Showing results for "David Ault" in Spirituality

The Way of the Sufi presents an unparalleled cross-section of material from Sufi schools, Sufi teachings, and classical writings as a basic course of Sufi study. The author begins with the outward aspects of the teaching most likely to puzzle the student coming fresh to the subject. He considers various attitudes to Sufi ideas and evidence of their absorption into medieval Christianity, Hinduism, Jewish mysticism, and modern philosophical teachings.

The Sufis have been using carefully constructed stories for teaching purposes for thousands of years. Though on the surface these often appear to be little more than entertaining fairy tales or folktales, they enshrine - in their characters, plots, and imagery - patterns and relationships that nurture a part of the mind not reachable in more conventional ways, thus increasing our understanding, flexibility, and breadth of vision.

Contemporary esoteric systems almost always play on the desire of mankind to seek or acquire knowledge. All but universally neglected in such systems are the often unrecognized barriers which prevent knowledge and understanding. Before learning can take place, certain conditions and basic factors must be in place, in the individual or the group.

According to the Sufis, human faculties, although perceptive, are limited: like a radio set, which can receive only certain electromagnetic waves and not other parts of this band. The inability to transcend the barrier of limited senses explains human subjectivity. The Sufis assert that through familiarization with concepts, patterns of thought, and ideas that form part of their contemporary literature, one can learn to penetrate beyond this apparent reality.

In a darkened room, a group of men once sought to examine an elephant. Taking hold of a different part - an ear, a leg, the tail - each one mistook his particular part for the whole. In the darkness each of the men became convinced that the elephant was the object he had felt - a fan, a rope, a pillar, and so on. With this ancient fable, first described by the Sufi Master Jalaluddin Rumi, Idries Shah presents the Sufi perspective that Christianity and Islam stem from one inner origin.