Pure Prayer in Sufi Science
Sufi Science comes to us from the teachings of non-duality in Sufism, the mystical aspect of Islam dating to the 12th century.¹
Dualistic binary thinking is transcended
in the metaphysical standpoint
as knowing and being become one.²
— Muhammad Maroof Shah
God speaks
out of the innermost being of the mystic
while [the mystic] is silent.³
— Al-Junayd
Wait till you look within yourself
and see what is there.
O seeker,
One leaf in that Garden
is worth more than all of Paradise!⁴
— Rumi
Neither this body am I, nor soul,
Nor these fleeting images passing by,
Nor concepts and thoughts, mental images,
Nor yet sentiments and the psyche's labyrinth.
Who then am I?
A consciousness without origin,
Not born in time, nor begotten here below.
I am that which was, is and ever shall be,
A jewel in the crown of the Divine Self,
A star in the firmament
of the luminous One.⁵
— Rumi
Silence is not the absence of sound,
silence is the absence of the little self.⁶
— Rumi
Move outside the tangle
of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
[Transcend.]
Flow down
and down
[and down…]
in always widening rings
of Being.⁷
— Rumi
The ‘annihilation’ of the limited
individual self—
the apparent disappearance
or ‘conceal(ment)’ of ‘soul and body,’
’intellect or perception’—
must not be understood
as a negative experience.
[Rather]: ‘The self in the final station
drowns in its love
to the point that it has no more feeling
of itself or even of its love.
The lover arrives at a station
in which he says:
I am my beloved.
My beloved is I.’⁸
— Jens Söring and Junayd of Baghdad
At the edge of the ocean
footprints disappear.⁹
— Rumi
When the worshiper thinks no longer
of worship or self
but is altogether absorbed in Divinity…
that state, by the Gnostics, (seers of reality)
is called
the passing away of mortality (fana’),
when one has so passed away from oneself
that one feels nothing
of one’s bodily members,
nor of what is passing without,
nor what passes within one’s own mind.
One is detached from all that
and all that is detached from the one:
one is journeying first to the Lord,
then at the end in the Lord.…
This absorption at first
will be like a flash of lightning,
lasting but a short time,
but then it becomes habitual
and a means of enabling the soul
to ascend to the world above,
where pure and essential Reality
is manifested to it,
and it takes upon itself
the impress of the Invisible world
and the Divine Majesty is revealed to it....¹⁰
— Abu Hamid Al-Ghazal
This above quotation presents
a description of
the process of transcending
and then being in the transcendent.
In the beginning of the development
of higher states of consciousness,
the experience of the transcendent
may only last for a short time.
But gradually it ‘becomes habitual,’
and then one becomes naturally established in it.¹¹
— Evan Finkelstein
Islamic metaphysics can be called
‘the science of the Real,
and the real science.’¹²
— Mohammed Rustom
I cannot teach you how to pray in words.
God listens not to your words
save when the Divine Itself utters them
through your lips.¹³
— Kahlil Gibran
You were born from divine attributes
in the first place:
Now return to those attributes.¹⁴
— Rumi
See also Pure Prayer: An Overview
Waves of the Ocean
[1] Chase Winter, Sufi Islam: What you need to know, https://www.dw.com/en/sufi-islam-what-you-need-to-know/a-41532401 11.02.2024
[2] Muhammad Maroof Shah, Ibn Arabi: Mysticism and Interfaith, (Academia.edu), p. 3 https://www.academia.edu/9146501/Ibn_Arabi_and_Interfaith 11.17.2022 AX 7166
[3] Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Travelling the Path of Love: Sayings of Sufi Masters, (McNaughton & Gunn, 1995), p. 12, • https://truthisone.org/docs/insights/mind-is-the-obstacle.htm • 01.28.2001 • [the mystic] replaces “he”
[4] Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva, A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi, (Bantam, 1992), between the title page and the contents page.
[5] Rumi, The Garden of Truth: The vision and promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition by Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2009 p. 10
[6] Imam Jamal Rahman, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLH-VQ-0Vb0&ab_channel=UnityVancouver • 06.26.2021
[7] Barks, Coleman, Translator, The Essential Rumi, (HarperCollins, 1995) p. 3 • With great respect we offer the ripened words [Transcend.] and [and down…]
[8] Junayd, translated by F. Rosenthal, A Judeo-Arabic Work under Sufi Influence, (Hebrew Union College Annual, vol. 15, Cincinnati, 1940) • http://www.monasticdialog.org/bulletins/72/soring1.htm 11.28.2003
[9] Coleman Barks, The Soul of Rumi, (Harper Collins, 2001), p. 41
[10] Margaret Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam, (Westport: Pir Publications, 1994), p. 70
[11] Evan Finkelstein, Universal Principles of Life Expressed in Maharishi Vedic Science and in the Scriptures and Writings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, (Maharishi University of Management, 2005), p. 425
[12] Mohammed Rustom, The Great Chain of Consciousness: Do All Things Possess Awareness? p. 49 https://www.academia.edu/32931070/The_Great_Chain_of_Consciousness_Do_All_Things_Possess_Awareness_Renovatio_2017_
[13] Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, (Alfred A Knopf,1951), p. 68 · [the Divine Itself ] replaces “He Himself,” AX 1174
[14] Rūmī, cited in William C. Chittick, “The Descent and Reascent of the Spirit,” in The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1983), p. 81 • footnote cited in Rumi’s Original Sufi Enneagram Introduction by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos https://ia800703.us.archive.org/7/items/RumisOriginalSufiEnneagram2/Rumi%E2%80%99s%20Original%20Sufi%20Enneagram%201.pdf • p. 11 06.29.2022 AX 8017
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