[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the advice of the illuminate Mumshad Dinwari: *
You learn, he says, by association with a realised teacher. But
you can gain nothing from such a person if you bring a sense of
personal pride.
The widespread compulsion to do things for which one is not
fitted, and also to assume that one's choice of action is appropriate,
is seen everywhere, in all epochs.
THE LEGLESS BURGLAR
In the contemporary world there is an excellent opportunity to see
this working in the human behaviour reported in the daily and
" Recorded in his Tadhkirat al-Awliyya by Faridudin Altar.
51
weekly Press. Take this almost random example. It shows be-
haviour which underlies such things as unthinking group-joining
or journeys to the East. Are they the product of spiritual aspira-
tions or of sheer non-thinking elevated into a virtue?
A cat-burglar, who climbed girders and houses to steal, and
who carried out at least forty-one thefts, was caught and brought
to court. Of course he was caught, in spite of his great skill:
because he happened to have no legs, having had them amputated
years before.*
*Daily Telegraph (London) 9 September 1977, p. 19, col. 3.
52
What a Sufi Teacher Looks Like
Q: How should a teacher appear to the students, according to
the Sufis?
THE BRICK AND THE HOUSE
A: This question, like so many others which assume that they
can be usefully answered in a few words, reminds me of a story
about Mulla Nasrudin. Someone asked him what his house was
like, basically. In reply he brought this man a brick, saying: 'It is
just a collection of these.' What the fool may do without realising
it is foolish, the wise man may have to do or say in order to
show how unthinking the question is.
How can you say what a teacher should look like? The most
one can do is to make a few remarks about it.
What is so perplexing to conditioned attitudes about the Sufis
is that, unlike teachers of other kinds, they refuse to stick to one
kind of appearance. As an example, if you go to see a Sufi divine,
he may not look, talk or act like a mystical master at all. This is
because he says either: 'You can teach only by the method
indicated for each pupil, and you may have to teach by what
seems to him unlikely'; or else because he says: 'There is a time
and a place and certain company. According to these, we will
teach. When it is a time to be serious, we will be serious. When it
is a time to work through what looks like ordinary things, we
have to do so."
So important is this lesson that it can be said to go before all
others: in the sense that failure to know this can prevent you
from learning more - and can leave you attached to the externals
of hypocrites. This includes, of course, unconscious hypocrites.
If the Sufis are right in their claim that time affects behaviour,
and that personal appearance should change (and even tempera-
ment) then obviously all the people who cultivate a reverend
appearance, and all those who acquire it, mistaking this for
spirituality, are wrong.
53
It is this unspoken contradiction which makes it almost im-
possible for people who want continuity and easily identifiable
teaching figures, to accept the change in circumstances and atti-
tudes which the Sufi Way demands.
These people, of course, will not have thought it out like this.
All they know is that 'A holy man must seem holy to me'; or 'If
he always behaves in the same manner, or always exhorts me to the
same things, I believe that he may be right'.
The other problem is that the observer is confusing, as he is
bound to confuse without having understood, continuity and con-
sistency with reliability or truth. Because butter always tastes the
same when it looks the same, he expects a similar 'reliability' in
his spiritual teacher. He is, of course, self-deceived in this as-
sumption.
The genesis of the attitude adopted by the people of externals
is that their inward drive is for finding tidiness, order. This is not
a spiritual activity, it is perhaps, rather, a therapeutic one. Order
is essential for disordered people. Looking for it as a major factor
in 'esoteric' directions is the mistake.
In trying to make what - for them - is order out of what they
imagine to be the disorder of Sufi tradition, they have to over-
simplify. They ignore parts of the teaching and succeed only in
creating an imitation of Sufism.
Because so many people desire order so strongly, you will find
more imitations than reality. One cannot blame anyone for this.
But pointing out facts can help.
WHAT A TEACHER SHOULD BE
Ibn Arabi's dictum on this matter has not been bettered:
'People think that a teacher should display miracles and mani-
fest illumination. But the requirement in a teacher is that he
should possess all that the disciple needs.'
BEYOND APPEARANCES
In order to possess what a disciple needs, the Teacher must be
one who has gone beyond appearances and has realised his inner-
54
most self, after transcending the barriers imposed by attach-
ment to secondary factors. He really exists and is aware of this
existence. As Ibn Arabi says: 'Absolute existence is the source of
all existence'.
Hallaj put it in this way, indicating the peculiarity of the
realised individual:
'I am the Real, for I have not ceased to be real-through the
Real.'
Sufi teachers who have reached stages where strange things
happen in their vicinity, generally called miracles and wonders,
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]