Tariq Ramadan – Mysticism and Sufism Podcast#10 Looking at the world
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Hello.
Easy with you.
The notion that I want to tackle in
this,
podcast
today is the notion of mysticism
and in the islamic tradition sufism.
I think it's important as an introduction to
get
a deep
knowledge or understanding of what this
notion
means from within the spiritual traditions,
the Jewish, the Christian and the Muslim traditions,
and to get an understanding of what we
have to
understand
out of this
notion and to get
a better understanding of different steps and different
levels. Because this is a notion which has
multiple
meanings, and and it's important to get an
overall understanding of this. And then we can
talk about
the objectives and the means and the obstacles
and also the conditions. So the 4 pillars
that I want to tackle in this podcast
today are important. Let me start with an
understanding of what do we mean when we
speak about mysticism.
Mainly it's a Greek
notion and there are 3
notions that we have within it,
that are important. The first has to do
with
mystery.
That it's
the link that we find between us as
human being
and mystery and the
mysterious dimension
of
our knowledge. So it's the connection between us
and the unknown
that is important here. This is the first
notion. It has to do with how do
we get the knowledge of what is behind
the veil. It's what is mysterious
in our
life and in our understanding
of the world around us. So, it's to
go beyond what is apparent
and
what is visible to get the invisible, to
get
the what is hidden
behind the visible
dimension of light. The second notion
that we find in
mysticism
and in the Greek
etymology
has to do with
teaching, it has to do with knowing, it
has to do with a learning process.
So it's how do we get this knowledge,
how do we try to learn about
this dimension as human being, and,
in which way we have to deal with
these
teachings and this
knowledge, which is not the superficial knowledge that
we can find through rationality.
It's to go beyond rationality. Even we can
say it's to go
towards this
knowledge that is part of
the knowledge coming from our heart. It's
the knowledge of the invisible that we can
reach through our heart
beyond our rationality.
So, it's not the knowledge of the order
in an objective way, it's the knowledge of
the essence, of the very essence of life
and things. And this
essence we can reach, we can get, we
can find through a process where we are
training our heart and getting
a knowledge which has to do with
something which is veiled in our daily life.
So this is the the second dimension.
The third here,
it's also
to get a sense that
when we go towards
this knowledge, when we try to get the
essence, that what is veiled, what is beyond
the visible,
we have 2 things. As I said, first
is mystery, is the mysterious
side of our life. It has to do
with,
teaching, but it also has to do with
God. It has to do with how do
we get,
this knowledge of the transcendent, of the divine.
And what is said in the mystical traditions
is, you can get the knowledge of God
through the knowledge of the self.
So, in order to come close to God,
you have first to come close to yourself.
It's to go beyond your
superficial
consciousness,
to get this deep conscience of who you
are.
In other way,
in other words, what we have here is
yes of course I know,
I think and you know the Descartes
way of putting it
I think
so I am.
This I think is the superficial
understanding
of me being here through my rationality.
But the mystical question is not
only I am
who is
the I
that is there?
Who am I
who can say I am?
So,
in other words, what we need to get
here is this deep understanding of what it
means to be and what it means to
get the sense of this
self that is
deeper and and and and far
deeper in us than this
superficial consciousness
that we have here when we we come
to this understanding, to the point that the
the the very question that I have when
I'm I'm talking,
in mystical terms, in the way I have
to deal with
mysticism is what do I really want?
What myself
is,
here for?
And how do I am I going to
achieve
this
very understanding of my essence and my the
very essence of of my life
and who I am in this life.
So, we go beyond this
superficial
consciousness
and we try to get a sense of
what is
veiled for our consciousness
and what is beyond the visible.
And in order to come close to God,
to understand that I have to come first
close to myself,
I have to
deepen the knowledge of the self in order
to come closer to the knowledge of the
divine.
This is something which
is essential in all the mystical different
understand
different understandings even about the the very meaning
of Sufis where some were talking about you
know it comes from Sufis, the way they
were dressed in a very poor way because
they were
avoiding the world, refusing to be part of
the world
and dress in very very modest way in
order to put the essential. The essential was
the knowledge of God
beyond anything which is
uh-uh richness and and and and power in
this world. So to be powerless,
in this world in order to come close
to God's power
in this life, during this quest for
this,
proxy.
Part of, the way people are saying, oh,
Sufism is coming from different you know, I
think that we had
7 to 8 different
origins for
for the way Sufism is understood and in
the way we are dealing with this notion.
Having said that,
the essence of everything here is very much
about, you know,
try to learn about yourself,
try to learn about who you are, the
deep essence of your being and through this
process
of trying to get this knowledge, you go
through the
unveiled
process, which is the El Kesh, which is
I'm trying to unveil the very truth, the
light
behind the light, the light beyond the light
that I can see with my rationality. And
you know,
reason is perceived as light. But the light
that we find in your heart, the light
that you are going towards when it comes
to come close to the light, which is
one of the names of God is light
upon light, then I'm trying to get this
understanding
with my heart, through my heart to come
close to God.
So this
knowledge that we get out of this process
is part of
what it's all about when it comes to
mysticism, when it comes to Sufis.
So having said that, and you see it's
a long introduction with multiple dimensions that we
have to get here,
there is something that we have to solve.
The first pillar of this is the objectives.
What do we want to achieve by doing
this? And here what we need to get
is the ultimate objective of this process, the
learning process to go towards the
invisible,
our soul, the the the hidden
dimension of this knowledge
is
to come close to God and to come
close to it the oneness of God in
the Islamic tradition, but also the presence of
God
Jewish tradition, which is part of okay, to
come close to this I need to get
this understanding of the self. And 3, this
is going to be done through
different,
steps and levels
and states. And we have this in the
Islamic tradition. Al Mu'artef is the the the
different stations that we have to go through,
Merateib is the different levels and Al Ahuah
the different states,
the different states that you have to go
through. And you need to get a sense
of this
step by step
process. So
in order to follow the way, this initiation,
this getting
the
mysterious knowledge, getting the
esoteric knowledge, the the knowledge of of the
inside, which is known also as the gnosis.
The gnosis is the the the knowledge of
of God, the knowledge of the Self, the
knowledge of
what is invisible for our rationality,
the spiritual knowledge that we get out of
this process
is and we need to go through steps
and it's a step by step process and
for this it's the only way for our
for us to deepen our knowledge. Having said
that, we also,
with this knowledge need to to get you
know step by step and it takes time
to be initiated
to this is that,
we are acquiring knowledge and
with this knowledge we are adding knowledge to
knowledge. So how are we going to do
this? And there are many many different ways
that the the scholars and the Sufi and
the the mystics were talking about is coming
back to the self. It's to go through
patience and to nurture
patience in ourselves. It's also mastering ourselves. It's
also something which is
this self consciousness that it's very important about
okay who am I am trying to do
with my life. It's
adding knowledge to knowledge and this process of,
coming back to the self, getting
more knowledge out of our
patient way of dealing with ourselves,
looking at who we are,
going through this
self consciousness,
going through this
way of dealing with who am I, what
am I doing, it's something which is part
of everything. And then
part of this
the the ultimate
objective and within which we have objectives, which
is trying to get
at different levels just to
progress in the process
to get more knowledge and to add,
and to go from one state to another
state, went from one station to another station,
from one level to another level, which is
also always going higher.
At the same time, we have to acknowledge
the fact that sometimes we can just regress.
We can just we are moving forward, but
sometimes we are moving back. And we need
to get this,
right in our way of dealing with
this process that even
sometimes the only fact that we are regressing,
that we are moving back, it's in itself
part of our
progression,
part of
our process of getting more knowledge.
So the fact remember what Mandela
was,
saying, and this is something which is part
of a a Sufi tradition as well or
a mystical traditional as well as well. In
this type, I never lose.
Either I win or I learn. That's exactly
it. You you you you win, meaning that
you are getting knowledge. And when you are
having this feeling that, oh, I'm regressing, I'm
coming back to, oh, it's it's
worse than what it was before. I'm regressing.
And this is you learn. And through this
process, you get something which is essential
as part of this
teaching and this knowledge that we are acquiring.
It's the very essence of humility. Because when
you regress, when you
fall, when you just move,
back to something which is, oh, that it's
as if I'm not I'm not progressing.
This very, very feeling, this very, very,
deep reality of you,
facing obstacles and sometimes not knowing where you
are,
it's teaching you humility. And humility, it's part
of the whole process as an objective. You
cannot come close to God
and to yourself
if you don't get
this deep understanding,
this deep feeling, this deep experience
of humility
in the way you deal with your own
knowledge. So it's not up to you knowing
that when you you understand that
you cannot do it yourself, that you need
God in order to come close to God,
this is the very essence
of this initiation that we are talking about
in the mystical tradition. Now having said this
about the objectives that I've come to the
second pillar and the second pillar has to
do with the means. And when we deal
with the means, it's important here,
to to get them
all together.
So here we have 7 means and and
you see 7 means,
uh-uh, 5 obstacles
and and 7 conditions. These are all
symbolic numbers that we have to remember that
we can find
with
with the work of, in the work of
some scholars and and and and and Sufi
that are well known from the the the
the the Rumi tradition
but also Junaid,
also
in Harpa and in Skandiri and others that
are part of this. And, of course, Abuhamid
el Ghazali
was talking about this. The first
means that we have is
study, to study. It has to do with
a learning process to get to the substance.
As I was saying, it's not only to
get the knowledge of what is visible to
our rationality,
it's to get the knowledge of what is
invisible with our heart, with the light of
our heart,
meaning that here we have to come back
to the knowledge of the self. It's to
take time. It's to care about yourself. It's
to take care of yourself in the way
you look at yourself and to you take
time to get a deep,
knowledge. But to go through this study of
the self,
to go to this knowledge of the self,
there is something which is essential here, which
is,
in a position with the consumer
society that we are living in. In this
consumer society, you are told do whatever you
want and just go and follow your,
patience and
and and your desires and this is this
is freedom. Here it's exactly the opposite is
you have to be disciplined with yourself, disciplined
in the rituals that you are following. So
this is why the mystical traditions are very
much connected to religiosity
with religions, with all the rituals.
It's because religions are helping you to be
disciplined
that you are going to get this way
of dealing with this
process, this initiation
to get a deeper understanding
of yourself and of the world and then
trying to reach and to come close to
God.
So this is something which is part of,
this process. The second means is
a vik, is, remembrance.
And this is so essential because we are
human beings just very quick to forget
the the the repetition and to try to
remember the essence of life and the essence
of our presence is something which is important.
Remember that the Abu Hamid al Ghazali was
saying in order just to
change your own nature, you have to repeat.
So the fact that you repeat the name
of God, the fact that you repeat supplications,
the fact that you repeat prayers,
it's helping your mind to change your nature,
the very nature of human being. And if
you look at what is said today
in neurosciences,
it's something which is
very very interesting. In fact, the way your
our brain,
is functioning is by the fact that you
are repeating, by the fact that you are,
getting
something that you repeat in your life.
It's you
give to your
brain, you give to yourself a second nature,
you take something which is helping you to
reach a level of,
changing,
transforming,
the self, transforming
your very nature.
So when you work on your brain by
repeating,
you work on yourself
by deepening
this knowledge, deepening this way of dealing with
the invisible.
You change,
in a way, your very nature
by repeating. So
repetition
could appear rationally as something which is not
deep. But spiritually,
repetition
means
deepening
the very
connection that you have with the invisible,
with yourself and with God.
The third means that you have is contemplation
and this is
also has to do with meditation
that you meditate, you contemplate the world around
you, the creation, the beauty. Contemplation
of the beauty around you is helping you
to get to the beauty
within yourself.
Beauty is essential, aesthetics is essential to the
mystical tradition
and the contemplation of what is there, it's
something which is
so important. Having said that, with contemplation there
is a state which is strange.
Sometimes we don't get that but it's an
essential
teaching in the mystical tradition is acceptation.
Is the fact that you accept
what is the natural order, to the point
that in the Jewish tradition
at the very beginning there was a sense
that when you will,
when you want what
is around you, when you will
merge with the will of God in the
way He created the world. This is where
you get the true you get true freedom.
That's very important. When we think that
my freedom is to do what I want,
the mystical tradition is saying go beyond what
you want and try
to
mirror the very order of the world to
the point that your will is mirroring
God's will. And when this happens,
when this is possible, this is what you
get true freedom because you free yourself
from the superficial
will of your ego to come to the
essential will of the self, of what is
the light I would say the light in
yourself
mirroring the light around you.
So, acceptation is the fact that you accept
that, the fact that you surrender
to what is around you and the order
that is wrong, not to the point that
you accept injustice. No, you surrender to beauty,
you surrender to order, you surrender to his
will, but his will is telling you if
you are facing injustice you have to stand
up. It's not to surrender to injustice, it's
to surrender to his justice in order to
resist
human injustices,
if you are facing it. The third means
here has to do with generosity. It's also
to give from who you are and what
you have. This generosity
is part of means through which you get
the knowledge of the self because this is
where you can see the limits of what
you are able to give and what you
can give and when you cannot give that
you are not willing to give. It's part
of this
ongoing process where you deal with yourself and
you go beyond
who you are by giving
from who you are and what you have.
The 6th one is solidarity. And solidarity is
not only solidarity towards your fellow human beings,
it's solidarity with the world, it's solidarity with
the creation,
it's solidarity with life around you. And it's
life that nature is a
living presence, it's life in itself,
the species around you and human beings of
course. But this kind of solidarity
with life,
in the name of the one who created
life, it's essential as part of this process.
And I and the last one has to
do with sacrifice.
If are you able to get out of
your comfort zone to just to sacrifice
from what you have and who you are,
in order
to to be a witness of what you
believe in? This sense has to do also
with courage. Courage is essential here because at
one point in the name of God, in
the name of your love to God,
towards God and the love that you have
for his,
creation, you are ready to stand up and
to understand that your ego is not the
most important thing in the world, that your
presence is not essential. If your presence
is accepting
injustices,
is accepting
the non acceptable. So it means that there
is a problem with your presence. So to
be able
to be
part of this
harmonious
creation you also need to get a sense
of okay, I should be able to experience
sacrifice
and,
to give and to give more from who
I am in order to be better
myself.
Now,
these are essential,
means that you have to deal with and,
of course, we are dealing with obstacles.
And I would just mention here quite quickly
5 main principles
that,
are on our way when we are following
this initiation
we need to deal with. The first one
of course is the ego. It's arrogance is
when I am I the the the eye
is taking so much space in the way
you look at the world that we end
up being arrogant.
The second has to do with,
passions and and desires and and even hatred.
And you know that in the Quran,
Don't let this hatred towards people. Even you
can be at war with people, but don't
let the hatred of what they are doing,
push you,
to be injust.
So you need to master your patience, you
need to master your desire in order to
be just and to
be disciplined,
so to speak as we said before.
So this is part of the obstacles. So
of course power and this love for power
is something which could be
an obstacle because
the opposite of surrender to God you are
just trying to get some power in this
world and power corrupts
as you know.
Always if you are not disciplined with yourself
the ego is going to take over.
And
money also it's important because money is all
about having, it's all about what we have
and this could
interfere, this could
paint. This could destroy the very essence of
this
way of getting the knowledge of the self.
So you are so much loving
what you have that you end up not
knowing who you are. That's also part of
the obstacles. And
among the obstacles there is something which is
important is the people around you, the companions
that you have, the friends that you have.
Tell me who you love and I will
tell you who who you are. Tell me
about your friends, I will tell you who
you are. Friendship it's important here, so you
need to get
this companionship,
the the people around us helping us to
come to the self and not remain at
the
surface, at the at the periphery of who
you we are.
So that's also something which is essential obstacles
in our way towards
this knowledge of the self and the knowledge
of God. Let me end with the conditions
here that are necessary in in this process
that we find in all the mystical traditions:
the Jewish, the Christian and the Islamic traditions,
in the Sufi tradition, but
also I would say in the Buddhist tradition
when it comes to how do we deal
with ourselves.
So, there is here something which is
essential
and especially in the
monotheistic tradition is faith.
So, faith
it's
essential because this faith that you have in
God and the the trust that you have
in him helping you to go through this
process, understanding that during this process you need
him to come close to him, and if
you are, let alone, you are going to
be lost in the whole process. So faith
is important with trust. Trusting him, it's the
wakkul halalah, it's essential.
The second, as I said,
it's discipline that you cannot just say, oh,
I trust him and that's it. We have
to be disciplined in the way you deal
with him, in the way you, pray, in
the way you remember, in the pray, in
the way you deal with day and night,
in the way you deal with time, in
the way you deal with space,
discipline is essential and it's a way,
paradoxically,
it's a way to get freedom.
In fact, if you think that it's without
discipline that you get freedom, you don't get
it. Discipline is the only human way to
reach true and deep freedom in the way
you are with yourself and the way you
are with the world.
So having said this, we have to this
as one of the condition is repetition because
part of the, the, discipline is to repeat
and to repeat and to repeat in order
to transform yourself,
to change your nature, which is a nature
that could forget quickly, to a nature that
is
now
accustomed,
now trained to remember in a way which
is a second nature.
The third,
so the first one is face. The second
is discipline. The third is repetition.
The 4th is patience. And as I said,
Those people, they like everything, which is going
very fast. But in this process of the
knowledge of the self, you have to be
patient. You have to rely on him. You
have to rely on your own work. You
need to go through steps. You don't you
cannot go too fast. You have to go
through steps that are
determined and they are sometimes very long and
sometimes you will go,
back. You will move,
back, you will fall and you need to
get this as part of
this patience,
a sobriety which is part of
the process
getting what the 5th
condition, which is humility. You have to be
humble and to rely on Him
and to remember
that you're asking God to help you,
to,
go through the process, to be patient enough,
to repeat what should be repeated, to be
disciplined with our own self and to deepen
your faith. So,
humility
is,
is essential.
With humility courage it's also important and once
again if you are trying to come back
to yourself,
to get rid of what is superficial in
your life, You also have to face in
the world injustices,
despoties,
lies and corrupt people. You need to be
quite clear that as much as you refuse
to be part of a world where superficiality
and injustice and lack of solidarity
is the rule. You need to come with
a
presence in the world which is remembering,
reminding, I would say, the people of what
is right. And it takes courage, courage with
your own self,
courage with,
when you deal with your ego you should
be ready to lose,
what you have in order to respect who
you are. You should be ready to lose
what you have in order to keep this
respect
and the self respect of who you are.
So courage it's important. And the last one
which is part of the whole thing, which
is the envelope of everything, which is the
essence of everything, which is the light of
everything is love.
It's to this
through this process of getting this knowledge. It's
the knowledge of God. It's based on what?
What is the secret of
El Airefel? What is the secret of Al
Ma'arefel Ma'arefatullah?
It's to love him in order to be
loved by him and knowing that when He
loves you,
it irrigates around you. So the secret of
the whole process in the mystical tradition
is loving God and hoping and trying to
be loved by Him and hoping that this
process, this discipline is going to come close
to His love in order to spread around
love. This is what we have to do
at the end of the day. Our presence
everywhere should be in the name of His
love, to be an agent of love in
the world,
loving his creation,
loving his,
the human beings, loving what is good, promoting
what is good. And in the name of
this love to hate what is bad,
to detest what is bad, and to resist
what is bad. This is part of the
whole process, which is what we are trying
to reach when we are,
involved in this
tradition, this way of coming close to God
by getting a better knowledge of ourselves.
May Allah help us to follow this path
and remember, don't forget to tell the people
you love, that you love them, life is
fragile,
and,
peace be with you.
And
I would say here
that, with this piece it's important to remember
the
7 conditions
that are important for us to try to
be dignified
and to be courageous enough
to come close to him
and to get his love and to spread
love around us. Peace be with you.