"I thought the Sufi saints had only lived in ancient times"

By Ali Réda · June 2, 2021 · 6 min read

Contents

I was born in France to immigrant parents who raised me in Muslim culture, but outside all religious practice. I was brought up in the love of the One God, in the search for purity of intention, but I only tasted prayer much later, after discovering the heart of islam in Sufism.

As a teenager, I often wondered about my place, here in France. That questioning was as much about identity as it was spiritual, and it led me to undertake a search into myself, God, spirituality. My search took me into churches, where I asked myself why I should be more Muslim than Christian. I read the Bible and felt love for Christ. I was thus led to make many encounters, to discover other religions, other schools of the mysteries. I learnt a great deal in the course of this quest; yet after a certain time I had the feeling of having almost exhausted the field of possibilities. And then I realised that perhaps I was not looking in the right direction. I was left with my questionings about self, about reality, about faith…

My life, my quest have always, I believe, been lit by the light of faith. That light was constantly present, whatever happened. When I spoke of it with my friends, they would say to me: “You’ve got the charcoal-burner’s faith: forever going down the mine without knowing why.” And they were right: for me, that is exactly what faith was.

I believe that this very enriching itinerary, in the shape of a loop in the end, was necessary for me to come, years later, to the conclusion that it was indeed islam that was going to give me the wherewithal to satisfy my quest.

I could speak of the difference I perceive between, on the one hand, islam, at least the idea I formed of it and that many people form of it, and on the other hand “Sufi” islam, if indeed it is possible to distinguish between the two.

Let us say that islam as lived in Sufism embraces and exceeds all I could have imagined, in terms of conduct, of sharing, of love alike. All these notions are lived above all in this “Sufi” islam and procure an incomparable flavour, which in fact recalls what one lives in childhood: innocence, purity of belief, simplicity, generosity. I discovered this aspect of islam, which seems fundamental to me today, in Sufism, in the path to which I am now attached.

The Frequency of frequencies

Being a dowser, I know that it is possible, with a great deal of training, to find water with a wand or with a pendulum. Strangely, it is also possible to find something else with these instruments. In fact, it is the mental state into which one puts oneself for the search that is decisive. That is to say, if I am looking for water, I will think of water; if I am looking for gold, I will think of gold; if I am looking for an object that belonged to someone, I try to picture that person.

In this way one enters into a sort of resonance, a sympathetic frequency with the object of one’s search. That is to say, this frequency will come to us, provided we go towards it. God says in a hadith qudsi, for that matter: “Take one step towards Me, and I will take ten towards you.”

To come back to my own wayfaring, I asked myself what THE frequency is, what is the Frequency of frequencies? For me it was obviously not chasing after young girls, nor amassing money, nor pursuing brilliant intellectual reasonings. No: the Frequency of frequencies, I told myself I would find it in Muslim esotericism, the deep and interior dimension of islam. I did not decide this; it was like a sensation, a veritable call.

So I began to read works written by Sufis. I immersed myself in ’Attar’s Memorial of the Saints, Rumi’s Book of the Within and others besides. I thought the Sufi saints had only lived in ancient times and very far from here. I believed only their books remained and could not imagine that there might still be some in our own day.

While I was reading Rumi, I had the occasion to attend a lecture on Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch, the translator of Rumi and, as I learnt later, a disciple of the path of Sidi Hamza¹.

That lecture certainly interested me, but it remained too “intellectual” and did not satisfy my search for spirituality. A few months later, I attended another lecture, in the course of which I had the “revelation” that the Sufi masters did not belong solely to the past. First glimmer of light. I then realised that my quest was perhaps not in vain.

I then had the opportunity to practise, in a group, a dhikr (invocation) consisting in repeating aloud the formula “La ilaha illa Llah” (“there is no god but God”, or again “there is no reality but the divine Reality”).

Something then happened: I felt an intimate sensation, which I could not describe further, but let us say that I felt in the very depths of my being something at once powerful and subtle during that dhikr. This sensation, of a spiritual order, allowed me to step out of the intellectual framework of my search, a framework which, I could well feel, was leading me nowhere. It was quite simply a veritable revelation; that is how I felt it, at any rate. I had the deep feeling that this was “it” that I had been looking for, and that my being had been missing.

This feeling prompted me to want to know more about this Sufi path, which appeared to me in all its actuality and vividness. I met the disciples of Sidi Hamza and took part in ritual gatherings. Then I was confirmed in the idea and above all in the felt sense that this path was the right one. I therefore asked to take the initiatic pact.

At no moment did entering a Sufi path appear to me as an escape route, a search for protection. No! This approach was conceived as a decisive action towards a goal pursued, almost the realisation of something I had been awaiting for a very long time, in fact.

As an old faqir (disciple, “poor one in God”) recently reminded me: “When love is sincere, it seems that one has known one’s brothers for a very long time already, since always even.” I have to admit that since I have been on the path, that is exactly what I feel. That is to say, the impression that between the disciples, between these people pursuing the same spiritual quest, there is an unconditional love, irrepressible even. A love whose origin one does not know: one guesses at it, one can barely put words to it.

There is such a love that one has the impression of having always been together. The companionship lived today by the master’s disciples, of which this love is the cement, is sometimes compared to what the Companions who surrounded the Prophet Muhammad lived.

By Ali Réda.

Mashrabiya