In observing the Sufis by means of what are in fact derivations of Sufi techniques, we shall have to look at many things which may be important at first, but which will cease to have the same significance as we proceed. This technique can easily be illustrated. A child learns to read by mastering the alphabet. When he can read words he retains the knowledge of the letters, but reads whole words. If he were to concentrate upon letters, he would be severely handicapped by what was useful only at an earlier stage. Both words and letters should now have a more settled perspective. Thus the Sufic method.
The process is easier than it sounds, even if only because doing a thing may often be easier than describing it. I report a glimpse of Sufis in a circle (halka), the basic unit and very heart of active Sufism. A group of seekers is attracted to a teaching master, and attends his Thursday evening assembly. The first part of the proceedings is the less formal time, when questions are asked, and students received. On this occasion, a newcomer had just asked our teacher, the Agha, whether there was a basic urge toward mystical experience, shared by all humanity.
‘We have a word,’ replied the Agha, ‘which sums all this up. It describes what we are doing, and it summarises our way of thinking. Through it you will understand the very reason for our existence, and the reason why mankind is generally speaking at odds. The word is Anguruzuminabstafil.’ And he explained it in a traditional Sufi story.
Four men — a Persian, a Turk, an Arab, and a Greek — were standing in a village street. They were travelling companions, making for some distant place; but at this moment they were arguing over the spending of a single piece of money which was all that they had among them.
‘I want to buy angur,’ said the Persian.
‘I want uzum,’ said the Turk.
‘I want inab,’ said the Arab.
‘No!’ said the Greek, ‘we should buy stafil.’
Another traveller passing, a linguist, said, ‘Give the coin to me. I undertake to satisfy the desires of all of you.’
At first they would not trust him. Ultimately they let him have the coin. He went to the shop of a fruit seller and bought four small bunches of grapes.
‘This is my angur,’ said the Persian.
‘But this is what I call uzum,’ said the Turk.
‘You have brought me inab,’ said the Arab.
‘No!’ said the Greek, ‘this in my language is stafil.’
The grapes were shared out among them, and each realised that the disharmony had been due to his faulty understanding of the language of the others.
‘The travellers,’ said the Agha, ‘are the ordinary people of the world. The linguist is the Sufi. People know that they want something, because there is an inner need existing in them. They may give it different names, but it is the same thing. Those who call it religion have different names for it, and even different ideas as to what it might be. Those who call it ambition try to find its scope in different ways. But it is only when a linguist appears, someone who knows what they really mean, that they can stop the struggling and get on with the eating of the grapes.’
The group of travellers which he had been describing, he continued, were more advanced than most, in that they actually had a positive idea of what they wanted, even though they could not communicate it. It is far more common for the individual to be at an earlier stage of aspiration than he thinks. He wants something but does not know what it is — though he may think that he knows.
The Sufic way of thinking is particularly appropriate in a world of mass communication, when every effort is directed toward making people believe that they want or need certain things; that they should believe certain things; that they should as a consequence do certain things that their manipulators want them to do.
The Sufi speaks of wine, the product of the grape, and its secret potential, as his means of attaining ‘inebriation’. The grape is seen as the raw form of the wine. Grapes, then, mean ordinary religion; while wine is the real essence of the fruit.
The travellers are therefore seen to be four ordinary people, differing in religion. The Sufi shows them that the basis of their religions is in fact the same. He does not, however, offer them wine, the essence, which is the inner doctrine waiting to be produced and used in mysticism, a field far more developed than mere organised religion. That is a further stage. But the Sufi’s role as a servant of humanity is brought out by the fact that, although he is operating on a higher level, he helps the formal religionist as far as he can, by showing him the fundamental identity of religious faith. He might, of course, have gone on to a discussion of the merits of wine; but what the travellers wanted was grapes, and grapes they were given.
When the wrangling over smaller issues subsides, according to the Sufi, the greater teaching may be imparted. Meanwhile, some sort of primary lesson has been given.
The basic urge toward mysticism is never, in the unaltered man, clear enough to be recognised for what it is.
Rumi, in his version of this story (Mathnawi, Bk. II) alludes to the Sufi training system when he says that the grapes, pressed together, produce one juice — the wine of Sufism. The Sufis often start from a nonreligious viewpoint. The answer, they say, is within the mind of mankind. It has to be liberated, so that by self-knowledge the intuition becomes the guide to human fulfilment. The other way, the way of training, suppresses and stills the intuition. Humanity is turned into a conditioned animal by non-Sufi systems, while being told that it is free and creative, has a choice of thought and action.
The Sufi is an individual who believes that by practising alternate detachment and identification with life, he becomes free. He is a mystic because he believes that he can become attuned to the purpose of all life. He is a practical man because he believes that this process must take place within normal society. And he must serve humanity because he is a part of it...
In order to succeed in this endeavour, he must follow the methods which have been devised by earlier masters, methods for slipping through the complex of training which makes most people prisoners of their environment and of the effect of their experiences. The exercises of the Sufis have been developed through the interaction of two things — intuition and the changing aspects of human life. Different methods will suggest themselves intuitively in different societies and at various times. This is not inconsistent, because real intuition is itself always consistent.
The Sufi life can be lived at any time, in any place. It does not require withdrawal from the world, or organised movements, or dogma. It is coterminous with the existence of humanity. It cannot, therefore, accurately be termed an Eastern system. It has profoundly influenced both the East and the very bases of the Western civilisation in which many of us live — the mixture of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Near Eastern or Mediterranean heritage commonly called ‘Western’.
Mankind, according to the Sufis, is infinitely perfectible. The perfection comes about through attunement with the whole of existence. Physical and spiritual life meet, but only when there is a complete balance between them. Systems which teach withdrawal from the world are regarded as unbalanced.
From The Sufis by Idries Shah
Copyright © The Estate of Idries Shah
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Idries Shah was born in India in 1924 into an aristocratic Afghan family. He was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition and is considered one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century.
