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Foreword HUSTON SMITH
The Sufis are the mystics of Islam. Every upright Muslim expects to see God after death, but the Sufis are the impatient ones. They want God now—moment by moment, day by day, in this very life. And they are willing to undergo the disciplines that make that possible. This book presents selections from a multitude of saints and sages whose hearts were opened through the Sufi path.
Three modes of union with the divine turn up in every religious tradition and all three are present in Sufism. One of these is ecstatic. It requires a special visitation that lifts the soul out of its body—ex (out), statuo (to stand), ecstasis (to stand outside oneself)—and transports it to a higher, distinctly different level of consciousness that relativizes our normal register dramatically. The experience can be so intense that it sends the body into convulsions.
Sufis honor their ecstatics, but they refer to them (affectionately) as “spiritual drunkards” because their God-intoxication dissociates them from the ordinary world.
Introduction SHEIKH RAGIP ROBERT FRAGER AL JERRAHI Know, O beloved, that man was not created in jest or at random, but marvelously made and for some great end. AL-GHAZZALI
Sufism is often described as a path, suggesting both an origin and a destination. The aim of Sufism is the elimination of all veils between the individual and God. Traveling this path, one can acquire knowledge of Reality. God is the ultimate reality, not this phenomenal world of multiplicity.
To understand Sufism, we must understand mysticism. The Greek root myein, “to close the eyes,” is also the root of “mystery”; the mystic’s goal is not to be reached by the intellect or by ordinary means. Fundamentally, mysticism is love of the Absolute, the One Reality, also called Truth, Love, or God. According to Sarraj’s classic definition of Sufism, “The Sufis are people who prefer God to everything and God prefers them to everything else.”
For the Sufis, not only love but also self-knowledge leads to knowledge of God. The Sufi philosopher Al-Ghazzali says, “Real self-knowledge consists in knowing the following things: What are you in yourself and where did you come from? Where are you going and for what purpose are you tarrying here awhile? In what does your real happiness and misery consist?” Many pitfalls, both real and imagined, render us unable or even unwilling to seek this inner knowledge.
According to many Sufis, however, the essential Truths of Sufism exist in all religions.
The fruit of the tree is the Truth, or God.
AI Summary
Essential Sufism by Robert Frager, James Fadiman, and Huston Smith presents key insights from the Sufism tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
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