More Than Words

What is Sufism?

What is Sufism?

The most obvious question of all is for us the most difficult question. But I’ll try to answer. Sufism is experience of life through a method of dealing with life and human relations. This method is based on an understanding of man, which places at one’s disposal the means to organize one’s relationships and one’s learning systems. So instead of saying that Sufism is a body of thought in which you believe certain things and don’t believe other things, we say that the Sufi experience has to be provoked in a person. Once provoked, it becomes his own property, rather as a person masters an art.

Q - So ideally, for four million readers, you would have four million different explanations?

In fact, it wouldn’t work out like that. We progress by means of Nashr, an Arabic word than means scatter technique. For example, I’ve published quite a number of miscellaneous books, articles, tapes and so on, which scatter many forms of this Sufi material. These 2,000 different stories cover many different tendencies in many people, and they are able to attach themselves to some aspect of it.

Suppose we get a group of 20 people past the stage where they no longer expect us to give them miracles and stimulation and attention. We sit them down in a room and give them 20 or 30 stories, asking them to tell us what they see in the stories, what they like, and what the don’t like. The stories first operate as a sorting out process. They sort out both the very clever people who need psychotherapy and who have come only to put you down, and the people who have come to worship.

If a pot can multiply: One day Nasrudin lent his cooking pots to a neighbor, who was giving a feast. The neighbor returned them, together with one extra one - a very tiny pot. “What is this?” asked Nasrudin. “According to law, I have given you the offspring of your property which was born when the pots were in my care,” said the joker. Shortly afterwards Nasrudin borrowed his neighbor’s pots, but did not return them. The man came round to get them back. “Alas!” said Nasrudin, “they are dead. We have established, have we not, that pots are mortal?”

In responsible Sufi circles, no one attempts to handle either the sneerers or the worshippers, and they are very politely detached from the others.

No Guru

Idries Shah was once asked in an interview: 'You are the West’s leading exponent of Sufism, that rich religious tradition growing out of the Middle East. Why, at a time when new cults are springing up, do you refuse to be a guru? You could easily become one'

Shah's reply was:

There are a lot of reasons. But if we are talking about the teacher who has disciples, it’s because I feel no need for an admiring audience to tell me how wonderful I am or to do what I say. I believe that the guru needs his disciples. If he had a sufficient outlet for his desire to be a big shot or his feeling of holiness or his wish to have others dependent on him, he wouldn’t be a guru.

I got all that out of my system very early and, consistent with Sufi tradition, I believe that those who don’t want to teach are the ones who can and should. The West still has a vocation hang-up and has not yet discovered this. Here, the only recognized achiever is an obsessive. In the East we believe that a person who can’t help doing a thing isn’t necessarily the best one to do it. A compulsive cookie baker may bake very bad cookies.