The awakening of the heart (1/2): an interview with Faouzi Skali
An interview with Faouzi Skali.
Traditional Sufi writings speak of the “path of the heart”. What is its reality, in your view?
Here, the heart does not designate only the organic heart, but above all the subtle centre of the being, the one which has the capacity to receive divine Knowledge. This brings to mind the hadith in which God speaks in these terms: “Neither My heaven nor My earth can contain Me, but I am wholly contained in the heart of My servant.” To designate this process of access to Knowledge, the Sufis speak of the opening of the “eye of the heart”. It is the development of the intelligence of the heart, capable of discernment in an intuitive mode, whereas the mind, the heart and the spiritual domain are generally considered separately.
The Qur’anic tradition insists on the presence of “signs”: every event is itself a sign. Day and night, for instance, are signs; the fertilisation and development of the embryo are other signs. The heart will then be the place where meditation on these signs allows one to penetrate their deepest meanings.
What kind of signs are these?
Signs of the divine Presence. Every manifestation is a sign, and there is not a single manifestation that is not a sign. To make clear what this means, let us take the analogy of reading a piece of writing. What matters in reading is not the letters themselves, but the meaning that shows through behind the assembling of those letters. That meaning cannot be seized or pinned down; it transcends the letters taken separately, but one needs a “key of reading” to grasp it.
Thus the beauty of a flower, like that of every sensible manifestation, will be for the Sufis a sign which infinitely transcends that beauty. In Sufi poetry, the symbols used may at first sight seem ordinary, since they are simply drawn from the material world, whereas in fact they aim at what lies far beyond. Symbols are only letters which let a truth infinitely greater than themselves show through.
If everything is a sign, then everything is a truth that exceeds us, but which would nevertheless be accessible through the heart?
That is it: the whole of creation alludes to that unique Truth through multiple forms and manifestations.
How is it that two Sufis can interpret the same event differently, in perfectly good faith? Can their hearts read an event in a totally different way?
It depends mainly on the degree of knowledge at which each one stands, and on the spiritual state each one is going through. There are those who journey along the path and who see many signs, many symbols from which they try to draw elements allowing them to come closer to the Truth. But for the one who has reached the end of the path, there are no more signs: God is closer to him than His own signs.
Can the one who has arrived be designated as a master?
The function of master and the fact of having reached a certain degree of spiritual realisation are not exactly the same thing. One can indeed be perfectly realised spiritually without thereby having the function of master. In this domain, nothing is determined on the basis of any individual decision. One does not say to oneself one fine day: “It seems to me I have things to teach others, so I shall become a master.” In reality, multiple criteria come into play: belonging to an initiatic chain going back to the Prophet of Islam, authorisation to initiate granted by an authentic master, transcendent confirmations received personally. The function of master is very difficult to fulfil, and no one may attribute it to himself. It belongs to the transcendent, in the true sense of the word.
With a true realised master, there is above all a legacy that is received: the idhn, that is, the explicit authorisation to give teaching in one’s turn. Yet in the history of Sufism there have been disciples who had received the idhn from their master and who nevertheless did not teach for years, until they had explicitly received an inner confirmation. The true knower, freed from his ego, has no use for this function of “master”. Yet in certain cases he is obliged to assume it, precisely by virtue of that transcendent “order” which reveals to him that this is indeed his mission and that he cannot evade it in any way.
So the notion of ego is indeed present in Islam?
Yes, and it is even central in Sufism, where a whole classification of egos has been developed according to the degree of purification of the carnal passions: from the tyrannical soul to the pacified soul, passing through the soul that rebukes itself. These different states of the soul are, for that matter, mentioned in the Qur’an, but what is most interesting is that whoever is committed to the path will, at one moment or another, have to confront them and go beyond them.
How are these states of the soul recorded in the Qur’an?
In fact they are not given there in a systematic way, but simply evoked in certain passages. Each evocation belongs to a particular context. For example, one verse says: “O pacified soul, return to your Lord, satisfied and approved!” (89:27-28) and another says: “It is the very nature of the human soul to be tyrannical, unless it is touched by divine Grace” (12:53). The Sufis, for their part, experience these different states described by the Qur’an.
Is teaching on the Sufi path based on this knowledge of the human being and of the different states of consciousness of the soul in its journey?
Indeed, and this knowledge is possible only thanks to the progressive liberation from the grip of the ego, the nafs. The Sufis wage against the nafs what they call the “greater struggle”, compared with which the lesser outward combat with weapons is quite negligible. This refers to a hadith according to which the Prophet Muhammad said to companions who had returned exhausted from a battle: “Here you are back from the lesser struggle in order to accomplish the greater struggle!” Then he was asked: “Prophet, what then is the greater struggle you speak of?” He replied: “The greater struggle is the one you wage against yourselves.”
The Sufis insist that true inner realisation passes first through “death” to oneself, as the Prophet had said: “Die before you die!”, or again: “Men are asleep; when they die, they awaken.” The “death” of the ego is essential, and through this death the human being is brought to perceive all that in reality he could only know after bodily death. When our nafs “dies” here and now, the purified soul climbs through all the different degrees of the beyond, without for all that having left the body…
Is that a way of tasting Paradise in advance?
That is not the goal, for the Sufis consider that the different degrees of Paradise are themselves obstacles to be passed beyond. Everything that belongs to a genuine spiritual experience must be experienced without attaching oneself to it. In a certain way, for the Sufis, Paradise is the sage’s hell, the sole goal being knowledge of the Unique, of God. Paradise and Hell are only created elements and, as such, they have only a relative importance…
How can one envisage a “beyond” of Paradise?
Through the permanent search for the essence of the true being… At that degree, it seems impossible to reach it without being guided, for only a master will be able to compel the disciple to “come out” of the states of bliss in which he might delight indefinitely, and compel him to go beyond by showing that in the end those states are negligible. In Arnaud Desjardins’ film on the Sufis of Afghanistan, one can see the disciples doing the ’imara, that is, the bodily translation of a spiritual state which is at once an immense joy, an ecstasy, a love, a knowledge. It is an ineffable perception, in which each one is brought to “travel” ever further, in an ever more inward, ever more subtle way. This inner journey takes place under the direction of the spiritual guide, who enables the disciple to divest himself of all idols, and notably of the idol of happiness experienced here below, which remains very far from pure divine contemplation.
A hadith states that there are 70,000 veils of shadow and of light separating the servant from God. If it proves fairly easy to pass beyond the veils of shadow, which generate rather unpleasant states, it is much more difficult not to become attached to the veils of light, which allow one to experience a form of bliss. The presence of the master is, in this respect, fundamental.
An interview initially conducted in 1986 by Robert Faure and Daniel Bessaignet, completed in 2013 by the soufisme.org editorial team.
Continued: the awakening of the heart, part two. See also the role of the spiritual guide.
