To What Extent Can Sufi And So-called Pagan Approaches To Spirituality Be Reconciled?
An
individual who is a proponent of a pagan spiritual tradition sent an e-mail which
suggested such a person (i.e., a pagan) and a Sufi had nothing in common about which to talk. This
person was of the opinion these two approaches to spirituality were inherently
opposed to one another.
In view of
what you have said about our having nothing to talk about and how we are destined to be
"perpetual opponents", I pursue that which follows with a certain amount of
'fear and trembling'. Nonetheless, I wonder if there might not be -- at least, up to a
point yet to be determined -- more of a commonality than you might suppose between your
polytheistic perspective - which, admittedly, I do not know much about - and the kind of
monotheism that is at the heart of the Sufi mystical tradition to which I subscribe.
To begin
with, I fully agree with you concerning your critical commentary on the way people of all
spiritual stripes have an ugly habit of using force to impose their way of thinking on
anyone who disagrees with them. The Qur'an, which is the Holy book of Islam, clearly
states there can be no compulsion in matters of spirituality. Each individual must be able
to freely make her or his own choice in such matters.
Unfortunately,
there are all too many Muslims -- as well as individuals from other spiritual traditions
-- who have glossed over this boundary of propriety and delegated to themselves the right
and duty to try to tell others how to live their lives. We all have values which we
believe are right and, as well, we all consider certain other values to be incorrect, but
this does not justify violence, killing and cruelty in relation to other individuals who
do not share our particular hierarchy of values.
Although
Sufi teachers maintain there is one ultimate Reality which makes everything in the seen
and unseen worlds possible, nonetheless, Sufi masters also indicate the structural
character of the created world, on whatever level, is the result of an interplay of Divine
Names and Attributes. Each of these Names and Attributes has its own "personality',
if you will, or its own sphere of responsibility and activity through which the dynamic or
potential character of that Name or Attribute is given expression in accordance with an
underlying and unifying Divine Will.
These Names
and Attributes combine in dynamic, complex ways to color, shape, orient and structure what
goes on in created reality. Moreover, these Names and Attributes generate an array or
spectrum of opposites.
Light and
dark; hot and cold; presence and absence; fullness and emptiness; wet and dry; good and
evil; truth and falsehood; beauty and ugliness; pain and pleasure; struggle and ease;
clarity and confusion; the known and the unknown; strength and weakness; health and
sickness; just and unjust; - these are just a few of the opposite pairings. In order to
understand one of the aspects of any given pairing, one must come to know, in some way,
its opposite. For instance, one cannot come to appreciate the nature of light unless one
has had some experience with darkness.
While Sufi
masters maintain that the overall play of these opposites is ultimately harmonious,
nonetheless, on a given level, the clash of opposites can appear to be, and can be
experienced as being, quite fractious. Furthermore, during this clash of opposites,
different Names can seek to acquire dominance in a person's life.
In addition
to the foregoing, when a Sufi seeker is given a certain chant by the teacher, this chant
often focuses on one or several of the Divine Names and, in effect, is calling upon God to
manifest Divinity in the form in an individual's life toward Whom the chant is directed.
At different times or circumstances, and at different stages on the mystical path,
different chants, featuring different Names and Attributes of God may be given to the
individual seeker.
These Names
and Attributes may be both female and male in character. Alternatively, they, also, may be
neither primarily male nor female in character.
In fact, one
needs to develop an appreciation of, and insight into, just what the notion of 'male' and
'female' might entail when talking of Divinity. Unfortunately, people on all sides of this
issue who are caught up in various aspects of the gender wars, fail to realize that in a
spiritual context, maleness and femaleness have nothing to do with biology or
socialization processes.
Instead, the
aforementioned qualifiers of 'male' and 'female' refer to, among other properties, a
principle of acting, or being acted, on. In other words, whenever some aspect of reality
operates on or acts on another aspect of reality, then the first, relative to the latter,
is said to manifesting a property of maleness, whereas the latter, relative to the first,
is exhibiting female properties.
In
actuality, there are very few manifestations, if any, of Divinity which do not give
expression to female and male qualities simultaneously. This is true even in the realm of
biology and gender since we all are often simultaneously required to both act on, as well
as be acted upon by, different dimensions of reality -- whether our own or that of
different facets of the world around us.
If one
separates-off some of these individual manifestations from the underlying Oneness of
Divinity, then one easily might begin to speak about distinct male gods and female
godesses. In effect, in doing so, one has chosen to emphasize and deitize a given
particular manifested aspect of the figure/Ground relationship through which Divinity
gives expression to Itslelf.
The decision
to give emphasis to figure or Ground --or, multiplicity or unity, selves or Self -- is a
conscious choice made by an individual to go in one hermeneutical direction rather than
another. That is, if one construes hermeneutics as having to do with the problem of
interpretation -- whether in relation to a written text or the text of Being, then an
individual who is committed to a spiritual tradition populated by gods and godesses is
someone who has chosen to construe his or her experience through a particular kind of
hermeneutical lens which has certain optical properties associated with it.
From a Sufi
perspective, the use of such a lens has both revealing as well as problematic features.
The revealing side is that those who would use this kind of interpretive lens of
perception concerning experience do grasp, to varying degrees, that Divinity operates in
Creation through the Agency of Divine Names and Attributes, each of which has various
qualities or dimensions of 'maleness' and 'femaleness' (in the foregoing sense) associated
with It. The problematic side of the use of such an interpretive lens -- at least from the
point of view of a Sufi -- is that in following the aforementioned sort of interpretive
orientation, one risks separating off manifestation from the One Whom is making these
manifestations possible.
In effect,
one creates gods and godesses without necessarily understanding what Divinity is. As such,
one runs the risk of conflating manifestations of Divinity in the form of a given Name or
Attribute with the hermeneutical judgement that such manifestations are evidence for the
existence of separate gods and godesses.
From a Sufi
perspective, one who is interested in the way Divinity is manifested through different
modalities and combinations of 'male' and 'female' properties is not necessarily wrong in
having such an interest or set of beliefs, and such an individual need not be wrong in
wishing to act in accordance with this hermeneutical perspective. After all, on a certain
level, and from a certain hermeneutical orientation, one is committed to, and wishing to
act on, the way Truth manifests itself under cetain circumstances. On the other hand,
difficulties can arise when such an individual permits this kind of perspective to get in
the way of futher spiritual exlorations which have the potential of taking one back to the
underlying Ground out of which the manifestation of Divine Names and Attributes arise.
A Sufi
master would agree with those so-called pagan spiritual traditions which teach that every
created thing, whether animate or inanimate, has a spirit which can be contacted and which
can offer assistance of various kinds to the one who has made the appropriate kind of
contact. Indeed, from a Sufi perspective, since every thing in creation is a function of
some combination of Divine Names and Attributes, then the spirit of a thing -- whether
animate or inanimate -- merely gives expression to the way Divnity chooses to manifest Its
Will through any given locus of created existence.
The healing
properties of plants and herbs or the effect that various kinds of minerals have upon us
are just a small indication of how this interplay of Names and Attributes may come to the
surface of our everyday lives. Similarly, the respect that we owe to all dimensions of
creation is a reflection of the sacred presence of these Names and Attributes in every
single aspect of Creation.
I could go
on, but I think enough has been said to let you know some of the basic features of a Sufi
perspective vis-a-vis certain aspects of so-called pagan spiritual traditions. Perhaps, in
addition, enough has been said to suggest there may be more points of commonality and
overlap in our respective perspectives - as divergent as those perspectives may seem from
certain vantage points -- than you previously might have believed to be the case. I
suppose a lot depends on whether we wish to emphasize our differences or whether we want
to see where we can cooperate and come together in order to help heal a troubled world.
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