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INTRODUCTION
"In the Mohammedan world the Süfi sect and various darvish bodies are the possessors of the mystical tradition. The Sufis have existed in Persia from the earliest times, and as their pantheism is so much at variance wi.h the hot and rigid monotheism of the Arab mind it has been suggested that Sufism must have been inoculated into Islam by Hipdu influences."
Quoting Sir William Jones, Brown the learned author of "The Darvishes' gives the fundamental tenets of the Sufis as follows:
"Their (Süfi's) fundamental tenets are, that nothing exists absolutely but God; that the human soul is an emanation from His essence, and though divided for a time from its heavenly source, will be finally reunited with it; that the highest possible happiness will arise from its reunion, and that the chief good of mankind in this transitory world consists in as perfect ap union with the Eternal Spirit as the incumbrances of a mortal frame will allow; that, for this purpose, they should break all connection (or taälluk, as they call it) with extrinsick objects, and pass through life without attachments, as a swimmer in the ocean strikes freely without the impediment of clothes."
Al-ghazzali a Persian philosopher and theologist, who flourished in the eleventh century, and ranks as one of the greatest doctor of the Moslem Church, says in his auto-biography as quoted by Prof. William James:"The Science of the Sūsis aims at detaching the heart from all that is not God, and at giving to it for sole occupation the meditation of the divine being. Theory being more easy for me than practice, I read (certain books) until I understood all that can be learned by study and hearsay. Then I recognized that what pertains most exclusively to their method is just what no study can grasp, but only transport, ecstasy, and the transformation of the soul. How great, for example, is the difference between koowing the definitions of health, of satiety, with their causes and conditions and being really healthy or filled ...
The first condition for a Süfi is to purge his heart entirely of all that is not God. The next key of the contemplative life consists in the humble prayers which escape from the fervent soul, and in the meditations on God in which the heart is swallowed up entirely. But in reality this is only the beginning of the Sufi life, the end of Sufism being total absorption in God. The intuitions and all that precede are, so to speak, only the threshold for those who enter. ... The transport which one attains by the method of the Sufis is like an immediate perception, as if one touched the objects with one's hand."
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