Sufism Is Far Older than 14 Centuries...

The historically strong appearance and modern seeming-argument for the "inseparable" identification of Sufism with Islam (with persons from the former of these two, often being persecuted and murdered or executed, by those representing the latter) is clearly not reflected in the following parting words:

"The philosophy of Sufism is best summed up in the final instructions to his disciples one month before his passing, some seven-plus centuries ago, of Hazrat Khwaja Mu'inuddin Chishti, founder of this lineage":

Love all and hate none.

Mere talk of peace will avail you naught.

Mere talk of God and religion will not take you far.

Bring out all of the latent powers of your Being

and reveal the full magnificence

of your immortal Self.

Be surcharged with peace and joy,

and scatter them wherever you are

and wherever you go.

Be a blazing fire of truth,

be a beauteous blossom of love,

and be a soothing balm of peace.

With your spiritual light, dispel the darkness of ignorance;

dissolve the clouds of discord and war,

and spread goodwill, peace and harmony among the people.

Never seek any help, charity or favors

from anybody except God.

Never go to the courts of kings,

but never refuse to bless and help the needy and the poor,

the widow, the orphan, if they come to your door.

This is your mission, to serve the people.

Carry it out dutifully and courageously,

so that I, as your Pir-o-Murshid,

may not be ashamed of any shortcomings on your part

before the Almighty God and our holy predecessors

in the Sufi Order

on the Day of Judgment.

§

I don't know what that Mr. Chisti looked like, but this Mr. Chisti's own late Pir-o-Murshid in our 20^th century, Hazrat Inayat Khan, looked like this, and as one sees, quite evidently embodied those last instructions from a much earlier century:

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2014/12/love-is-most-great.html

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2015/01/give-with-your-eyes.html

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2013/08/tears-of-love.html

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2013/07/that-this-beauty-shall-prevail.html

 

WTF?!

Is not Boko Haram the real face of Islam?

Or are there Muslims intervening,

when mosques fill up five times from

mornings till noon, and on into evening?

Do they ever collect for their purses,

or exercise such faith-muscled intention

to exorcise themselves of these four
                                                    curses:

self-pity, supremacy, misogyny and
                                                   aggression?

I can joke about Jews, I can criticize Christians,

irritate Evangelists, satirize Sikhs, polemicize

Pentecostals, pun on names of every nation,

but it's "offend not the Muslims" for they're on the rise!

These peace-loving Muslims I keep hearing about –

are they there, do they care? Tolerant are they indeed, but of whom?

God knows their hearts, our politicians clearly not –

confront Boko Haram or just distance themselves, conceding room?

Sunni and Shi'ite compete in loathing and murder, in scheming

bound hands and feet since the origin of their species; no love

is lost where none there was, "There is no room for God!"

                                                    is what I hear them screaming

from minaret to minaret, region to region, age to age.

Sufism, being of no traceable age

in embodying light, quite conscious'

took on the mantle of Islam, minus the rage –

in order to clean it of its darkness.

I do not have the means, I'm afraid, to deliver, or bring

succor to all who've suffered by this "Islam" – do not

wonder that I sleep with the weight of all their killing

and barbarism, Damascus or Baghdad, in war and prior to it.

How odd, that ISIS carries the name of a goddess they'd abhor,

ask any one of these Jihadis or their wives, they don't know themselves;

puerile hatred of the modern which they use, rejecting all and wanting more –

perhaps reading right to left they see 21^st century as 12^th.

How odd, that there, among whom Compassionate and Merciful

are repeated in millions of mouths a thousand times daily, one is told;

there, among whom it is said "In Islam there is no compulsion,"

are women whipped, gays hanged, boys raped, children sold;

Christians ousted, churches mocked, no discusssion, bibles burned;

woe to you should you convert to something else, your loathesome

daring will be repaid by those who keep their women interred –

yes, go be Christian and die a martyr by the blood-soaked knife

                                                              of your own family's bosom.

Come let us be tolerant, though, let's all be politically correct now;

let churches in all Muslim lands disappear, and Christians as well;

leave them their patriarchy and let them have a Caliphate, allow

for ever more mosques to be built here, everyone else go to hell.

Let Shari'a come, and see how you like it, it's making inroads –

try on a burqa, ladies, a hijab – you'll love it, there's no compulsion,

so long as there's compliance, your life decided for you by wiser heads;

outwardly chaste, now everyone chaste: no holding hands, dears,
                                                                              that's only for men.

In light of Nigeria, Sudan and Mali, Somalia, Iraq, Iran and Syria –

I have but my craft to put down some lines, and what conclusion
                                                                            can I draw this hour:

only this, let everyone worship as they wish, formulate their faith
                                                                               without hysteria –

let Muslims have Islam in their own Muslim lands; and never
                                                                   give Islam political power!

 (Sunni vs. Shari'a: "My 'God is greater' than your God!")

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2013/03/show-me-islam.html
http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2011/05/cornerstoneof-your-faith.html
http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2013/07/that-this-beauty-shall-prevail.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv-kSbjr8EY

Pregnant With Radiance

The period of mid-1973 to late '74 was particularly formative for me and informed and imbued the rest of my life from there. A student at CU-Boulder, and not much of one at that, I followed Mark Twain's lead and never let my schooling interfere with my education.

It was in this period of my life that I discovered the beloved Swami and many others, and the Bhakti path I was to take, and that I began to massage – and to sing, ceaselessly; it was in this period of my life that I would discover the Dances, and the Sufism which so decidedly established my future, from which place I'm now telling this in retrospect; it was at this juncture in time that I discovered in this way, all the Bringers of light, of Dharma, and discovered Christ, and found my own Teacher out of a marketplace full of 'em - the Coach I'd prayed God to vouchsafe me.

I'd longed to be pregnant with radiance, You may love a certain food but you have to eat lots of it to get fat on it. So it is with light. I wanted to be so full of this love I'd discovered, that I could swallow all the world's darkness and shit out light.

Neither drugs nor grass nor booze played a role in my life. I was stoned however, flat-out stoned on love. The only thing lacking was a dime and maturity – and the latter comes with time, no security. I worked at Ticos, washing dishes with joy and some soap – my pupils were sometimes actually dilated. I'd show up giggling but always on time and fit for work, my supervisor on the cook-line, a Pisces named Jeff, looked me straight into those stoned eyes and asked if I were showing up on the job drunk or on weed. I smiled and assured him, I was drunk on love, just love, patting his arm. That was the period of my wearing a wooly, multi-colored Morrocan jalabea everywhere, my hair grown long, first beard, and passing out roses in the park, washing and massaging feet – anyone's. The only beer I got soused on was Bir Hanumana (strength of Hanuman). My beloved Swami embodied that, and he was pregnant with radiance. All Great Ones are, and I revered them - and I wanted to be pregnant with that radiance.

One fine early Spring mid-morning in '75 I guess, on The Hill just off campus, I walked by Chuck's Grill, which was nearly empty. I only wanted to use Chuck's restroom, which back then was the norm without making a purchase. I just had to do a quick number-one and leave.

On my way to that restroom I noticed this young woman of very unremarkable form and features – let's be honest here, you would have walked right by her. She was neutral and apathetic, also rather dumpy, and that turned out to be because she slouched in the booth where she sat alone, the only customer in the joint.

Because of this slouch, and her pullover sweater, it crossed my Lucy-in-the-sky-with-diamonds optical-perception, that: she might be pregnant. To this day, I don't know what took hold of me - but after I'd left the restroom instead of heading straight for the door leading out, I swung by her booth and with my right hand gently on her shoulder and my left gently on the hump of her belly, on the pullover of course, I asked her with sincere elation and warmth, “When?...“

As in, "when's the date, O mother-to-be?" She did not call the cops, she did not make a scene, she did not say, "WTF – you some kinda goddam smart-ass? Get away from me you freak!" She did not react angrily or even look hurt or burst into tears at this otherwise seemingly insensitive cruelty. The fact was, she was not remotely in the family way, she was just frumpy. She had a gut on her. So?

Not a word passed between us, her eyes registered bewilderment, to which my eyes registered "Oh shit, you're not pregnant?" then, "OMGdess, I fucked up, am I a schlemiel!" I muttered a genuine "sorry, I thought..." but outside of that it went all without words. And then something happened. She got it, and her face brightened up at the idea, and my face brightened up again and for that moment gazing at each other, she had the radiance of someone pregnant with life inside her. So she was in that moment pregnant with radiance.

Then we both laughed, just a sweet, tender, ever so human laugh, shared in love between two total strangers under quite comical circumstances. I collected myself and nodded goodbye, headed for the door. One last look over my shoulder and a wave: that woman watched me from her booth, still smiling and still glowing, sitting a tad straighter there, and I have no recollection of her voice, as not a word had been shared, it was all through the eyes.

These drunken eyes, pregnant with radiance.

Tears Of Love

Sufism says, “God is your lover, not your jailer“ - and means it and practices it. Islam has proven time and again to prefer it the other way around. Religion is in every other case I know of - more or less, yet quite frankly when you look at its core: about freedom, not dictatorship. The Muslim mentality tends strongly toward subjection to the latter, coupled most unfortunately with that peculiar combination of projected victim-status with delusions-of-supremacy, and with subterfuge to boot, such as was exceptionally witnessed in the Germany of the '30s and '40s. It pains me most severely to even put this into so many words, but it has to be done, come what may. Is there another religion I haven't heard of in our generation, in this century, where you can be murdered with impunity for merely leaving it, or converting to another, or satirizing or exercising critical analysis of it?

The darkness of so much Church history had entirely inhibited my early life from trustingly approaching the New Testament. The light of Swamis had made it not only approachable but readable, sparklingly clear. I cannot open the Gospels or the Epistles without being choked with tears of rejoicing at the clarity of what I see presented. How that escapes others I no longer know, I guess they were out when the Swamis came by. When Suras from the Qur'an were recited during ceremonies of those lovers of God and of Hu-man-kind, the same tug at my chest occurred, the same tears flowed, the mind became also still. I guess the Sufis know something Muslims don't – it causes them to sing, it moves them to turn about, it makes them wild with a fiercely fine light in their eyes, their hearts soaked with love, not dried up with clichéed theo-ideology.

Tears of Love

There is a movement, and a rest -
something like a cough suppressed,
a wringing, wrenching sensation in my chest.

Old tissue proves all too worn,
a breaking through this, and it's torn,
breaking forth from the heart, and born

like a dervish in the Sema room -
this itself so like a rose in bloom -
opening into the Turn, consumed

by that which words cannot express:
but tears which on these cheeks so press
like water in the wilderness

do Love justice as no other.
Sovereign love for one another
draws warmest smile from that Divine Mother.

Sometimes I Drink Water

Sometimes I drink water from a brook, a stream,
sometimes I drink from a river, a fresh pond or a lake,
sometimes I may drink from the sweetwaters of an ocean -
after all, it's just a notion.

So it is with religion(s), as water is for all its variation, one:
religion is one, and truth is one.
Where you draw your water from is your own concern, not mine -
if it makes of you a lover, then alone is it divine.

Best expressed through Sufism, accepting all, all waters -
this is no sales pitch, dear Friend, merely a fact -
Sufism is not the "mystical side of Islam" as you've read,
Islam has none, Sufism has covered for that, let it be said:

Of others, they do indeed, for Jews the Kabbala and Zohar,
Christians a long tradition of it, Hindus and Buddhists needn't
bother, theirs are overflowing with the inner Teaching!
Without the waters of Sufism, Islam is so much dead preaching.

That This Beauty Shall Prevail

In the humble expression of this poor servant,

let this be known:

Better to fall on the battlefield

than choke on my steak in the War Room.

For it is my intention, in this my lifetime,

here-now and in reality, as in eternity,

that Sufism shall defeat Islam, prevail over and replace it entirely

with knowledge of God, with love of God.

That the Sovereignty of Love shall prevail over

and replace Muslim bigotry, racism, misogyny, hypocrisy.

That the prayers of the Great Ones and faith of the Heart

shall prevail over and replace Muslim arrogance, ignorance,

aggression, and its most primitive brutality.

That music and dance, creative literature, reason,

beauty in all its variations, shall prevail over and replace

the Muslim's native bent toward pronouncing death-fatwas,

toward pathologically underdeveloped, grossly self-conscious

phobias against any nonconformity, as against all freedom

of self-expression, against any notion of critical self-reflection,

of maturity in relation to the rest of the world:

over this shall prevail the nectar of Rumi, the fragrance of Hafiz;

the madness of Kabir and of Rabi'a shall prevail over and replace

a Muslim mentality which shuns pork but evidently not cannibalism.

That the creative openness of Sufism which embraces all faiths

and all paths toward God shall prevail over and replace this Islam

of domination, delusions of supremacy, of bludgeoning with Shari'a

every Muslim who is "other" and every culture which is not of itself.

Verily, the song and movement of Dervishes,

the Movement and the Message of Sufism through the Ages

cannot be annihilated, it is here in spite of historic repression,

and shall prevail over an Islam which never could appreciate

Sufis, Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, Jews, Buddhists - and murders them

century for century.

O Beloved Lord and Cherisher of the worlds:

let these words not prove empty, no -

let this love be active, this harmony penetrate through hearts:

that this beauty shall prevail.

Let it so Be as I, Sheikh Samuel Inayat-Chisti, have said,

who shall raise the banner of Love on that battlefield

in whichever form that comes,

and shall not fall, after so many lifetimes of this, but shall prevail.

Insha'llah.

I have been asked to pen something on Sufism in light of developments in Mali

Sufism dates back to the first Human Beings, it is neither a religion nor a philosophy, while giving them their life and depth and dimension, as it expresses from the source of both.

Whereas for a believer God is a reality, a Sufi apprehends God as THE reality, and arrives at this through direct experience of God and nothing less. She has donned the mantle of many faiths through the ages, lending each its peculiar form and the scent of love, harmony and beauty. And whereas Sufism is immeasurably older than Islam, which to the uninitiated appears to claim it for itself, the fact is that Sufis alone have given Islam all that is of value in it. Sufism is free and the Sufi belongs to no religion, it is the essence of all faiths.

Sufis may traditionally be Muslims, but Muslims are no Sufis, rather they have persecuted Sufis for centuries into the present, and we will be seeing more of this.

The Sufi can coexist in real mutual appreciation with anyone, embracing all forms and requiring none, but the Sufi cannot coexist with bigotry, racism, all manner of hypocrisy, faking, mass manipulation, supremacism, slothful indifference. Having said that, I have to point out that the Sufi can coexist with every kind of ignorance, as she does this all the time.

The most profound expression in English of Sufism in our time, is in the following invocation, whose value is - as with all things given by Sufism - only in the practice and realization of it:

“Toward the one, the perfection of love, harmony and beauty, the only Being, united with all the illuminated souls who form the embodiment of the master, the spirit of guidance.“

Now the spirit of guidance which demonstrates Sufism as the Source and not the effect of any religion, not the “mystical side-show“ of any faith, as bookish academics so often portray it – this spirit of guidance is most beautifully expressed in the part of this Sufi prayer addressing it:

“. . . Thy light is in all forms, Thy love in all Beings: in a loving mother, a kind father, an innocent child, a helpful friend, an inspiring teacher. Allow us to recognize Thee in all of Thy holy names and forms: as Rama, as Krishna, as Shiva, as Buddha. Let us know Thee as Abraham, as Solomon, as Zarathustra, as Moses, as Jesus, as Muhammad – and in many other names and forms, known and unknown to the world. . . .“

It should be clear by what is happening in Mali, in Pakistan, and certainly elsewhere, that Sufism - which proposes an ever forward movement of conscious Human development, both embracing tradition and yet traditionally, even notoriously breaking with it, both disappearing into any surrounding culture it finds itself sharing a corner of the planet with and maintaining an unwavering position in deference to the truth, to the light, indifferent to and independent of dogmas, institutions and ideologies of every brand or intensity.

What shall be the difference between Islam and Sufism, then, when they both have a penetrating power? Where Islam penetrates with dogma, sectarian warfare, supremacist tendencies – the Sufi penetrates with light, and her interests lie in effacement in God over religion.