Monday, November 01, 2004
SUFISM
On a recent trip to Borders, there were no books by Rene Guenon availble. The Sufis by Idries Shah, was the most compelling book on the Islam shelf, so I brought it home.
According to the online reference source, Wikiverse: A World of Knowledge, Idries Shah is one of 20 Famous Sufis. Neither Rene Guenon nor Fritjohf Schuon make the list. Another list member, Syed Hussain, says of Sufi Mysticism:
[It] is neither a religion nor a philosophy. It's neither occultism nor Belief System. In fact, Sufism is a science, a science of esotericism.
(One wonders if he has been reading Rudolf Steiner who says much the same thing.)
Science, by its very nature, requires observable data and repeatable experiments. Esotericism provides neither. In fact the very nature of esotericism is that it is grounded in the spiritual world. This Wikiverse entry provides another characteristic of Sufism:
Sufis believe that their teachings are the essence of every religion, and indeed of the evolution of humanity as a whole.
Further along the article gives further hint of what we may be looking at:
...relatively simple Quranic concepts that gave basic structure to [the] Islamic worldview had soon become exposed to Neoplatonist and Gnostic influence, as well as Zoroastrian religious imagery.
So it would seem that this "scientific" esotericism is merely a new variety of occultism in disguise. That would fit with Rene Guenon's early occult experiences prior to becoming a Sufi.
In an online interview from Psychology Today 1975, Elizabeth Hall comments "I am surprised that these gurus tell you all their secrets..." Idries Shah responds:
I must tell you that I have not renounced the Eastern technique of pretending to be interested in what another person is saying, even pretending to be on his side. Therefore, I am able to draw out gurus and get them to commit themselves to an extent that a Westerner, because of his conscience, could not do. The Westerner would not allow certain things to go unchallenged and would not trick, as it were, another person. So he doesn't find out the truth."
Hmmm...so much for truthfulness, I guess.
Sufism is not the ony source of scientific esotericism that is not a religion, that deals with spiritual concepts, and that is eager to encompass all the religions of the world. In fact that is a perfect description of esoteric Freemasonry. It is really no surprise, then, that Robert Graves opens the Introduction to Shah's book with the words:
The Sufis are an ancient spiritual Freemasonry whose origins have never been traced or dated; nor do they themselves take much interest in such researches, being content to point out the occurrence of their own way of thought in different regions and periods. Though commonly mistaken for a Moslem sect, the Sufis are at home in all religions; just as the "Free and Accepted Masons" lay before them in their Lodge whatever sacred book--whether Bible, Koran, or Torah--is accepted by the temporal state. If they call Islam the "shell" of Sufism, this is because they believe Sufism to be the secret teaching within all religions.
Another way to say "Freemasonry" or "Sufism" is "perennial philosophy"; and in fact, that is precisely what Guenonian Traditionalism promotes.
An online article by Jay Kinney, titled "Sufism Comes West: An Introduction to Sufism" indicates:
Thus the Sufism that Inayat Khan brought West accepted the love of God expressed by non-Muslims as a valid point of departure for studying Sufism. Kahn was a great exponent of what Aldous Huxley called "the perennial philosophy" and went so far as to create a Universal Worship service that acknowledged the unity behind the great world religions.
Idries Shah makes it clear, beginning on page 205 of The Sufis, that it is Freemasonry in an Eastern dress:
"Sufi-ism," said Sir Richard Burton, was "the Eastern parent of Freemasonry." Whether Burton was a Freemason or not, there is no doubt that he was a Sufi.
The remainder of the book builds on this theme. Knowing this connection makes it much easier to understand how it is that Guenonian Traditionalism is welcome in the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina obedience and the Rene Guenon Lodge of Grand Orient Freemasonry.
It also becomes easier to understand how someone persuaded by Sufism could be comfortable working with Satanists. Quoting Jules Michelet, the French medievalist, Shah states:
Dante and St. Thomas Acquinas look upon Satan in one of two ways--the Christian way; "grotesque and coarse-minded...such as he was in his earliest days, when Jesus could still drive him to enter into the herd of swine." And the other (the Sufic way) as "a subtle reasoner, a scholastic theologian, a phrasemongering jurist." This latter view is again and again insisted upon by the Sufis: "Seek the real Satan in the scholastic sophist, or the hairsplitting doctor--for he is the opposite of Truth." (P. 361)
There is no more place in Sufism for the one and only Son of God than there is in Freemasonry, and attempts to Catholicize this doctrine will fail unless Catholicism is morphed into a branch of a universal religion.
