The awakening of the heart (2/2): an interview with Faouzi Skali
An interview with Faouzi Skali, part two. Read part one.
What is striking in the traditions of the Sacred, and in Sufism in particular, is this extraordinary determination to go to the essential, relativising everything else…
Fundamentally, all that is other than God is only relative. That is precisely what the first part of the Muslim profession of faith expresses: “La ilaha illa Allah”, which can be translated as: “There is no divinity but God.” Everything begins with a negation, “La ilaha”, which allows one to detach oneself from all the idols man is so quick to fashion for himself, and ends with a saving affirmation, “illa Allah”, in which divine Unicity occupies the central place.
Do the Sufis often meditate on these notions?
Meditation is omnipresent in Sufism, and the sentence in question very often serves as a support in the form of a repetition made a great many times. This is a spiritual exercise called “dhikr”, which means both “reminder” and “remembrance”. It is thus a kind of mantra which the Sufi disciple repeats, each time in a deeper way. He spends his time erasing, affirming, then erasing and affirming again, the affirmation becoming ever more real. He erases what is illusory and draws a little closer to the Real. In fact, Sufism urges one to do everything for God without expecting anything in return, neither reward nor fear of punishments. Always to act for God, for the “Face” of God. Our actions and our states have no importance in themselves, except that they sometimes constitute means placed on our road to help us reach the goal: that is why God is the Real, the only Reality. Everything else, at whatever degree it may stand, remains relative.
Is there a work done by the master on his disciple to free him of his complexes, or a work done on his energy to bring it down into the depths of the unconscious, so as not only to reach the ultimate goal, but also to embody it ever more fully as a human being?
In Sufism, the essential thing for every aspirant is the encounter with an authentic master, able to give a spiritual teaching suited to that aspirant’s quest. Everything can be summed up in that. After that, the techniques and the supports will simply depend on the way this guide proceeds. He is endowed with a spiritual “colouring” of his own, which will orientate the way he initiates his disciples. He transmits to his disciples the authorisation, the permission to perform this or that type of practice, and notably the dhikr. This authorisation has a particular virtue, for the master holds the “energy” which vivifies the practices and gives them an efficacy beyond all comparison with a practice carried out without guidance, in a solitary way. A process of illumination thus takes place in the disciple’s heart.
For me, this is similar, on a microcosmic plane, to what happened on the plane of the whole universe: “Let there be Light, and there was Light!” This fiat lux is the order, the vibration given to the cosmos outside of time. In the same way, the principle of transformation of the human psyche is bound to an inner illumination. Yet psychological balance is always fragile, so that the dhikr can prove dangerous if it is performed without discernment. It can then be the vehicle of influences which really do risk harming the psychological integrity of the individual.
What danger are you speaking of?
The danger is doing the dhikr without having received it from a person authorised to transmit it, and so without the possibility of that “fiat lux”. What happens in that case? Spurred on by the practice, consciousness “descends” into deep regions of the being, but without disposing of the “light” received with an authorised dhikr. The aspirant who ventures onto this path then finds himself facing situations, or psychic “attacks”, which can completely pull him apart, for he has awakened within himself “forces” he is quite incapable of controlling.
Is there a specific dhikr for each person?
The guide gives the modality of dhikr he judges to correspond to this or that person. That modality is then adjusted according to the inner changes taking place in the disciple. The dhikr then becomes the channel, the vehicle of a light which transforms the state of consciousness in an unspeakable way. The more the disciple is steeped in the dhikr, the more he feels within himself those luminous vibrations which enlighten him in the course of the journey into the depths of being. At each level of realisation of the being, this light takes part in the awakening of the disciple’s heart.
Is what you are describing to be related to the human substance, the “human clay” in the most universal sense of the term?
Yes, I believe that in each of us there are a great many levels or degrees, from what is individual to what is supra-individual, from zones of shadow to states of great clarity. All that substance is truly extraordinary; it is fathomless and deserves to be explored with finesse and discernment.
It would seem that there is here a great knowledge of man in the totality of his potentialities, including the psychological mechanisms, the “ruses” of the soul…
Absolutely. We were speaking earlier of the “nafs”: it is indeed the nafs that opposes our aspirations towards the unconditional freedom of the being. By its very nature, it delights in bringing everything back down to the level of individuality, severing every link with a transcendent dimension. Its aim is to remain in command, whatever the cost, of the decisions we take in daily life. It is ready to use every ruse, every scheme to that end… So this is indeed a great struggle being played out in each person’s innermost self.
Can the disciple, at a certain moment, have the somewhat cruel experience of solitude? Or on the contrary, does being close to a master remove all feeling of solitude?
When the master’s energy “enlightens” the disciple’s inwardness, a dialogue is born out of that experience. There is in fact such a complicity that only an allusive language manages to evoke what is at stake: the guide passes messages to the disciple in a subtle way, through a simple allusion or even a single look. The experience the disciple lives through leads him to grasp that language and to enter a form of communication ever more subtle and more intimate. This point of contact plays the role of a developer, and the disciple can find himself alone with himself, to the point of feeling a certain pain from it. But since it is a process of transformation, what is felt is not fixed, and is nourished by an ever greater luminous presence. The disciple then perceives a deeply liberating inner guidance, from which intuitions spring that escape the strict control of the mind. Instead of taking things in a purely analytical way, the disciple is led to grasp each situation with the whole of his being.
Thus, what could seem dark or negative in an illusory state of separation is no longer any of that once the divine Presence has penetrated consciousness. Everything that can appear as fear, anguish, rejection or hatred is only the effect of the mind “tensing up” before the wave of love which envelops all things…
Can such a process be compared to psychoanalysis?
In fact, it is not at all the same register. Psychoanalysis does not, as such, constitute a spiritual path, since the process of inner illumination is absent. In the Sufi approach, each person tries to understand what is happening within him, not simply with the cerebral or emotional faculties (whether conscious or unconscious), but above all starting from the awakening of an intimate faculty which transcends mere analysis. And that awakening belongs fundamentally to Grace, even though work on oneself has its importance.
Isn’t a Sufi master ultimately a sort of “prophet” of inwardness?
In Islam, the word “prophet” means an “envoy of God”, like the Prophet of Islam, whose precise function is to establish a new framework destined for a community of men or for the whole of humanity. Not all spiritual functions are identical, and a distinction must be made between a prophet who brings a new Law and a spiritual master who offers a teaching within the framework of an existing Law.
For the Sufis, are other prophets expected after the coming of Muhammad?
If Muhammad said there would be no other prophets after him, he meant by that that no one would come to bring a new Law before the end of this cycle of humanity. Moses brought back from Sinai a first Law; Jesus then came with the authorisation and the function of being able to soften the Mosaic law and bring some changes to it. The Prophet of Islam came in his turn to promulgate another Law, which marks the end of the cycle of revealed Laws. This closes the “door” of the revelation of a new divine Law, but does not seal the “door” of spiritual realisation within the final tradition.
One must not forget that Jesus is awaited by Muslims to close the present cycle. He will not, however, come to bring a new Law, his coming not abolishing the last Law revealed by Muhammad. While standing within that Law, his task will be to give it its full spiritual significance, at the moment when that significance is on the point of being lost.
Are these eschatological details borne out by scriptural data?
Yes, in a number of hadiths the return of Jesus at the end of time is spoken of. Jesus is considered, in the Muslim perspective, as belonging to a lineage of prophets, the first of whom was Adam. Thus Islam confirms the validity of the messages prior to it, and presents the goal of its mission as being their integration into a final synthesis.
An interview initially conducted in 1986 by Robert Faure and Daniel Bessaignet, completed in 2013 by the soufisme.org editorial team.
Back to: the awakening of the heart, part one. See also on the necessity of a master.
