Path: news.bjt.net!not-for-mail From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (haramullah) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.sufi,alt.islam.sufism,alt.consciousness.mysticism,talk.philosophy.misc,alt.religion.gnostic Subject: truth, Truth, sufism and Sufism Date: 6 Sep 1997 12:02:34 -0700 Organization: Bay Junction Technology, Inc. Lines: 117 Sender: tyagi@news.bjt.net Message-ID: <5us9ca$p8b@bay1.bjt.net> Reply-To: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (haramullah) NNTP-Posting-Host: bay1.bjt.net X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 (NOV) Xref: news.bjt.net alt.magick.tyagi:1003 alt.sufi:155 alt.islam.sufism:289 alt.consciousness.mysticism:1349 alt.religion.gnostic:618 [orig-To: tariqas@world.std.com] 49970822 aa2 assalam alaykum, my kin. Egeriae@aol.com: #># It is not that there is *a* mailing list, it is that there are so many with #># people muddying the water and little is clear. getting on my goggles and wetsuit, I will accept the visibility. there are many times in my life where I will understand nothing. these are the times I am most alone with myself and have the deepest potential to grow. #># If we drop the pebble of truth into each of these pools, how do we find the #># one with the Stone of Truth? by the way the ripples form in response. do they go out on all sides? do they emit a variety of beautiful rings? do they have turgidity and calmness at once? surely the Stone of Truth (on the side of the Ka'abah') is of such diversity as to include all the variables. how rounded are the rings, then? #># ...howit is that so many people have so many different versions if there is #># only One Absolute Truth? Truth can not be one for each customer... that is #># illogical. Habib: #> ...whether or not there is only One Absolute Truth, each person's #> experience of it is uniquely their own. perhaps that precious experience is the same as that One Absolute Truth, varying per the perfect body with which we may associate it, that excellent self to whom it appears to be happening, and typically filtered through the perceptions of our beautiful, limited minds. # I am somewhat confused... if there were ten Sufis in a room and they all # contemplated Truth, would not they be sharing the same view? each would see it through hir own eyes at a different position within that room. imagine an infinitely-faceted jewel in the center of the room, blossoming rays of fractionalized light and shadow. each of us within its field obtains perception of a different influence, has a different experience of the that centrality. like the philosophers and the elephant, we may be prone to identifying what we have found works for us with what works for all (becoming fundamentalist for a time). I would learn whatever reflections of you may have of that jewel, and bid you shift about the room a little to get different perspectives. ;> we can dance spritely in the field of Truth's effulgence. # ...arrive at a destination wherein other Sufis reside. oh dear. there are so many challenges before this approach. where are the other sufis? are they in some organization identifying with its name? are they part of a conservative tariqa? are they part of a more liberal and inclusive network? do they associate with people who call themselves 'sufi' at all? do they evince certain qualities? do they sometimes take on alternative appearances so as to deceive or instruct? with all this uncertainty, how will we ever locate them? and even then, do all the other sufis, presuming for the moment that we may locate them, attain to the same destination? will that destination be the same for every one of them? will they know when they have or have not reached it? will they reach it before or after they die? is that destination something I will want also? oh the complexities have only just begun. # ...do not all Sufis share the same Truth? this question I answer differently, taxonomically. Sufis (Muslim sufis) appear to vary according to the tariqa and even within the tariqa individuals vary as to what they consider to be 'true' in an intellectual sense. I have noticed that sheikhs may gear the instruction toward the sensitivies of the individual student, for this one providing a sure and certain intellectual ladder, for that one coming to their assistance in destroying all intellectual solutions via rigorous logic so as redirect them back to themselves. sufis (en toto) seem even more varied than this, though an awful lot of them seem to presume that the Truth of the matter is that 'truths', or self-contained and exclusive knowledge systems, are perspectives on some unspoken Truth beyond it, that religion and spirituality are manifestations of culture and time, particular systems addressing the needs of those who needed to participate. some suggest that this results in a kind of 'nihilism' on account of their obsessive focus on the intellectual as the revealer of wisdom. it becomes 'nihilism' when instead of saying 'Truth is so variable and alive that we can only point to it in the moment' she says 'there is no Truth at all to point to so I won't bother'. do all sufis share the same Truth? if 'Truth' is the fact of experience and whatever condition this may include, then all sufis share this, though they may have different abilities to realize what is happening, to whom it may be occurring, and what is its significance. # I am so pleased when others help me untangle the cobwebs in my mind. cobwebs within cobwebs. have a care that you don't get caught up in my tangles too. :> peace be with you, haramullah tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com -- (emailed replies may be posted);join the AMT syncretism!!;call: 408/2-666-SLUG! see http://www.abyss.com/tokus; "Clement of Rome taught that God rules the world with a right and a left hand, the right being Christ, the left Satan." - CGJung