begins to cry the primal cry of separation, the heart’s longing for God. This is the song of the reed flute at the begin-
ning of Rûmî’s Mathnawî:
Listen to the reed how it tells a tale, complaining of separations,
Saying, “Ever since I was parted from the reed-bed, my lament has caused man and woman to moan.
It is only to a bosom torn by severance that I can unfold the pain of love-desire.
Everyone who is left far from his source wishes back the time when he was united with it.”⁵
This pain of longing is the most direct road back to God. Longing does not belong to the complexities of the mind or the veils of
the ego. Within the heart the Beloved speaks directly to the lover, leading us through the fire of our own transformation. If we follow the
thread of longing we step out of the ego, with its patterns of control, and enter the arena of the heart. It is the heart that hears His call:
Know that you are the veil which conceals yourself from you. Know also that you cannot reach God through yourself, but that you
reach Him through Him. The reason is that when God vouchsafes the vision of reaching Him, He calls upon you to seek after Him
and you do.⁶
He calls us to Him with the irresistible attraction of love, which we experience as longing. In order to fully hear His call we have to
allow ourself to be dissatisfied and unfulfilled, rather than trying to fill this painful vacuum with another distraction. We have to allow
the pain of longing into our life. Longing is both the pain that burns away the veils of separation and the thread that guides us deeper
and deeper within, until we are able to enter the innermost chamber of the heart where He is waiting.
In the West we are conditioned to believe that at the beginning of every journey we should know where we are going and how to get
there. Caught in this conditioning, we apply it to spiritual life: what is the goal we seek and what are the practices that will take us there?
But the real journey of the soul is not of our own choosing, nor can we find our own way. We are responding to a call that will take us
beyond the known into the unknown, beyond the world of forms into the formless.
The spiritual journey is the most difficult undertaking. It is a voluntary crucifixion in which we die to the ego. Of our own accord we
would never turn away from the world with its many attractions and illusions and begin this painful, lonely quest. It is only because He
calls us, because He attracts our attention with His love, that we set out upon the path of no return. Like a magnet He draws us to Him
with love, for, in the words of the Sufi poet Nizâmî, “If the magnet were not loving, how could it attract the iron with such longing?”⁷
THE KNOWLEDGE OF UNION
The irresistible nature of His love is that it has the quality of completeness. All human love is incomplete, never totally fulfilling. But
His love carries the song of union, the total oneness of lover and Beloved. This is what we knew before separation, before we were sent
as exiles into this world. Within the innermost core of the human being there is a place where we remain one with God. The Sufis call
this place the heart of hearts. It is the home of the Self, our divine consciousness. The Self is the part of us that is never separate from
God. We carry this state of oneness within us and yet we have forgotten it. His love awakens us to its eternal presence.
He for whom we long is so close to us and yet we cannot see Him. He is “nearer to you than your very neck vein,” and yet we can-
not touch Him. In Rûmî’s words, “You guard the treasury of God’s Light—so come, return to the root of the root of your own self!”⁸
The longest and most painful journey is the journey back to ourselves. Longing is our guide. It is the pull of His love that takes us
through the darkness of separation. Longing keeps our attention on the heart and keeps alive the memory of our real nature.
The greater the longing the greater the attraction of the Beloved. This is why the Sufi prays, “Give me the pain of love, the pain of
love for Thee! And I will pay the price, any price you ask!”⁹ The pain of love is the knowledge that we are separate from the one we love.
This is not a mental knowledge but a knowledge of the soul which we feel in the heart. The soul knows the truth of love: that we belong
to the Beloved. The soul has tasted the wine of union, “has drunk the wine before the creation of the vine.”¹⁰ Before we come into this
world we are with God.
The knowledge of union evokes the pain of separation. Only because we remember that we are one with God do we experience this
state of separation. But unlike the memories of the mind, this memory of the heart does not belong to time. What we remember is the
eternal moment of the soul when we are always united with God. The remembrance of the heart is an awareness of a different level of real-
ity where there is no duality and no time. In the depths of the heart the lover and the Beloved are eternally united, and in everyday con-
sciousness there is always separation. Love’s most painful paradox which consumes the lover with longing is that we are both united
and separate.
He awakens us to the eternal moment of union and the weary hours of separation. In the state of separation, longing draws us into
the heart. Longing is both the call and the path we follow. His imprint is the sigh of the soul. When we give ourself to this primal pain
we walk in His footsteps to Him:
By his own powers no one can find the way that leads to Him;
Whoever walks towards Him walks with His foot.
Until the beam of His love shines out to guide the soul,
It does not set out to behold the love of His face.
My heart feels not the slightest attraction towards Him
Until an attraction comes from Him and works upon my heart.
Since I learnt that He longs for me, longing for Him never leaves me for an instant.¹¹
THE LIMITLESS OCEAN OF LONGING
Longing can take many different forms. For some it comes like a physical pain within the heart. For others it is a dull ache beneath the
surface of their lives, a hidden grief, an unexplained sadness. Depending on its intensity it can cause overwhelming despair or a nag-
ging discontent. It can appear unexpectedly, bursting into consciousness with the pain of lost love, and then melt away, leaving an
unexplained sweetness or the exhaustion of spent passion. But deep within us this grief is always present, for it is the soul’s remem-
brance of union. In the words of Meister Eckhart, “God is the sigh in the soul.”
Sometimes we can embrace this longing and welcome it into our lives. We recognize how precious is this pain. But the heart’s long-
ing can also be terrifying, making us run and hide in the distractions of the outer world. We cannot contain or control this sadness. Nor
can we rationally understand its purpose, for it draws us into a journey beyond any known horizon. Longing is as limitless as love’s
ocean. It has no end because love has no end. Dhû‘l-Nûn tells a story of meeting a woman on the seashore who revealed to him the
mysteries of the path. He asked her, “What is the end of love?”and she answered, “O simpleton, love has no end.” He asked, “Why?”
She replied, “Because the Beloved has no end.”¹²
Longing is without end because love is without end. Love and longing do not belong to the dimension of time or space, but to the
infinite dimension of the Self. To be confronted by an endless ocean of grief is terrible. This is not an ocean we can cross, because, in
Rûmî’s words, this is “the shoreless sea; here swimming ends always in drowning.”¹³ Only through dying to the ego can we merge into
the infinite ocean of the Self. Confronted by the heart’s unspoken ultimatum, how often do we run away from the sea’s edge back into
the complexities of the mind and the many illusions of the outer world?
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him down the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter …¹⁴
But once longing is awakened within the heart we can never escape it. However far we run it will always haunt us as a lover whom
we have betrayed. Whatever our seeming achievements, life will have a sour note of deep disappointment. The poet who flees Him
hears His feet following, and hears His voice saying, “All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”
Longing is the grief that consumes the ego. Longing is intimate, endless, tortuous, and terrible. It is the pain that underlies every
heartache, every feeling of loss. If we feel rejected or abandoned by a parent, friend, or human lover, at the core of this feeling is the pri-
mal pain of separation from God. He with whom we were united betrayed us and banished us from paradise. From the state of union
we were sent as exiles into this world of separation. Mankind’s crucifixion is to be both human and divine—the soul which has tasted
union imprisoned in a world of duality. Christ’s cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”¹⁵ echoes deep with-
in the heart of each of us. To embrace the pain of longing is to make conscious the deepest grief of humanity.
Nothing is more painful than to consciously feel within our own heart that we are separate from God. On the level of the soul all
humanity knows this separation but it is hidden from consciousness. Only when we know that we are contained within His love can we
bear the real intensity of this experience. In the moment of tauba, when He gives our heart a glimpse of unity, the knowledge of His love
for us is imprinted upon the heart. This imprint allows us to consciously experience the intensity of separation. The momentary expe-
rience of union both awakens the pain of separation and enables us to contain the pain.
The knowledge imprinted on the heart is not the same as mental knowledge. The knowledge of the heart is both more certain and
more elusive: more elusive because it is far finer and more difficult to grasp than the mind’s thought-forms; more certain because it is
not relative, but belongs to the absolute world of the Self. As we travel along the path we hear more clearly the wisdom of the heart and
can distinguish its voice from the mind and the ego. But from the very beginning this inner certainty is present. The heart knows that
we are held within the circle of love.
THE FEMININE SIDE OF LOVE
Love comes from the beyond and is our direct link with God. But like everything that is a part of creation, love has a dual nature, a posi-
tive and negative, masculine and feminine aspect. The masculine side of love is “I love you.” Love’s feminine aspect is “I am waiting for
you. I am longing for you.” The feminine side of love is the cup waiting to be filled, the heart longing for the wine of divine intoxication.
The lover waits for the Beloved, the soul waits for God. The mystery of the soul’s feminine nature is one of love’s secrets. The six-
teenth-cen-tury Indian princess and poet, Mirabai, knew this. Once, because she was a woman, she was denied access to one of Krish-
na’s temples by a famous theologian and ascetic, Jiv Gosvami. She shamed him with the words, “Are not all souls feminine before
God?” He bowed his head and led her into the temple.¹⁶ The Song of Songs also celebrates the soul’s feminine relationship to God in
mystical symbolism filled with sensuality:
I sleep but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my Beloved that knocketh, saying, “Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my unde-
filed: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night….”
I rose up to open to my Beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh, upon the han-
dles of the lock.¹⁷
The soul waits and opens to the Beloved, just as the heart waits and then opens to the tenderness of His touch, to the infusion of His
love. The Song of Songs is one of the most beautiful evocations of the mystical love of the soul for God, and yet, like many aspects of the
feminine, it has been misunderstood and repressed by our patriarchal culture. The Church fathers could not deny that the Song of Songs
belonged in the Bible, but they tried to interpret this erotic and mystical poem as the relationship between Mother Church and Christ.
Those who have tasted just for an instant the inner relationship with the Beloved can hear instead the depth and passion of the
receptive soul that waits for the intoxicating embrace of her divine Lover.
Gradually we have become aware of our culture’s patriarchal injustice towards women. We are far less aware of our denial and
repression of the inner feminine. As a culture we need to rediscover and value many feminine qualities, such as being rather than doing;
relating, allowing, and listening; creating space rather than creating form. Many of these qualities are essential to the mystic, who needs to
rediscover her own natural way of being with God, create a sacred space for this meeting, learn to listen to His silent voice, and allow
Him into her life.
The mystical path is in essence a feminine path of surrender and devotion, as expressed in a simple Sufi prayer:
I offer to Thee the only thing I have:
My capacity of being filled with Thee.
The mystic gives herself to her Beloved and so allows Him to come into her and dissolve all traces of duality. Longing is a dynamic
state of waiting in which the soul offers herself to God, and it is the very core of the mystical path. The anonymous author of the four-
teenth-cen-tury Christian classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, says that “Your whole life must be one of longing.” Yet many people have an
instinctual longing, a homesickness of the soul, but do not know it. Instead they interpret this feeling as a failing, an inability to be
happy or fulfilled with what life offers. Longing can so easily be misunderstood as a psychological problem, even a depression. One
who suffers it can feel rejected and isolated, not realizing that longing is the greatest gift because it does not allow us to forget Him
whom the heart loves.
We need to reclaim the potency of longing, to value its spiritual power. Rather than denying our longing we should welcome it and
pray for it to increase. Longing is the remembrance of the heart that both guides and nourishes the wayfarer. Ibn ‘Arabî prayed “Oh
Lord, nourish me not with love but with the desire for love.”¹⁸
Longing is a direct connection from the heart of the seeker to the heart of the Beloved. Longing is not entangled within the psyche in
our complexes and patterns of conditioning; nor does it function on the level of the mind where it can be strangled by doubts. Longing
is a living prayer of love. In the words of the eleventh-century Sufi, al-Qushayrî, “Longing is a state of commotion in the heart hoping
for meeting with the Beloved. The depth of longing is commensurate with the servant’s love of God.”¹⁹
CONFRONTING THE DENIAL OF PAIN
The fact that longing does not belong to the mind or the ego makes it threatening to our rational, ego-based consciousness. But to em-
brace longing, to welcome this pain within the heart, also confronts us with an instinctual and cultural conditioning that forbids us to
welcome pain. Instinctually we avoid pain and seek pleasure, and this drive is amplified by a present cultural conditioning that denies
the value of pain and seeks to alleviate even the slightest physical pain with drugs. While the advances of medicine have helped to res-
cue us from physical pain, there has also developed a conditioning that it is “wrong” to suffer.
Previous cultures understood the transformative nature of pain. The passage into adulthood was often marked by pain: for men, the
pain of ritual circumcision; for women, menstruation and the pain of childbirth. In our society, pain has become an aspect of the shad-
ow, to be escaped at all costs. We are increasingly conditioned to seek someone to blame for our suffering, which in the United States
has become linked with material greed as an incentive to sue someone for one’s suffering. To seek to blame someone else is not to
honor one’s own experience. To deny the value of suffering is to close the door on the transformation that can only come through pain.
Moving beyond our instinctual and cultural conditioning to avoid pain, we honor the transpersonal dimension of ourself which is
beyond the dualities of pleasure and pain. We welcome the reality of love which embraces every aspect of life with the wholeness of the
Self. In allowing the pain of longing we allow ourself to be taken into the innermost chamber of the heart, where we wait for the
Beloved.
The mystic does not seek pain. Some people who like to live in their own darkness can become addicted to suffering, just as they
can become addicted to their psychological problems. Pain like this, to which one becomes attached, is not transformative pain. The
lover seeks only the Beloved, and is attached to nothing but Him. But when the heart cries for God, the lover embraces the truth of this
pain. The lover knows that the cry of the heart is an open door for love, and that through our tears we prepare the place for the Beloved.
One paradox of the spiritual path is that although suffering does not take us to God, we cannot reach Him without suffering:
By suffering none attained
the treasure of mystic union;
and, strange to say, without suffering,
none beheld that treasure.²⁰
Embracing the depths of our longing, we allow the most painful and deepest need of the soul into consciousness. This call of the heart
attracts the Beloved, who takes us to union.
THROWN BETWEEN THE OPPOSITES
On the journey of the heart, longing draws us closer and closer to Him whom we love: “The hearts of mystics are the nests of love, and
the hearts of lovers are the nests of longing, and the hearts of longing are the nests of intimacy.”²¹ But this progression from separation
(bu‘d ) to nearness (qurb) is not linear, but a spiral path on which the wayfarer is constantly thrown between these opposites, turned
from the pain of separation to the bliss of nearness. In the words of the hadîth, “The heart of the faithful is held between the two fingers
of the All-compassionate, He turns it wherever He wants.”
Sometimes we feel so close to Him and the heart sings with His love. Then we are thrown into separation; He becomes so distant
that it is as if we never knew Him. We feel there is no God, only loneliness and desolation. Then the heart cries and cries, and through
these cries is drawn back closer to Him. Because longing draws us to Him, in these states of heartache and desolation we are actually
closer to Him than when we feel His nearness.
States of longing can last for days, months, or even years. At the beginning the experiences of nearness are fleeting, but slowly they
become more lasting. He who had seemed inaccessible becomes a friend within the heart, a companion of love. First it is just sepa-
ration that drives us to God; then gradually intimacy, the touch of His embrace, takes us deeper into love. The opposites become
reconciled within the heart. The journey back to God becomes the journey in God.
In the physical world we will always be confronted by separation. Only death can lift this final veil, as al-Hallâj knew when, before
his execution, he uttered, “Everything for the ecstatic is to be alone with his Only One, in Himself.”²² But longing makes us turn away
from ourself and turn back to God. Longing takes us into the realm of love, into the innermost chamber of the heart where only the
Beloved exists.
LOVE’S MOST HOLY MYSTERY
What stands between the lover and the Beloved is the lover’s ego, as Hâfiz proclaims: “Between the lover and the Beloved there must
be no veil. Thou thyself art thine own veil, Hâfiz—get out of the way!” Longing does not belong to the ego; it is the soul’s pain of sepa-
ration. While the soul longs for union, the very nature of the ego is separation. The ego develops as the infant separates from the moth-
er; in adolescence we further strengthen the ego through the separation caused by rebellion. The ego’s development is determined by
an awareness of our separate identity. To allow the longing for union into our life is to surrender the ego.
Each pang of longing is a momentary death. In the words of a Persian poem, “The ego does not go with laughter and with caresses.
It must be chased with sorrow and drowned in tears.” The heart’s cry for God is so potent that it breaks down the ego’s patterns of de-
fense and dissolves the ego. In the depths of longing there is no ego, no identity, just the terrible need of the soul. This need pulls us
closer to Him and away from ourself.
Accepting the feelings of longing, the discontent and dissatisfaction, we turn away from the desires of the ego and align ourself with
the need of the soul. Embracing the pain of our separation, we turn from duality back to unity, a unity of lover and Beloved which is
death to the ego. In the ocean of love’s longing, the ego is doomed. The primal cry of the soul takes the lover beyond this world and the
next, straight to Him who is our deepest desire.
The lover cries for the Beloved because the Beloved longs for His lover. To quote Rûmî,
Not a single lover would seek union
if the Beloved were not seeking it.²³
The light within our heart is attracted by His light and so they come to meet. This is the mystery of “light upon light,” which is “the
secret of the mystical journey”:
There are lights which ascend and lights which descend. The ascending lights are the lights of the heart; the descending lights are
those of the Throne. [The lower-self (the ego)] is the veil between the Throne and the heart. When this veil is rent and a door to the
throne opens in the heart, like springs towards like. Light rises toward light and light comes down upon light, and it is light upon
light (Qur’an 24:35)….
Each time the heart sighs for the Throne, the Throne sighs for the heart, so that they come to meet…. Each time a light rises up
from you, a light comes down toward you, and each time a flame rises from you, a corresponding flame comes down toward you…. If
their energies are equal, they meet half-way…. But when the substance of light has grown in you, then this becomes a Whole in rela-
tion to what is of the same nature in Heaven: then it is the substance of light in Heaven which yearns for you and is attracted by
your light, and it descends toward you. This is the secret of the mystical journey.²⁴
He longs for us and so we long for Him. He calls us to Him and awakens us to the call of the heart, the homesickness of the soul. Our
longing rises directly to Him and meets His longing, as in the hadîth, “If you walk to Him a small step, He comes to you running.”
We are attracted to God by God. We walk with His feet to Him. The light that rises within the heart is the same as the light that de-
scends. His light gave birth to our light and in essence “the being of the lover and Beloved are the same.”²⁵ The secret of love’s union
is that He unites with Himself within the heart of His lover. The lover who gives himself to longing participates in this mystery.
He shares the secrets of love with those who have given themselves to Him, who have surrendered the ego’s desire to be separate.
Love is both the longing for union and the bliss of union. Love is the sadness of separation and the knowledge that there is no sepa-
ration. Only the heart can contain this paradox which is imprinted in every sigh of the soul. In the heart of His lover He cries out to
Himself, He comes to meet Himself, He unites with Himself:
It is he who suffers his absence in me
Who through me cries out to himself.
Love’s most strange, most holy mystery—
We are intimate beyond belief.²⁶
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