Historical Beginnings of Sufism - Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

I will say at the beginning there are two schools of thought some say that Sufism is the esoteric branch of Islam and in fact the first transmission of Sufism was between the Prophet Muhammad and Abu Bakr in the cave it was the secret silent transmission from heart to heart that took place in the cave that is that thread of Sufism that begins there and then there is another school that says Sufism long before it was called Sufism is the ancient ancient mystery of love it was always present back to the very beginning before the beginning in the first breath of human consciousness there was the breath of God in the first spark of human consciousness there was this deep understanding of love of mystical love and that it was always there woven throughout humanity through the history of humanity but through the teachings of Islam it in a way fermented it became alive in a particular way that we now call Sufism it is of course an inner kernel of truth it is not about outer form who always goes back to the truth now some of the the early Sufis they were they were not they didn't belong to any Sufi order it was before Sufi orders there were just these mystics and at the beginning they were very very ascetic most of them were very very ascetic for example there was the 8th century Sufi teacher Hassan of Basra who who really aspired just to eat as little as possible and sleep as little as possible and he was the teacher of a Sufi many of you know core Rabia who was the first woman Sufi saint who also lived in the 8th century and she was both tremendous ascetic she was sold into slavery when she was young and as a slave she she did all her household duties during the day and then prayed all night and it was only when one night when her master was wandering in the house and he heard her praying that he discovered the depth of her devotion and set her free and so she was lived and incredibly austere life but was also one of the first people in the tradition of Sufism to talk about divine love but there is this love affair between the human being and God so she was both austere but also there was this thread of love and then there was a ninth century Sufi master called Dolan remember this was before there were Sufi orders who were just these saints these luminaries like little bits of divine light that came to earth that lived that light though none was was the Egyptian he lived in in Egypt he was a very supposed to be a magician and he was the first sufi to develop what we call Fanaa and baka and fauna is a process of annihilation of getting rid of the ego so began to be developed back then in the 9th century the stages of Fanaa that lead to Baca and bakar is a state of abiding with God or abiding in God it is a state of complete fulfillment you were just with God there is no journey anymore you you were just in God in the state Fanaa is all of the struggle all of the difficulties all of the trials all the tribulations as you were torn away from your identity of yourself of who you think you are and then you discover something else there is this presence in your heart there is this sweetness in your heart and it deeper and deeper and you begin to live in that and then your whole spiritual practice your whole relationship to God changes you don't look for God anymore he is with you and and you go deeper and deeper into the state of being in God of being with God but Tilden was one of the first Sufis to really to talk about that but at the same time he practiced self-mortification but he knew the supremacy of love he was also a lover so we remember they may talk about austerities that may be practices to help you to get rid of the ego of the little self of what the Sufis called the nafs the lower self but he wanted to have birthright there is a legend that when he died there was seen written in green on his brow this is the friend of God he died in the love of God this is the slain of God by the sword of God he's a friend of God he died in the love of God it is about love you know those of you who have already been in love in a human experience know that it is not easy you give yourself in ways you never thought to give yourself you become vulnerable in ways you never thought you would become vulnerable and that is like the Sufis say that is like playing with dolls compared to the real love affair the love affair that takes place within your own heart this passion with God and that's what Sufis have written about mainly yes there are techniques for deepening this love for living this love but these are the tears they have cried this is the ecstasy they have experienced this friend of God died in the love of God so although the early Sufi Saints regarded renunciation of everything other than God as the most important quality on the Wayfarer it was become more and more stressed that the love for God is primary and there is this beautiful saying by a great great Sufi saint beyazid bastami in the 9th century he was one of those incredibly intoxicated mystics will go into a state of trance a state of intoxication and then he he said these things like under this cloak there is only God because he was so much merged so much immersed in God there was just God there was just that presence that I mean there is only God but to live it in full consciousness that is something else maybe I should just dress that there is only God that can never be anything other than God otherwise there would be - there would be God and not God there would be - and God is one everything is God everything here is God you are God the carpet is God the air is God there is nothing other than God and it's easy to say those words but to live it in full consciousness to be in that state where there is only God that is the full consciousness of divine union but he said that what really matters is not even our love for God but God's love for us remember I talked about the two seas and the one human seas are longing for God but the divine sea is his love for us and that is something that is covered over so much I don't know why I don't know why it's something that you have to fight for that you have to cry for that you have to to spill blood for because it is in a way the most prime everything is not you're longing for God but God's longing for you God's love for you that is in a way the stamp of existence everything is created out of love everything is an outpouring of love if you knew how much love flows into creation every moment you wouldn't even bother to look for love you would just be there you know open your mouth wide and drink it down everything is made of love every moment everything is remade with love again and again and again but it it took beyazid bastami a long time to realize this at the beginning I was mistaken in four respects I concerned myself to remember God to know him to love him and to seek Him when I had come to the end I saw that he had remembered me before I remembered him that his knowledge of me had preceded my knowledge of him that his love towards me had existed before my love to him and he had sought me before I sought him so that is the the divine ocean which is God's mystery that we are at this place where God's mystery is experienced and we can be that place consciously where his mystery is experienced everything is that place where his mystery is experienced unconsciously unknowing everything is that moment of divine revelation but we can be that place where it is conscious where we know it we come alive through his love and also by as it realized that rather than renunciation of the outer world as in the early very very austere mystics it is the renunciation of the nafs of the ego of our lower self that matters God spoke to him what does thou desire and beyazid replied I desire thee and God said until the remains even one particle of báez Ignis in thee that desire cannot be fulfilled so out of these early mystics that came this great understanding there is this divine love there is this outpouring of divine love but then there is what we call the ego that veils us from it that gets in the way and that rather than trying to renounce the outer world out of poverty what matters is what the Sufis call the poverty of the heart this stepping aside from oneself this fanaa this annihilation of the ego of the of what you think you are and and that is if there is any work on the path and it's difficult because a love affair is not really about work but there is an effort yes and the effort is to be allowed to allow yourself to be stripped bare to be taken back to the essence to have all of those images of yourself of what you think you are fall away this is Fanaa and Sufis have written a lot about this and there are techniques to help you to let that happen to allow yourself to be stripped bare so so there is no I anymore that gets in the way this I who you think you are it is a there is a science if you like of losing yourself and Sufism has for over a thousand years developed that science as your contribution yes you will have to learn how to live this love affair but you also have to learn how to let go of yourself how to become nothing how to become zero how to go through this process of for now and that is the part of the science of Sufism why they why they attach so much importance to psychology from very very early on how can you lose yourself how can you let yourself go how can you learn to be lost in love now by is it was completely intoxicated with God and maybe I should say that in Sufism there have been there are two paths there is the path of intoxication and the path of sobriety because there are ways to get completely drunk with love of God completely you you are you're completely completely drunk you were intoxicated you forget yourself you don't know who you are you don't know where you are you were just completely in love it is I guess most of us have been drunk on what they call alcohol at some point in their lives but this is heightened form of drunkenness it is divine intoxication you are just lost in the presence of God you don't know if you don't know who you are you don't know where are you I don't know what day of the week it is it doesn't matter mostly at the beginning you can only bear it for a few minutes because it is so potent it is like I always say it is like hundred proof alcohol it it does strange things to be all to your mind you actually have to train the mind to bear intoxication now there are there is one path of Sufism that says you just get more and more intoxicated you lose yourself more and more in that drunken state of being with God you wonder you don't care if you don't have a home if you don't have any clothes you don't have any possessions it doesn't matter who cares about things like that when you are lost in God and then there is the other path which is called sobriety that says that's all very well but you have to be able to come back to put your feet on the ground to get up in the morning to take the kids to school to go to the office that actually one should be able to bear those deep states while living an ordinary outer life and I should just mention that one of the great proponents of this was the 9th century Sufi master Junaid and Baghdad it's just worth remembering that it was over a thousand years ago that there was this extraordinary flowering of Sufism in the Middle East that Baghdad was a spiritual center of the world this was before Genghis Khan's armies destroyed Baghdad in the 13th century and it was these incredible Sufi masters were all there in Baghdad and there was this deep understanding of how to live divine love of the science of love which is also a science of the human being of the real human being there was this incredible understanding of the depths of a human being and how to live in those depths and how both to be intoxicated and also to have your feet on the ground and then in the midst of that there was this great mystic al-hallaj who actually Junaid criticized he even threw him out of his meditation group for being too ecstatic because Jenek out large said what had never been said before in public I am he whom I love and he whom I love is me this great secret of Sufism that we are one with God but we are God we are one there is never too and never was too than ever was me and God an illusion this was the great secret of Sufism which is why Sufis are called the people of the secret al-hallaj this mystic lived it and spoke about it in the marketplace and AHA I am the truth which is always known by the mystic that we are one with God you neo Mystica that state which every mystical path takes you to to realize that you are one with God this moment in your consciousness when the whole consciousness of yourself breaks apart to reveal what is in the core of everything and what is in the core of your own consciousness that you are one with God doesn't matter what path you follow they all take you to that place of divine oneness that seed from which everything grew that is why even in our human experiences we long for that oneness we try to meet somebody who we can merge with whom we can become lost in and the physical sexuality there is this experience for a moment of meeting and merging and this ecstasy of oneness that lasts just a few seconds but for the mystic of course it becomes a conscious state but that has always been the secret until that time in Baghdad when this crazy mystic al-hallaj stood in the marketplace and of course he was crucified for it he spent 11 years in prison and then he was crucified and he is afterwards been known as the martyr of lovers he is in a way for the Sufi the one who made the secret of divine love public before you could never talk in public like this about that mystical secret it was heresy God is God human beings are separate they are other and Sufism held for those early centuries as a secret only sharing it with initiates in closed rooms Junaid when the greatest Sufis of all time only ever had 20 disciples at a time because he would not share it in public he said this is too easy so Terry this is too secret ever to be spoken about except in the close circle of initiates and suddenly it was broken open by al-hallaj who was prepared to give his blood for it who was prepared to be killed in public for it to suffer this horrible experience it was actually a very moving story about on his way to the crucifixion he had to his crucifixion he was being taken through the streets and he was a very deep optimistic he'd spent 11 years in jail and he was in a very very deep state and there is a deep mystical state that you can go into where the physical world doesn't touch you anymore and people were throwing stones at him as he was going by and nothing hurt him because he was in communion with God completely lost to this world and he had a dear friend who was called Shipley Shibley was also a great Sufi master and Shibley was on the balcony looking at how a large going by and while everybody else threw stones at him Shibley threw a and when the rows touch talha lodges skin how halal looked up and sociably looking down at him and he said why did you do that because you threw it with laughs and it touched me with love it brought me back to this world and now I have to suffer everything in full consciousness so that was a moment in which this mystical secret of love broke out of this closed space and you know what centuries later that Rumi said one should go gladly to the gallows like our collage one should live the mystery of dying through love like a hollow but underneath it there is this oneness that belongs to love and I told you this is the place where the two seas meet this is the place of kidder this is the place where the dead fish becomes alive this is Sufism and in that place where the two seas meet there is only one less there is nothing other than oneness that never can be anything other than oneness there is a divine world and there is the human world and there is this place within the heart where it comes together where everything is one it always was one that it always will be one except there is no time there there is only the moment and that is really what it means to be a Sufi is to live that mystery of divine oneness I am he whom I loved and he whom I love is I if thou seest me thou seest him and if thou seest him that seus us both of course there have been many many other great Saints that have followed that have lived that calling to laugh that stamp of laughter we now call Sufism and slowly of these great luminaries developed groups around them and these groups became Sufi orders and now we have all these different Sufi orders for example Sufi order that formed around Rumi the Mevlevi and the practice is that a taught in the different ways to live that love to walk this path we call Sufism which is not really a part that is a way to be with God it is a way to love God and to love be loved by God but I think you know here whatever it is over a thousand years later it is helpful to remember how it began there was no organization there never is a hierarchy there is there were just these people who were called to love God and who lived there loving for God some spoke about it Rabia just wrote a few poems and Rumi wrote hundreds of poems but they were just people who lived there loving for God who uncovered the secret of what it really means to be a human being and that is the heritage we have been given and sometimes it's important to go back we are so easily caught up in all of the forms all of the the elaborations of it all and just like if you live your own calling there is this cry in the heart that is all Sufism was at first heartache it is your heartache it is your desire to know the secret of what it means to be a human being which is we have one with God it was always like that and that is this history of Sufism that is this stamp that is this gift of humanity of those who lived and died there longing for God that truth

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Keywords: Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Sufism, Sufi, mysticism, dark night of the soul

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Length: 26min 10sec (1570 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2016