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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: Sufis - The People of the Path, Vol 1 | Previous Next | |
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it has not gone astray. Philosophy became just speculation -- thinking and thinking and thinking, never arriving at any conclusion. And if you don't arrive at any conclusion your life is not going to be transformed. Just by thinking, nobody is transformed; only when you arrive at some experienced conclusions do you grow. Philosophy is a game with words and logic -- a beautiful game. If you like it you can play it, but you remain the same. It never changes you.
That's why science had to get a divorce from philosophy. The day science got a divorce from philosophy it started growing. It became experimental, it became objective. Science does not depend on thinking any more, it depends on experimentation. That is one possibility of getting a divorce from philosophy.
Another possibility of getting the divorce is Sufism. Science moves towards the object and becomes experimentation, Sufism moves towards the subject and becomes experience. But both are concerned about reality -- science for the reality that is outside and Sufism for the reality that is inside. Both have divorced philosophy.
Science depends on experiment because with the object experiment is possible; Sufism depends on experience because you can only experience the inner consciousness, you cannot experiment upon it. It is not an object, it is your subjectivity.
And the last possibility is from the Hebrew root 'ain sof' which means the absolutely infinite, the search for the absolutely infinite, the search beyond the relative, the search for the unbounded, the eternal, the timeless.
Yes, that's exactly what Sufism is. Sufism is all these things and more. To indicate that more I will repeat the definition in the Persian dictionary: SUFI CHIST -- SUFI, SUFIST. WHO IS A SUFI? A SUFI IS A SUFI. Nothing more can be said about it.
But you can enter into the temple of Sufism and you can taste it.
Before we enter into this small story of today a few more things will be helpful to understand. They will become a background.
The Koran says there are three basic qualities which have to be in the heart of the seeker. The first is khushu. khushu means humility, humbleness.
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