The Sufi Way Quotes

The Sufi way of thinking is particularly appropriate in a world of mass communication, when every effort is directed towards making people believe that they want or need certain things; that they should believe certain things; that they should as a consequence do certain things that their manipulators want them to do. ~ Idries Shah

Precious child, what is the meaning of the saying,
"We must die before death?"
It means we must make all the evil qualities,
all the qualities of satan within us, die before our death.
If those qualities die, then the world within us dies.
And if the world within us dies, then all the sins,
ghosts, demons, and satan's contained within it also die.
The desire for earth, gold, and sexual pleasure
all die along with the world within us.
All that is left is Allah and His power (quadrat).
If all the evil qualities die within us,
then we die before death
and only Allah's qualities, actions and conduct will remain.
Then there will be no death for us.
We will have attained eternal life (hayat).
If we attain eternal life, where will we live?
We will live in heaven, in God's kingdom.

To Die Before Death: The Sufi Way of Life- pg. 116-117 ~ Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.
The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this. ~ Idries Shah

People talk of the Sufi way. Wrong. If there is a way, it's not Sufism. ~ Art Hochberg

Hammered into the Heart

In the Sufi tradition light and knowledge are reflected from heart to heart. The heart is the organ of the higher consciousness - the consciousness of the Self. Spiritual teachings can be reflected or impressed directly into the heart, bypassing the limitations of the mind. . . . A further part of the Sufi training is to bring the mind into the heart, the mind 'hammered into the heart' as the Sufis say, so that the teachings given to the heart can be assimilated into everyday consciousness. A mind that has been brought into the heart can understand the ways of oneness, which are often paradoxical, sometimes even nonsensical, to the rational self. ~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

A yellow dog is brother to the jackal. ~ Idries Shah

Light up the fire of love inside and blaze the thoughts away. ~ Rumi

When I am gone,
break the night.
Set my remains on fire,
so I can still be your light.
For I am forever indebted to you.
O people of the world,
O love,
I am eternally yours. ~ Kamand Kojouri

Why am I seeking? I am the same as he. His essence speaks through me. I have been looking for myself ~ Rumi

The person who is in tune with the Universe becomes like a radio receiver, through which the voice of the Universe is transmitted. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Sufis teach that we first must battle and destroy the evil within ourselves by shining upon it the good within, and then we learn to battle the evil in others by helping their higher selves gain control of their lower selves. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf

He who is fortunately enlightened [the Sufi]
Knows that sophistry is from the devil and love from Adam. ~ Idries Shah

Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends upon how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more - more unseen forms become manifest to him. ~ Rumi

Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened. ~ Idries Shah

The Sufi lovers of the Beloved tell us badly that we must, for our own sakes, always keep on our knees before the majesty of God and always dare to keep up in our hearts a constant stream of longing for the Beloved, however painful that might sometimes be. Without humility, revelation itself can be a source of ignorance because it makes its receiver vain. Longing is both the anguish that burns away the veils of separation between the soul and God and the thread that guides us deeper and deeper within ourselves to where love is waiting, always, to take us further into its mystery. ~ Andrew Harvey

Sleep is a mirror of life in which can be seen the reflection of death. ~ Wasif Ali Wasif

Ignorance is the Mother of Opposition ~ Idries Shah

Sufi, the magus's camel,
was a remarkable mammal,
as at home in a busy bazaar
as alone on a dune with a star. ~ John Biccard

Without hope, death is merely the doorway to darkness. An oblivion from which none returns. With hope, death becomes the gateway to everlasting light, an illumination of the sensorium - Huja ~ Rehan Khan

The Sufi saint Rabi'a Al-Adawiyya was seen carrying a firebrand and a jug of water - the firebrand to burn Paradise, the jug of water to drown Hell ...
So that both veils disappear, and God's followers worship, not out of hope for reward, nor fear of punishment, but out of love. ~ Craig Thompson

Careful preparation is necessary before people can perceive something which is there all the time. ~ Idries Shah

Of all the things we share, the most central is not in the liturgical or theological or canonical dimensions of the religion. It is in the realm of our personal​ search and experience of God.
I have danced in a Sufi fikre, sat for hours in a Zen Buddhist tea ceremony, been part of a Hindu puja, attended Shabbat services in multiple Jewish synagogues, and never, in any of those moments of worship, did I doubt these people were just as deeply involved in the search for God as I am. And that God was with us all.

And why not?

God is everywhere, they told us as children. But the question never goes away: Yes, but - where is God for me? I don't feel God. I don't hear God. I don't know how to know God. So God is surely in all these other places where the consciousness of God is also real, as well. But as much as I knew, even as a child, that it had to be true, that God was everywhere, still God was nowhere in particular in life. And, though I did not know it at the time, and so struggled through the thought of god for night after night in life, in that reality was all I needed to know about the search for God.

It was years, of course, before I realized that I was looking for Something rather than for Everything, and so I found nothing because I was looking for the wrong thing. And that is the kind of seeking that causes all the pain. ~ Joan Chittister,

Water splashes and runs in a film across the glass floor suspended above the mosaics. The Hacı Kadın hamam is a typical post-Union fusion of architectures; Ottoman domes and niches built over some forgotten Byzantine palace, years and decades of trash blinding, gagging, burying the angel-eyed Greek faces in the mosaic floor; century upon century. That haunted face was only exposed to the light again when the builders tore down the cheap apartment blocks and discovered a wonder. But Istanbul is wonder upon wonder, sedimented wonder, metamorphic cross-bedded wonder. You can't plant a row of beans without turning up some saint or Sufi. At some point every country realizes it must eat its history. Romans ate Greeks, Byzantines ate Romans, Ottomans ate Byzantines, Turks ate Ottomans. The EU eats everything. Again, the splash and run as Ferid Bey scoops warm water in a bronze bowl from the marble basin and pours it over his head. ~ Ian McDonald

The Sufi saying has it: God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings! ~ Idries Shah

Some linguists say that the word Allah is based on the word waliha, which translates to a love that is so passionate and ecstatic that it completely transcends the senses. This implies that to know God we have to surrender our minds, everything we are, and everything we know in exchange for love, because self-surrender to divine love is the only path to God. ~ A. Helwa

…The heavens could not bear my debt
And wrote me as a madman in my fate.
But lovers bled their hearts
And on the face of the Beloved
Did a beauty spot create.

The fire that burns
In the flame of the lamp
Is not the fire;
It burns in the essence of
The moth and consumes him entire… ~ Hafiz Shirazi

The poor Sufi dressed in rags walked into a jewelry store owned by a rich merchant and asked him, "Do you know how you're going to die." And the Sufi said, "I do.""How?" asked the merchant.
And the Sufi lay down, crossed his arms, said, "Like this," and died, whereupon the merchant promptly gave up his store to live a life of poverty in pursuit of the kind of spiritual wealth the dead Sufi had acquired. ~ John Green

The religion of the Sufi is the religion of the heart. The principal moral of the Sufi is to consider the heart of others, so that in the pleasure and displeasure of his fellow-man he sees the pleasure and displeasure of God. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

The Sufi relates to God not as a judge, nor as a father figure, nor as the creator, but as our own Beloved, who is so close, so near, so tender.

In the states of nearness the lover experiences an intimacy with the Beloved which carries the softness and ecstasy of love. ~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

I am the Real, for I have not ceased to be real – through the Real. ~ Idries Shah

Now is the time to unite the soul and the world. Now is the time to see the sunlight dancing as one with the shadows. ~ Rumi

Poets must be grounded in the education of the arts, drama, history, mysticism, esotericism, and philosophy. To gain knowledge and become learned of the above is easy - read. Poets should apply this knowledge to their work, so a poet will advance to the next level, to their next phase of their emotional, psychological and spiritual development, growing in years in a short space of time, in hours or months if he or she is an avid reader. This knowledge will birth work that is not meretricious but of noble parentage. ~ Abigail George

Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness. ~ Idries Shah

Music, for me, is vital. Punjabi, Bollywood, Sufi, RnB ... I listen to it all. When I'm not listening to music, you will find me chatting with friends. Off the field, I just let my instincts take over. I certainly don't think about batting, or which bowlers I'm going to face. ~ Virat Kohli

One day the cub will become a wolf, even if it has been reared among the sons of man. ~ Idries Shah

The feet and their tapping
Write many a lovely couplet
The body dances to your rhythm O lord
After all, you are the master and I a puppet ~ Neelam Saxena Chandra

I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways. ~ Rumi

How can we speak about sustainability without speaking about the Sustainer? ~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Whereas Jesus demanded of the Jews the rejection of the tribalist Jahweh whom they identified with Israel, the race, the community the political state as object of worship and desire, the Sufis, born in an atmosphere of pure monotheism, demanded what Jesus of the first century A.D. would demand if he were to relive his early life again in present-day monotheistic Christendom. This does not mean that Jesus did not demand, like the Sufis, the cleansing of the soul from the personal deities it may worship besides God, but it does mean that the main weight of his teaching centered around the Jewish preoccupation with the tribe as God."
"The object and deal of Sufism is, therefore, identically the same as that of the radical self-transformation of Jesus. Both aimed at the state of consciousness in which God is the sole subject, the sole determiner and the sole object of love and devotion. The tradition of both later influenced each other and succeeded in developing the same kind of preparatory disciplines leading towards the end. Finally, both referred to the final end of these processes as 'oneness' and their reference was in each case exposed to the same dangers of misunderstanding, indeed to the same misunderstanding. The oneness of Jesus was misunderstood as unity and fusion of being, and thus gave rise to the greatest materialization of an essentially spiritual union history has ever seen. The oneness of the highest Sufi state was likewise misunderstood and gave rise to ~ Ismail R. Al-Faruqi

The appearance of the mountain changes, according to when in the day you beheld it and which side you approached it from. Our intellect is thus limited, so it is best not to judge others, for they may also be gazing upon the same mountain but simply viewing it from a different angle - Huja ~ Rehan Khan

Make me drunk.
Make me drunk, Beloved.
I crave your drink.
Break these thought chains
and tear these garments.
I crave your nakedness.
I'm speaking to you.
I'm speaking to you, Beloved
Take me to the depths of your ocean.
I'm thirsting for your drink.
I have followed the scent
of your intoxicating perfume
and having arrived at this altar,
I sacrifice my body for your soul.
Oh Beloved, make me drunk.
Make me drunk! ~ Kamand Kojouri

The major barrier to understanding is wishful thinking and following that which pleases one. ~ Idries Shah