CHAPTER I
THE PATH
Mystics of every race and creed have described the progress of the spiritual life as a journey or a pilgrimage. Other symbols have been used for the same purpose, but this one appears to be almost universal in its range. The Sūfī who sets out to seek God calls himself a ‘traveller’ (sālik); he advances by slow ‘stages’ (maqāmāt) along a ‘path’ (tarīqat) to the goal of union with Reality (fanā fi ’l-Haqq). Should he venture to make a map of this interior ascent, it will not correspond exactly with any of those made by previous explorers. Such maps or scales of perfection were elaborated by Sūfī teachers at an early period, and the unlucky Moslem habit of systematising has produced an enormous aftercrop. The ‘path’ expounded by the author of the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ, perhaps the oldest comprehensive treatise on Sūfism that we now possess, consists of the following seven ‘stages,’ each of which (except the first member of the series) is the result of the ‘stages’ immediately preceding it—(1) Repentance, (2) abstinence, (3) renunciation, (4) poverty, (5) patience, (6) trust in God, (7) satisfaction. The ‘stages’ constitute the ascetic and ethical discipline of the Sūfī, and must be carefully distinguished from the so-called ‘states’ (ahwāl, plural of hāl), which form a similar psychological chain. The writer whom I have just quoted enumerates ten ‘states’—Meditation, nearness to God, love, fear, hope, longing, intimacy, tranquillity, contemplation, and certainty. While the ‘stages’ can be acquired and mastered by one’s own efforts, the ‘states’ are spiritual feelings and dispositions over which a man has no control:
“They descend from God into his heart, without his being able to repel them when they come or to retain them when they go.”
The Sūfī’s ‘path’ is not finished until he has traversed all the ‘stages,’ making himself perfect in every one of them before advancing to the next, and has also experienced whatever ‘states’ it pleases God to bestow upon him. Then, and only then, is he permanently raised to the higher planes of consciousness which Sūfīs call ‘the Gnosis’ (maʿrifat) and ‘the Truth’ (haqīqat), where the ‘seeker’ (tālib) becomes the ‘knower’ or ‘gnostic’ (ʿārif), and realises that knowledge, knower, and known are One.
Having sketched, as briefly as possible, the external framework of the method by which the Sūfī approaches his goal, I shall now try to give some account of its inner workings. The present chapter deals with the first portion of the threefold journey—the Path, the Gnosis, and the Truth—by which the quest of Reality is often symbolised.