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Sufism is primarily an oral tradition, and is based on experience,
not on concepts or precepts, nor on external rules, or regulations.
Nonetheless, there is a very large, and very rich, body of written
material that can be used to compliment individual experience, meditation,
and spiritual practice.
What must be remembered is that written material is primarily
for the Mind. Written material, and the thinking that it engenders,
by themselves, can never lead to Realization, no matter how
lofty or transcendent the thoughts or ideas, because Mind is concerned
with distinctions and differences, which are rooted in the realm
of duality.
Realization, or Enlightenment, arises out of the Experience of
Unity, (not out of thinking about Unity, no matter how deep and
profound that thinking might be), and this is an experience of the
Awakened Heart, which is beyond the dualisms of Mind, of distinctions
and differences, of Names and Forms, beyond thoughts, concepts,
and ideas, beyond the sphere of the individual nafs (ego),
beyond the mind-mesh as Murshid SAM often called it.
The following selection from Hazrat Inayat Khan's
Bowl of Saki, with Murshid SAM's accompanying
commentary touches on the natures of Heart and Mind.
The wave
is the sea itself; yet when it rises in the form of a wave, it
is the wave, and when you look at the whole of it, it is the sea.
Soul,
forming a center in the Universal Light, produces heart. In heart,
soul sees directly, thus producing Universal Intelligence. But
as God has produced matter outside the realm of absolute intelligence
yet impregnated it with Universal Intelligence, the soul—to
experience it—must produce a vehicle capable of apprehending
it. So the Light-Intelligence is agitated and the waves on its
surface produce mind.
Mind
being made up of coarser vibrations than heart can look directly
upon matter and see it as matter. Heart may perceive matter, but
would not distinguish matter from spirit, because heart does
not distinguish. So mind sees all these differences, but
when one wishes to look beyond the differences, one must see with
the heart.
When
one further wishes to become that which one sees, one enters
upon the soul-life. Then sight, seer and seen are all one.
(From
The Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan,
with Commentary by Murshid Samuel Lewis,
entry for Nov 21)
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