Sufism : Tasawwuf, the inner mystical dimension of Islam, emerged among the Shi’ites as a reaction against the worldliness of the early Umayyad Caliphate that was set up in 668. Though Prophet Muhammad is the Al-Insān al-Kāmil, the primary perfect man who exemplifies the morality of God, hence the prime spiritual guide for all Sufis, they often belong to different Turuqs (orders or congregations) formed around a grand master referred to as a Mawla who maintains a direct chain of teachers back to the Prophet. All orders trace many of their original precepts from the Prophet through Ali ibn Abi Tālib, except the Naqshbandi order who trace their origins through Abu Bakr. Sufism includes the greatest of the Persian poets – Abu Said ibn Abi-l-Khair, Ferid ed-Din Attar, Hafiz, Omar Khayyam, & Jalal ed-Din Rumi. The highly developed symbolism of the soul’s union with God is expressed in exquisite lyric style. Some Sufis consider Sufism universal, its roots predating the rise of Islam & Christianity; traditional Sufis, such as Bastami, Rumi, Veli, Baghdadi, & Al-Ghazali, define it as purely based upon the teachings of the Prophet & the tenets of Islam; while orthodox Muslims deem it outside Islam. Some scholars see in it the influence of Christianity & Neo-Platonism & some others see it as an Aryan reaction against Semite cultural influence. Sufis have spanned several continents & cultures over a millennium, originally expressing their beliefs in Arabic, before spreading into Persian, Turkish, & Urdu among dozens of other languages.
... the word sufi, our aim here is to look for those insights in Sufism which are relevant to our examination of the relationship between the teacher and the pupil, and of the different levels of this relationship. But first it might be worthwhile for us to arrive at some idea of how Sufism developed and what Sufism means. Some say that Sufism developed out of historical Islam. Some say it developed as... 154 But what is at the core of Sufism? It can be said that to follow Sufism is to die gradually to oneself and to become one-Self, to be born anew, and to become aware of what one has always been from eternity (azal) without having realized it. In metaphorical terms, Sufism means to glide out of one's own mould like a snake peeling off its skin. Sufism may be regarded as a process of change... certain Islamic spiritual disciplines and make possible their propagation from one generation to another. At the same time, Islam admits that there is something corresponding to Sufism in every other religion and that Sufism can open an easy door for mutual understanding among the many religious and spiritual movements in the world. It is well known that Sufi ideas and even literary texts were ...
... Persia from the earliest times, and as their pantheism is so at variance with the hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind, it has been suggested that Sufism must have been inoculated into Islam by Hindu influences. We Christians know little of Sufism, for its secrets are disclosed only to those initiated. To give its existence a certain liveliness in your minds, I shall quote a Moslem document, and... conditions. Similarly there in difference between knowing the nature of abstinence, and being abstinent or having one's soul detached from the world. — Thus I had learned what words could teach of Sufism, but what was left could be learned neither by study nor through the ears, but solely by giving one's self up to ecstasy and leading a pious life. Page 138 "Reflecting on my situation, I... humble prayers which escape from the fervent soul, and in the meditations on God in which the heart is swallowed up entirely. But in reality this is only the beginning of the Sufi life, the end of Sufism being total absorption in God. The intuitions and all, that precede are, so to speak, only the threshold for those who enter. From the beginning, revelations take place in so flagrant a shape that ...
... vital power, mental-vital. He's a man who could have practiced some Tantrism in the way Woodroffe did; I can't say. There are also many people of that kind who were converted to Sufism—they are very easily converted to Sufism. But true spiritual life, there aren't many.... He has written three volumes entitled "Gnosis." Quite an ambition. But he's an intellectual, he may have received some ...
... Summing it up, this whole life has been an exposure to different religious orientations and spiritual paths. I was born into Buddhism, baptized into Christianity, initiated in Hindu Tantra, instructed in Sufism, and guided through all these experiences by the Supreme Shakti we call the Mother. What I have learned from all these paths is that each approach leads to a particular inner experience, and that each... yoga of transformation. In short, all these spiritual paths have helped me to understand Sri Aurobindo’s yoga in greater depth. Buddhism leads to the silent mind, Christianity to devotion, Islamic Sufism to the science of the heart and Hindu Tantra to the effective manifestation of the Divine’s Will upon the earth, i.e. the Shakti. In a symbolic manner, these disciplines also encompass all the levels ...
... object would not do—they do it because they are obliged here to look to a higher ideal in which these things have no value. What is kept of Hinduism is Vedanta and Yoga, in which Hinduism is one with Sufism of Islam and with the Christian mystics. But even here it is not Vedanta and Yoga in their traditional limits (their past), but widened and rid of many ideas that are peculiar to the Hindus. If I have... and figures, it is because I know them and do not know Persian and Arabic. I have not the slightest objection to anyone here drawing inspiration from Islamic sources if they agree with the Truth as Sufism agrees with it. On the other hand I have not the slightest objection to Hinduism being broken to pieces and disappearing from the face of the earth, if that is the Divine Will. I have no attachment ...
... Christianity, the offspring of Buddhism, derived its ethics and esoteric teaching at second-hand from the same source. Through Persia Vedanta put its stamp on Judaism, through Judaism, Christianity and Sufism on Islam, through Buddha on Confucianism, through Christ and mediaeval mysticism and Catholic ceremonial, through Greek and German philosophy, through Sanscrit learning and [ sentence left incomplete ...
... in much of the thought of Pythagoras and Plato and form the profoundest part of Neo-platonism and Gnosticism with all their considerable consequences to the philosophical thinking of the West, and Sufism only repeats them in another religious language. The larger part of German metaphysics is little more in substance than an intellectual development of great realities more spiritually seen in this ...
... also Chronology, p. 257 ff Srinivas Iyengar, 215 Stalin, 215, 225 strength, 14-15, 16, 18,21,32,36,45, 52 -53.54,57,58, 124, 125 -126 see also India, Shakti suffering, 22 -23, 166-167, 176 ,253 Sufism, 168 supermind, supramental, 173-174. 199,200 super station. 55, 85. 87, 90. 95, 99-100, 106, 200 svadharma, 177 , 182,250 Swadeshi movement, 17.35,39. 40(fn), 156,180,183, 195 Swaraj, 17,35 ...
... conclusions about it in terms that recall some of the expressions in the Arya. The idea in itself is not new; it is as old as the Vedas. It was repeated in other forms in Buddhism, Christian Gnosricisrn, Sufism. Originally, it was not discovered by intellectual speculation, but by the mystics following an inner spiritual discipline. When, somewhere between the seventh and fifth centuries B.C., men began both ...
... what we are capable of doing in the future; our history and our mission. This is the first and most important work which the Karmayogin sets for itself, to popularise this knowledge. The Vedanta or Sufism, the temple Page 20 or the mosque, Nanak and Kabir and Ramdas, Chaitanya or Guru Govind, Brahmin and Kayastha and Namasudra, whatever national asset we have, indigenous or acclimatised ...
... capable of diverse affinities: it can be shown to validate several aspects of Catholic Christianity no less than those of Vaishnavism and Tantra", not to mention Tibetan Buddhism and Ibn Arabi's Sufism. But I should think that the nearest approach to it as a whole is Teilhard de Chardin's Hyper-Catholicism as deducible in detail not so much from his set works, penetrative and brilliant though ...
... So I retired, with a resolve to buy his complete works at the earliest opportunity and try him out in cold print away from his voice and gesture which I felt could pass off what might be thin pseudo-Sufism as fumes of the unmixed Wine. When I did go through his books I noticed certain flaws which had been missing during the recital but which I had managed dimly to suspect by recollection in tranquillity ...
... cosmological and numerological significance of the pyramids and aroused Glauer’s curiosity about the occult gnosis of ancient theocracies. Hussein Pasha, his wealthy and learned host, practiced a form of Sufism and discussed these matters with Glauer. At Bursa he made the acquaintance of the Termudi family … Old Termudi had retired from business to devote himself to a study of the Cabbala and collecting ...
... nature not to do anything by halves; she wrestled - no doubt with encouragement from Richard - with the philosophers and system-makers, the schools of meditation and inner culture. Buddhism, Vedanta, Sufism, Taoism, Zen, Shintoism, Bahaism... all was grist that came to the mill. Yet there was no real breakthrough, no storming of the Gates of Reality. Richard was in politics too, and partly a political ...
... philosophers should try to see points of resemblance between The Life Divine and the thought of other philosophers of the East and of the West. Khalifa A. Hakim finds the great truths of the higher Sufism embodied in Sri Aurobindo's philosophy. S.K. Maitra finds in Sri Aurobindo's thought the "meeting of the East and the West", and he also makes interesting comparisons between Sri Aurobindo and Western ...
... in much of the thought of Pythagoras and Plato and form the profoundest part of Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism with all their considerable consequences to the philosophical thinking of the West, and Sufism only repeats them in another religious language. The larger part of German metaphysics is little more in substance than an intellectual development of great realities more spiritually seen in this ...
... And there was even a strong oriental influence through Paul de Lagarde, an orientalist precursor, Sebottendorff, renowned astrologer and closely connected with the Turkish aspects of occultism and sufism, Karl Haushofer and his son Albrecht, well acquainted with the Eastern religions and spirituality, Hess, significantly born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, an occult crossroads between East and ...
... the basic beliefs of all religions, particularly Buddhism — indeed the Four Noble Truths are echoed time and again in medieval words.’ (p. 6) Those ‘essential beliefs’ are also the main pillars of Sufism and of the traditional Yogas. 91 All this allows us to conclude that yoga has indeed been very well known in the West, albeit in another garb or under other names, long before various schools ...
... represented some aspect or other of her newly discovered values. She became acquainted with Abd ol-Baha, who had succeeded his father Baha Ullah as the head of Bahaism. Inayat Khan, the prophet of Sufism in the West, gave a talk in her house. She also visited occult séances and addressed various circles. And there was Alexandra David-Néel, the modern prophetess of Buddhism and fearless explorer, ...
... terms that recall some of the expressions in the Arya . The idea in Page 352 itself is not new; it is as old as the Vedas. It was repeated in other forms in Buddhism, Christian Gnosticism, Sufism. Originally, it was not discovered by intellectual speculation, but by the mystics following an inner spiritual discipline. When, somewhere between the seventh and fifth centuries B.C., men began both ...
... subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is true they gave some of these things a new turn, but they have not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result of Gnostics who lived in Persia and it is the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta. I have, however, mentioned [in The Foundations of Indian ...
... Tukaram (vii) Establishment ofKhalsa: Guru Gobind Singh (viii) Vijay Nagar (ix) Annals of Rajputana (x) Rana Pratap (xi) The rise of Maratha Power (xi) Shivaji (xii) Sufism VII (i) Arrival of Europeans in India. East India Company (ii) Conflict and chaos of the 18th century Page 196 VIII (i) Triumph of the British over Rivals ...
... although it represented a new standpoint and provided fresh terms of intellectual definition and reasoning. Even in the thought of Pythagoras and Plato, one could rediscover the ideas of the Upanishads. Sufism has been found repeating the teaching of the Upanishads in another religious language. Even some of the modern thinkers of the East and the West seem to be absorbing the ideas of the Upanishads with ...
... although it represented a new standpoint and provided fresh terms of intellectual definition and reasoning. Even in the thought of Pythagoras and Plato, one could rediscover the ideas of the Upanishads. Sufism has been seen to be repeating the teaching of the Upanishads in another religious language. Even some of the modem thinkers of the East and the West seem to be absorbing the ideas of the Upanishads ...
... to the eclecticism of Ram Mohan (in fact, Ram Mohan's tentative attempt at a synthesis - in the external formulation of an inner realisation - between the Vedanta, Christian Unitarianism and Moslem Sufism 85 had really resulted in a sort of eclecticism); but his preponderant bias for Christianity led him into a pot-pourri of diverse religious strains. Keshav's nature was genuinely religious and emotional ...
... other subjects were derived from India and It is true they gave some of these things a new turn. But they have not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result ofgnostics who lived in Persia and it is the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by Vedanta. I have, however, mentioned that Islamic culture contributed ...
... innate gusto, and Bharatavarsha became anaemic and wasted and diseased and degraded. It looked as though the twin movements, Vaishnavite and Saivite, for the revival of Hinduism, and the movement of Sufism in Islam, had also lost their great spiritual drive, and only a memory of god-intoxicated singers like Eknath and Kabir and Tulsi Das and Chaitanya and Farid and Nanak lay behind Page 9 ...
... years en route the Promised Land, how could this Pharaoh defeat them in Palestine? Further, as the mummies of both Pharaohs have been found, how can either be the one who was drowned in the yam suf in the miraculous parting of the waters? Sethna alone points out that nowhere does the Bible say that it was the Pharaoh who went into the sea. It was his horse and horsemen, while he rode... Ones and their allies spread over the entire land. Having established correspondence between the Bible and Egyptian history satisfactorily, Sethna examines another puzzle: what was yam suf , the "red" or "reed" sea and how to explain the miraculous "parting of the waters"? Many have hazarded that the ten plagues of Egypt tally with the phenomena (red rain, fish poisoned, whirlwinds, swamps... turning rusty red) attendant upon the volcanic explosion on Santorini in the Mediterranean that destroyed a 4,900 feet high mountain c. 1400 B.C. Sethna cites Glanopoulos' identification of the yam suf as Sirbenis Lake that is separated from the Mediterranean by a narrow isthmus across which the Israelites could flee during the 20 minutes interval when the Page 189 sea was drawn ...
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