the Sufi approach to enlightenment
Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
Several Sufi mystics seem to offer much insight through their poetry and teachings about the enlightened state beyond the egoic self, ideas, beliefs, and the phenomenal world. If you are one who seeks the essence of what you are, Sufism has much to say — IF you know how to find the gem within it and if you consider the teachings as guidance instead of a belief system.
tasawwuf
Sufism, also known as Tasawwuf, quickly emerged within, or even concomitantly with, Islam at its inception in the early 8th Century. Historian Filip Holm (Let’s Talk Religion) has spoken at length about Sufi mysticism, including views on non-dualism, the Absolute reality, unconditional love, and notable teachers who taught about what lies beyond the illusory objective world. Holm has also made it clear that Sufism is not a sect separate from Islam, nor is it a minority group nestled within it. Sufism, at least to the Sufis, is the essence of Islam, and this is the same essence that underlies all religion, thinking, and life itself.
message of enlightenment
Sufism would be nothing without those who shaped the movement, so let’s take a look at what some of these people taught. And if you’ve been following my articles then maybe you’ll find a commonality with the teachings of other awakened teachers through the ages and everywhere on earth.
A common theme among Sufi masters is the recognition of consciousness, or God or Allah, as the essence of everything and everyone. Therefore, what we are seeing, experiencing, sensing, and knowing, is ourselves. All is consciousness and nothing is, nor can be, other than consciousness. The world and all of its forms, expressions, and movement is a reflection of ourselves.
The famed Sufi teacher Ibn al-A’rabi (1165–1240) said, “When you know yourself, your ‘I’ness vanishes and you know that you and Allah are one and the same.”
all is one
It does not seem like too far a stretch to suggest that the Sufis walked a very thin line between extreme observance of Islam and outright heresy. Instead of becoming outliers, those who focused on the esoteric, spiritual aspects of life did so within the context of Islam, because there was no other way other than to risk life and limb as a secret society. And Sufism was not secretive at all. So it seems that the Sufis did the best with what they had, and their interpretation of Allah, God, was metaphoric and not literal as known to mainstream Islam.
The pervasive message of Sufi philosophy is that all is one — Allah is all, or as the Jews teach, the Lord is one (Adonai echad)
The 11th century Sufi Muhiyddin al-Arab is credited for bringing out the idea of “unity of being,” suggesting that God, Allah, is everything that exists, and all beings and the world are but manifestations of God. He wrote that the world is illusory and that we tend to imagine that it is separate and independently real, outside of the Absolute.
Ibn Arabi wrote: “My heart can adapt to all forms. It is pasture for gazelles. And a monastery for Christian monks, and a temple for idols, and the Kaaba of the pilgrims, and the tables of the Torah, and the book of the Koran. Because I follow the religion of love.”
The Persian Sufi poet Shams Tabrizi said, “If you look around, you can find a face of God in each thing, because He is not hidden in a church, in a mosque, or a synagogue, but everywhere.”
Ibn al-A’rabi explained, “It is He who is revealed in every face, sought in every sign, gazed upon by every eye, worshipped in every object of worship, and pursued in the unseen and the visible. Not a single one of His creatures can fail to find Him in its primordial and original nature.”
Abu-al-Hasan Ali ben Abdallah al-Nuymari, best known as al-Shushtari, was a 13th century Sufi poet and teacher in the Andalusia region of medieval Spain. His poems offer an insight that we still find today in the resurgent teachings of Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, and few others. The message is the same, which is essentially that all is one totality and we are this totality, and that the obstacle to knowing your own essence is the sense of self that believes it is separate from all else.
Al-Shushtari wrote: “Beware of seeking something outside — you won’t find a thing elsewhere existing. Not an atom can leave you — all things are within you existing. You are ultimate joy: you the examiner separating good from bad, I the one being tested.”
beyond all else
Beyond, behind, or prior to consciousness — prior to the existence and appearance of anything and everything, including the essence and movement of life and all its contents — is an irreducible, unexplainable void or capacity out of which consciousness, God, arises. Few people in any religion speak of this so-called stateless state, but we do find Sufis who have written about it.
The poet Jalaluddin Rumi said, “We came whirling out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust…The stars made a circle, and in the middle, we dance.”
It seems that it is up the individual to find the kernel of truth, even if it is necessary to do so from within mainstream religion when there is no other choice. To be a Sufi is to regard Allah not as some exogenous supernatural being, but rather what we all are at the core. Perhaps Sufi’s enduring popularity and mystery stems from its unwavering message of oneness — not with the divine, but as the divine. Though I have never seen it specifically expressed as such, certainly the words of many of its poets exemplify this sentiment.
