Idries Shah Learning How To Learn Psychology And Spirituality In The Sufi Way 289p

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

compensate for this. Otherwise people are attracted to them or to
the Sufis in general because of a craving for wonders.
THE ONION SHOP
One example of this is when the great woman Sufi Rabia had no
vegetables in the house, and mentioned it. Suddenly a string of
onions fell from the sky, it seemed, and people cried out that this
was a proof of divine blessing.
Conversions through miracles, Rabia realised, are only emo-
tional happenings and have no essential spiritual reality. So she
said, in a famous phrase:
'A miracle, you say? What, does my Lord therefore keep an
onion shop?'
55
Books and Beyond Books
Q: What is the compatibility, if any, of the Sufi book and the
Sufi teaching beyond books?
A: Many people say that they cannot learn from books.
INSTRUMENTAL FUNCTION
Of course they cannot: because they have first to learn that,
correctly guided, they can learn from books, or from grass-
hoppers, or from anything.
A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is some-
thing to give information.
Information and action are both necessary.
The key is the teacher.
If he says: 'Read this book' then you should read it.
If your answer is: 'I cannot learn from books', then you are in
fact refusing his teaching.
If you refuse teaching, do not be surprised if you do not learn
anything.
You may be one of those whose problem is that you do not
want to learn, and your saying 'I want to learn' is a protection
against ever learning: an incantation, in fact.
No real teacher will mistake a man or woman who merely says:
'I want to learn' for one who undoubtedly wants to learn.
That is why so many people have to go through stages which
will show them that their condition (while they claimed that they
wanted to learn and could not find the materials) was an un-
suitable basis for learning.
REALITY AND POTENTIALITY
Man has to come to understand how to see himself as he really is,
so that he can achieve something in the area which he calls 'what
he might be'.
56
Again, it is the teacher who knows what is indicated: whether
his student has to develop through linear or other modes. As
Khaja Khan says, traditionally, direct teaching beyond books, the
mystery of unification, was taught to the spiritual elite, while the
linear Holy Law (the Islamic Shariyya) was given to the ordinary
people. In this way the limited could rise via discipline, the
Shariyya, and the elite were able to descend to the Law by means
of the Truth of immediate perception.
According to the Sufis, there is only one Essence, Reality
(Haqq = Truth). Derived from this is appearance, Form, referred
to by Ibn al-Arabi, in his Fusus al-Hikam, and others, as Khalq,
that which is created, secondary. To mistake the secondary for the
primary is usual and humanity has to learn how to avoid this.
But living in a secondary realm, 'the world', humanity must learn
the value and limitations of the secondary, of phenomena. The
limitations include the fact that such derivatives cannot help one
beyond a certain stage with anything. The value is the occasions
and circumstances in which such things can be of help, and the
kind of use they can be.
VALUE OF THE RELATIVE
"The Relative is the Channel to the Absolute' (Al-majazu qantarat
al-Haqiqa) encapsulates this statement. The Sufi's experience in-
forms him in relation to knowing how to deal with the secondary
factors, and hence enables him to teach.
The Sufi teaching through books, or through the use of scholas-
tic methods applied to indicate their absurdity or limitations,
was demonstrated one day by Shaqiq of Balkh when Haroun al-
Rashid visited him seeking wisdom.
THE VALUE OF A KINGDOM
The Caliph, in all his magnificence, was in need of a lesson in
the relative nature of power and possessions. 'Ask a favour of me',
he said.
Shaqiq asked him whether he would give one-half of his realm
57
to someone who would give him a drink of water, if he were
dying of thirst in a desert.
Haroun said that he would.
And, continued the Sufi, would he give the other half to some-
one who enabled him to pass that water, if he had become unable
to do so?
Haroun said that he would.
Now Shaqiq asked the Caliph to reflect why he valued his
kingdom so highly, when it was something which could be given
away in return for a drink of water, which itself does not stay with
one.
People assume, like the Caliph, that they have something of
value and that by giving some of it away they can gain something
of even greater value. They tend, too, to offer not what they have
to get rid of, but something which they can give because they want
to.
Therein lies the genesis of trade, and a desirable thing it is,
too - if confined to trade. Therein, too, lies the desire to prescribe
one's own studies, one's own path: 'Ask a favour of me', as the
Caliph put it.
But, as the Sufis never tire of saying, the Path has its own
requirements, and the things which people want to do are likely to
be those which will help them to continue in the way in which they
are already set, rather than in a direction which will break through
their limitations.
Because Sufi affairs do not seem to resemble the kind of
organisation of studies familiar to most people, they imagine that
they have to be carried out in a completely incoherent manner. It
is worth listening to what Aftab-ud-Din Ahmad has to say about
this, in his Introduction to a version of Gilani's Futuh al-Ghaib: [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

pobieranie @ do ÂściÂągnięcia @ ebook @ download @ pdf