Idries Shah

Deep knowledge (maarifat) is characterised by three subordinate forms of knowledge. The first is the wisdom of how each word or agent acts. The second is the recognition of each agent in the ‘work’. The third is the recognition of the agent through thought. The man who recognises instantaneously the meanings of happenings and actions, without ordinary reflection, is the arif, the Wise, the ‘arrived’ Sufi, or the Mature One.
There are forms of understanding and re-understanding knowledge. These are described as:
The Science of Inner Wisdom;
The Wisdom of Science;
The Science of the Wisdom of Wisdom.
These are the simplest terms in which the succession of refinements of knowledge and wisdom can be rendered.

Those concentrating upon exercises connected with the past or the future are in a state of destruction. ‘The safety and the salvation of the people is in their being engaged in the ordinance of the time.’

The Science of Certainty is the revelation of truth (objective reality) through special states by experience, not by cerebration as we understand it in the conventional world.
There are three phases of the Science (practice and perception) of Certainty, allegorised by calling the Sun objectivity: The first, seeking guidance from the splendour and understanding of the heat of the Sun. The second, by actually seeing the body of the Sun. The third, the dispersing of the eyes’ light in the light of the Sun itself.
There are three stages of ‘certainty’, then, which Suhrawardi summarises as:
The Knowledge of Certitude, in which it is known, verified and evident;
The Essence of Certainty, manifest and witnessed;
The Truth (Reality) of Certainty, a double way in which there is a conjoining of the witnesser and witnessed.
Beyond this point words do not suffice, and the dervish is accused of pantheism and more. An attempt at explaining produces the word sequence, ‘The seer becometh the eye, the eye, the seer.’ A distortion of meaning, originating from the attempt to enunciate the process in formal terms, is perpetuated by the reader, who cannot penetrate by the unaided intellect the real significance of the phrase.

The ‘veiling’ or interruption of the correct use of the human spirit (essence) is caused by an unbalanced indulgence in certain coarse sentiments which together constitute a pattern of imprisonment (conditioning) characteristic of most people. These ‘veils’ or ‘blameable qualities’ are listed as ten:
1. Desire. Desires based on ignorance of what should be, and on assumptions as to what is good for the individual. Austerity, correctly used, is the antidote to irrational desire. This is the stage of ‘I want a lollipop.’
2. Separation. This is a type of hypocrisy, when the person uses rationalisation to justify thoughts and actions which are centred upon himself, not upon an ultimate reality. The antidote is the practice of sincerity.
3. Hypocrisy. Characterised by self-pride, glorying in possessions, pseudo-independence, violence. This is overcome only by the practice of qualities which are reprehensible in the eyes of the people, but laudable in God’s sight. They include submission of the right kind, humility and the poverty of the Fakir. These qualities are recognised only by correct assessment of the true worth of their opposites.
4. Desire for Praise and Love. Narcissism, which precludes objective assessment of oneself; lack of a balancing factor which amounts almost to self-contempt.
5. Illusions of almost divine importance. Countered only by the glory of the qualities of God.
6. Avarice and Parsimony. Give rise to envy, the worst of all characteristics. This can be dissolved only when the power of certainty (yakina) comes.
7. Greed and the desire for more. This is dangerous because it causes the person to be like the moth, insensately dashing itself against the candle flame. It is countered only by austerity and piety.
8. Irresponsibility. This is manifested by the desire to attain something which has been conceived in the mind. It is always in motion, like a globe continually turning. It can be made to depart only by patience.
9. Haste to Fatigue. This is lack of constancy of purpose, in its usual manifestation. This is what prevents people from realising that there is a succession of objectives which will replace present, crude ones. ‘From this calamity it is impossible to escape save by the establishing of the ordered thanks.’ Exercises are employed to overcome this tendency.
10. Negligence. Slothfulness of a deep kind is shown by lack of awareness of the needs of a situation or an individual. Alertness is cultivated through remedies applied by the ‘Physicians of the Essence’ — the dervishes.

‘In every person of mankind, another exemplar becometh — by the union of spirit and essence (in part) — transcribed from the exemplar of Adam and Eve.’ What is called ‘heart’ is the combination of Adam and Eve, the soul and the essence. The male element comes from the universal soul. The female element comes from the universal essence. It is this essence which man (Adam) contacts within himself and brings forth in the form of Eve. Eve being brought forth from Adam therefore represents the special, inner, cognition of the true (objective) essence, produced by mankind from its interior resources

All created things are the outcome of an interchange between the two principles which are called essence and soul: ‘By reason of active deed, of passive deed and power, of weakness, the attribute of male and female appeareth; in the soul of increase and universal essence, the custom of lovemaking became confirmed by the link of temperament; by means of marriage, the races of worlds became existing and by the hand of the midwife of Fate appeared in the apparent world.’

Illumination cannot be sustained by someone who is not ready for it. At the best it will throw him into an ecstatic state in which he is paralysed, as it were, and unable to consummate the contact. This is why, although dervish poets speak of being ‘mad for love’, they emphasise that this madness is the result of preview, not of genuine experience. It is recognised that genuine experience must take an active, mutual, meaningful form, not a form of useless intoxication.

There is no word in English which can be used as a true equivalent of the technical term ‘subtlety’. The original word is latifa (plural lataif). It has been rendered ‘purity spot’, ‘place of illumination’, ‘centre of reality’. In order to activate this element it is assigned a theoretical physical situation in the body — generally considered to be the centre where its force or baraka is most strongly evidenced. The latifa is theoretically considered to be ‘an incipient organ of spiritual perception’.

The five centres are named Heart, Spirit, Secret, Mysterious and Deeply Hidden. Another one, strictly speaking not a latifa at all, is Self, composed of a complex of ‘selves’. This is the totality of what the ordinary (raw) man or woman considers his personality. It is characterised by a shifting series of moods and personalities whose rapidity of movement gives the individual the impression that his consciousness is constant or a unity. It is not in fact so.

The illumination or activation of one or more of the centres may take place partially or accidentally. When this happens, the individual may gain for a time a deepening in intuitive knowledge corresponding with the latifa involved. But if this is not a part of comprehensive development, the mind will try, vainly, to equilibrate itself around this hypertrophy, an impossible task. The consequences can be very dangerous, and include, like all one-sided mental phenomena, exaggerated ideas of self-importance, the surfacing of undesirable qualities, or a deterioration of consciousness following an access of ability.