THE SUFI WAY
THE SUFI WAY
How Not To Do Things.
The Sufis have always been associated with whirling Dervishes and haunting music, but in fact this a very minor aspect of a religious ideology that was probably one of the most important channels of conscious development known to man, at the turn of the first millenium AD. Their rules for living were simply called “The Way” and their astonishing impact on history and social development goes well beyond the interest it continues to provoke in the West.
Modern public interest in Mysticism is probably one of the results of the loss of faith in established religions brought about by the injustice that the awesome media now packages and delivers to the household in its full, gory, glory. Perhaps it is a form of fear – a sense of loss of security which drives intelligent and successful people to the shores of the Asiatic way of looking at things. The Beatles definitely popularised it but it had been publicly played with, centuries before, with the advent of curious and improbable mystics like Madam Blavatsky, the warlock Crowley and the reluctant Krishnamurti among many, who sought to use this lucrative form of leadership to feather their own nests.
But if we talk about nests in this peculiar context, we must bring up “Alamut”, the Eagles Nest of the 12th. Century which harboured the most dangerous man in the world. This mountain stronghold now in Northern Syria was an impregnable fortress controlled by a sect which appears to have given its name to the word Asassin, Its leader and a man of great