Top 100 Quotes About Sufism
#2. People change and needs change. So what was Sufism once is Sufism no more.
Idries Shah
#3. Politics is the application of Sufism to earthlife ... To refuse to act politically is to starve your children, destroy civilization.
Shamcher Bryn Beorse
#4. Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience and you will know'.
Idries Shah
#5. That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh).
Idries Shah
#7. I think that Sufism fits all over the world. The concept is not anything that fits standard Western ideas - it's always related to culture, to music, to religion. It is a dominant religion in Senegal.
Youssou N'Dour
#9. It was being written in the East that 'Sufism was formerly a reality without a name: now it is a name without a reality'.
Idries Shah
#10. Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.
Idries Shah
#11. Sufism is the doing in this lifetime what any fool will be doing in then thousand years' time.
Idries Shah
#12. I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle.
Naguib Mahfouz
#13. Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it.
Idries Shah
#14. Sufism is the spiritual tradition of the dervishes. Its teachers never strive to show how wise they are, and their disciples go into a trance by performing a kind of whirling dance.
Paulo Coelho
#15. The practice of Sufism is the intention to move toward truth by means of love and devotion.
Javad Nurbakhsh
#16. Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism.
Idries Shah
#17. Sufism is that which succeeds in bringing to man the High Knowledge.
Idries Shah
#18. But now she wasn't sure if she could concentrate on a subject as irrelevant to her life as Sufism and a time as distant as the thirteenth century.
Elif Shafak
#19. Sufism is experiential. Capacities, even those for learning beyond a certain point, are provoked by Sufis, by one's own efforts and what results from them, and by an element of what is referred to by Sufis as the Divine.
Idries Shah
#20. Sufism is, in fact, not a mystical system, not a religion, but a body of knowledge.
Idries Shah
#21. The feeling cannot be described in words, it's mystical; I am changing. Perhaps the soul needed silence so that it can shout to hear the echo from the walls of my heart. It did heard something, Sufism!
Dr. S.U.A.H Syed
#22. Sufism is about connecting with the intuitive parts of ourselves so that we can attune to the highest vibration in the universe, which is pure love. It's about joining together in the mystical heart.
Charlotte Kasl
#23. Sufism, they say, is that which enables one to understand religion, irrespective of its current outward form.
Idries Shah
#25. The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.
Idries Shah
#26. Sufism, the "secret tradition," is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect.
Idries Shah
#27. What you are pleased to call Sufism is merely the record of past method.
Idries Shah
#28. The parallels to modern physics [with mysticism] appear not only in the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, or in the teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan.
Fritjof Capra
#29. I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.
Naguib Mahfouz
#30. When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.
Idries Shah
#31. Sufism, in one definition, "is" human life.
Idries Shah
#32. Question 3: Why should a person study Sufism?
Answer: Because he was created to study it; it is his next step.
Idries Shah
#33. It is not Sufism if it does not perform its function for you. A cloak is no longer a cloak if it does not keep a man warm.
Idries Shah
#34. Sufism is transmitted by means of the human exemplar, the teacher.
Idries Shah
#35. Sufism is not a religion or a philosophy, it is neither deism nor atheism, nor is it a moral, nor a special kind of mysticism, being free from the usual religious sectarianism. If ever it could be called a religion, it would only be as a religion of love, harmony, and beauty.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#36. Islam and Sufism are one. Teaching that to understand Islam one must be a lover, how can one understand Islam when the heart is empty of love.
Zarina Bibi
#37. Sufism is always systematised only for limited or transitory periods: because Sufism is primarly instrumental, not for enjoyment or display.
Idries Shah
#38. Sufism and yoga are one and the same thing. They are just words, in wisdom there is no difference. All the teachings are absolutely the same. They are only different paths to the One.
Irina Tweedie
#39. While most streams of Buddhism take a contemplative stance on passion, pleasure, and pain, Sufism encourages us to be open to our passions - to dive into the sea, to become at one with the beauty and power of the waves.
Charlotte Kasl
#40. People talk of the Sufi way. Wrong. If there is a way, it's not Sufism.
Art Hochberg
#41. Sufism is the essence of all religions.
Idries Shah
#42. If anybody asks what Sufism is, what kind of religion is it, the answer is that Sufism is the religion of the heart, the religion in which the thing of primary importance is to seek God in the heart of mankind.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#43. Helping others
I order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Moslem or not.
Idries Shah
#45. Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
Idries Shah
#46. If you cannot sit on a throne like a king, seize, like a tent-pitcher, the rope of the Royal tent.
Idries Shah
#47. Our heads are filled with 'knowledge', a knowledge that in some areas pre-empts our seeing anything at all.
Idries Shah
#48. Our thoughts have prepared for us the
happiness or unhappiness we experience.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#49. But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.
Idries Shah
#50. In the distorting mirror of your mind, an angel can seem to have a devil's face.
Idries Shah
#51. The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.
Idries Shah
#52. If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are not, you will get nowhere in higher things.
Idries Shah
#53. The barren branches may appear inelegant: They are, to the cook, the means to make his fire.
Idries Shah
#54. BARQI: AESTHETICS IS ONLY THE LOWEST FORM OF PERCEPTION OF THE REAL.
Idries Shah
#55. Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.
Idries Shah
#56. EPITAPH OF JALALUDIN RUMI
When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.
Idries Shah
#57. The people of the world have a fixed destiny. But the spiritually developed receive what is "not" in their destiny.
Idries Shah
#58. All approaches to a study or an individual may start with a desire for attention. However they start, they must never end up in this manner.
Idries Shah
#59. Great men are great until they know it. Saints are holy until they know it.
Idries Shah
#60. Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.
Idries Shah
#61. You can perceive a person's aspiration if it is genuine, because this creates a change in the emanations from such a person.
Idries Shah
#62. Remedy
Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.
Hazrat Ali
Idries Shah
#63. Death
If he is a good man, death will be a release;
If he is a bad one, it will release others from him.
Idries Shah
#64. Rumi speaks of people who rely upon the written word as sometimes being no more than donkeys laden with books.
Idries Shah
#65. The spirit is the mirror; the body is the rust.
(Divan-i-Shamsi Tabriz)
Idries Shah
#66. Saying of the Prophet
Obligation to Learn
The pursuit of knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim.
Idries Shah
#67. Those who can't, try: those who can, don't have to.
Idries Shah
#68. Whoever might perfume a scorpion
Will not thereby escape its sting. Bahaudin Naqshband
Idries Shah
#69. The only thing I know is that a person who is not busy with others is one who recognizes the truth of existence.
Sadegh M. Angha
#70. With enough information, it is almost impossible "not" to predict people's action.
Idries Shah
#72. Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.
Idries Shah
#73. You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.
Idries Shah
#74. Humility is a teacher of itself. It is learnt by means of its practise.
Idries Shah
#75. Opportunity's precious, and time is a sword.
Idries Shah
#76. Whatever goes into a salt-mine becomes salt.
Idries Shah
#77. Information about the activities of one body of Sufis may be harmful to the potential of another.
Idries Shah
#78. Man (and woman) has an infinite capacity for self-development. Equally, he has an infinite capacity for self-destruction. A human being may be clinically alive and yet, despite all appearances, spiritually dead.
Idries Shah
#79. You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.
Idries Shah
#80. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity.
Idries Shah
#81. Much religious teaching in the world is in reality a confused or deteriorated form, very different from its roots.
Idries Shah
#82. Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.
Idries Shah
#83. Proverbs and truisms are for this reason dangerous, because they produce blindness or non-thought.
Idries Shah
#84. The Apparent is the Bridge to the Real
Idries Shah
#85. The selection and following of a spiritual guide is the most important duty of a Sufi.
Idries Shah
#86. I want a God that makes me twirl.' I jumped off the couch. I untucked and unbuttoned my shirt so it would flow like a robe. 'Like this. I can do this for God.' I held my hands out. I twirled and twirled and twirled. 'Look,' I said. 'Look.
Rabih Alameddine
#87. Knowledge. How curious that a man who closes his hand upon air so often thinks that he has a ruby within his grasp.
Idries Shah
#88. Saying of the Prophet
Truth
Speaking the truth to the unjust is the best of holy wars.
Idries Shah
#89. The Path is not to be found anywhere except in human service
Idries Shah
#90. Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Poverty: The result of marriage.
Idries Shah
#91. THE BIRD AND THE WATER
A bird which has not heard of fresh water
Dips his beak in salt-water year after year.
(Anwar-i-Suhaili)
Idries Shah
#92. Unbelief and belief are both marching on His road, while both are saying, 'He is one and He has no associates'.
Idries Shah
#93. But the Sufis work IN the world, and therefore WITH 'things of the world'.
Idries Shah
#94. Why do people always wonder whether books are any good, without wondering whether they are themselves in a state to profit from them?
Idries Shah
#95. Trust is needed before lessons can be learnt.
Idries Shah
#96. When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.
Idries Shah
#97. There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.
Idries Shah
#98. Until you can understand illogicality, and the meaningfulness of it, shun the Sufis except for limited, precise, self-evident services.
Idries Shah
#100. Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza
Patience: A support for the disappointed.
Idries Shah
