Path: kudonet.com!kudo20!tyagi From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.sufi,alt.islam.sufism,alt.religion.islam Subject: JAAziz: Sufism Date: 11 Apr 1997 00:26:31 -0700 Organization: KudoNet On-Line Services Lines: 40 Sender: tyagi@bjt.net Message-ID: Reply-To: jamlid@ix.netcom.com NNTP-Posting-Host: kudo20.kudonet.com Xref: kudonet.com alt.magick.tyagi:8941 alt.sufi:12 alt.islam.sufism:1355 alt.religion.islam:37391 [from tariqas@world.std.com: "Jamey (Abdul Aziz)" ] Dear Brother, Asalamu-alaikum. I believe your question cuts to the heart of the matter. The Marifat answer is that God is the only Sufi. We are therefore, students of Sufism. Since we take on faith the statement puportedly put forth by God that "only the heart of my faithful servant can contain Me," and the Sufistic doctrine that only God can know God, we beleive that there is a mechanism for the development of some human capacity to have the experience of mystical unity. It is entirely possible, but highly unlikely, that an individual may complete that journey unaided, and so, in His wisdom and mercy, God has placed the Prophets, the lights of God, The friends of God and his faithful slaves in our midst to testify to absolute reality. Through their aegis, we are able to proceed step by step from the winding path of the duniya to the sirat-ul mustaqim, that straight way that is finer than a razor's edge. It is then that the aspiring Sufi begins to understand the connection between the lower mind, rooted in phenomenological experience, and the dormant higher mind which is linked to divine experience. These four lower levels of consciousness of feeling, awareness, intellect, and discrimination reduce the consensual reality to meaningful impressions. God has placed His signs and story into this realm to instruct and reveal. Under divine grace and guidance the student is shown the qualities and actions necessary to activate the higher three levels of subtle wisdom, universal wisdom and divine wisdom. When all seven are actively operating it can be said that the seeker and the sought have merged and only God exists. So then, who is there to tell the tale? The perfected being is in a state of silence, as there is no way to show God to the senses. The light of God will however be readily apparent on the face, and flowing from the heart of such a one. If you have the good fortune to discover an insan kamil, then by all means do all you can to follow them, as they can take you to God! May God protect us, Jamey