Could You Clarify Muslim Sufism, Especially Following a Spiritual Order?

 

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

Surely God’s friends–no fear shall be on them, neither shall they grieve. (10:62)

 

Sufism is light-giving, spiritual truth

There is a lovely, light-giving and spiritual truth variously called Sufism, tariqa (spiritual order or way), sainthood or being God’s friend, initiation, following a spiritual order or way. The truth-seeking scholars among the people of spiritual pleasure and discovery have so far written thousands of volumes to describe and explain this sacred truth and taught it to the Muslim community. May God reward them with much good! All that I will attempt to do here, therefore, is to show, in accordance with the present context, a few drops out of that ocean of information.

Question

What is tariqa?

Answer

Tariqa is the name of the spiritual way by which a man initiated into it seeks to acquire knowledge of God and attain full perception of the truths of belief, and by which he is elevated, at the end of his spiritual journeying, under the auspices of the Prophet’s Ascension, to the rank of the perfect man.

Since man is an all-comprehensive index of the whole universe, his heart is like an immaterial map of thousands of worlds. As the mind of man is, as shown by sciences, like a center of telecommunications, a sort of immaterial center of the universe, so his heart is, as explained in many enlightening books written by countless men of sainthood, the receiver of in-numerable universal truths, as well as being their source or seed.

Since, then, the mind and heart of man are of such a nature – a seed in which are encapsulated the members of a huge tree and the wheels and other parts of an eternal and splendid machine – the Creator of this heart, Who made it so, willed that it should operate and flourish by putting its potentials into practice. Since He willed it to be so, the heart will, like the intellect, work, and the most practical and important means to make it work is repeating different Names of God in the gradations toward sainthood and seeking to attain the truths of belief along with the spiritual journeying.