The spiritual guide on the Sufi path
Contents
A text written collectively by disciples of the Qadiriya Boutchichiya path.
Sufis often say that “the Path is the Shaykh”. In a tradition where the essential is not learnt from books, the spiritual guide is not a teacher: he is the living channel of transmission. This article explains his role, the nature of the bond between him and the disciple, and why the Sufi path holds this companionship to be indispensable.
The Path is the Shaykh
Sufis compare the spiritual guide to a spring of living water. Just as water irrigates different soils and nourishes different flowers, the disciples of a single path can look very unlike one another: countries of origin, social backgrounds, ages. Yet if they follow the same Guide, they all drink from one source, and each covers a journey with the same outline in his own way, according to the course of life that is his. That is what makes them spiritual brothers and sisters, beyond the outward differences. This brotherhood grows more and more concrete as each one lives the inner experiences of the wayfaring: words cannot describe these states to those who have not lived them, but they can call them to mind among those who have tasted them.
It is surprising to find that we can share deep and subtle things with someone who seemed, on the face of it, very unlike us. This is only a reflection of the working of what is called the spiritual secret (sirr). Placed by divine permission in the heart of the Shaykh, this secret is what makes the Path operative and brings about the disciple’s gradual transformation.
Neither friend nor guru
The relationship with the Guide is neither one of friendship nor a courteous exchange on fine or lofty subjects. Nor is it the Guide’s vocation to dictate his disciples’ every deed and gesture, or to take charge of their daily lives. A true spiritual guide is never a “guru” in that sense. For it is not through thought, nor through discursive reasoning, that the divine reality can be perceived: that reality is neither a mathematical formula, however sophisticated, nor a concept issuing from our own reflection, however subtle. Spiritual teaching will therefore have little in common with profane learning.
The Sufi Ibn ‘Ata’ Allah describes the function of the Guide in these terms:
“Your Guide is not the one from whom you hear speeches, but the one whose presence transforms you. He is not the one whose utterance guides you, but the one whose spiritual allusion penetrates you. He is not the one who invites you to the door, but the one who lifts the veil that separates you from Him. He is not the one who directs you with words, but the one who transforms you by his spiritual state. He is the one who delivers you from the prison of your passions to bring you before the Master of the Worlds. He is the one who never ceases polishing the mirror of your heart until the lights of your Lord shine forth within it. He raises you towards God and, once you have risen, carries you to Him. Yet he never ceases to watch over you until he sets you down in His hands. He brings you into the light of the divine Presence and says to you: ‘There you are, and there is your Lord.’”
A twofold condition: transmission and authorisation
The subtlety of the bond between the Guide and his disciple is matched only by how precious it is. The Guide is a saint chosen to call men and lead them on the way back to our Creator and our deepest nature. To fulfil this function, a twofold condition is required: the transmission of the spiritual secret by another guide, and the divine confirmation of this authorisation to teach. An unbroken initiatic chain thus links all authentic guides, from the Prophet to our own day; in the Qadiriya Boutchichiya path it leads today to Sidi Mounir.
A man extinguished to himself yet subsisting through God, the Guide is above all a spiritual educator. He is the mediator who puts us back in touch with that divine reality from which we come and which we have lost the ability to perceive. A realised man, he transmits to us the means of awakening our heart: the heart which, for the Sufis, is the instrument of spiritual perception, the centre of Being.
The struggle against the ego
In renewing this perception of the heart, we recover the true meaning of our existence. Through a trusting surrender to God, we learn to decipher and follow the signs He sends us to guide us towards Him. We recover that inner peace the sacred books speak of, and the joyful gratitude of one who knows that whatever befalls him is a mercy. We recover the love of the whole of creation, as so many faces of a single reality.
What prevents us from feeling this today is the tyranny of our ego. In the absence of a guide, our master is the ego. It is the ego that dictates our conduct, that urges us to act or not to act. It gauges and judges everything not for what it is, but for what it can gain from it. Out of fear, it rejects whatever does not go its way, whatever it does not know or cannot master. Out of desire, it covets and seizes by force what is not its own. Nothing leads us astray like illusion. Among the things that keep man far from God are, above all, the fear of losing what he has and the desire to obtain what he lacks. The spiritual Path is therefore centred on the struggle against the ego, in its negative, passionate sense.
A science of tastes
The guide’s teaching brings about an awakening of the heart: the knowledge that emanates from it is disclosed gradually, not as theoretical learning but as an intimate taste, ever deeper. “Sufism is not a science of papers but a science of tastes,” Sidi Hamza used to say. Very often this opening takes place without the disciple’s being fully aware that it comes to him from the Guide, since it arises from the depths of his own being.
What is at stake is not ideas or feelings, but inner perceptions. The experience of the Path is like a dye that gradually fills every compartment of our life and profoundly changes the way we look at events and at existence itself. In transforming our gaze, it transforms our reactions and our behaviour, making us each day more fully servants of the divine will, in conformity with the prophetic model of excellence.
God declares in the Qur’an: “I created jinn and mankind only that they might worship Me” (LI, 56). The Sufis thus make servanthood (’ubudiya) towards God the highest degree of spiritual realisation. In recovering our deepest nature, we recover the meaning of an active acceptance of the divine will: affirming the superiority of His will over our own restores our inner peace. Freed from our passions and from the tyranny of the ego, we gradually recover the capacity for a disinterested love of the whole of creation, which is, after all, the natural state of the very young child.
Further reading
- Finding a Sufi master in France: criteria of authenticity and first steps
- What is dhikr?: the practice the guide transmits to the disciple
- The initiatic chain: the transmission of the secret, from master to master
- The Tariqa Qadiriya Boutchichiya: the path to which these teachings belong
