The state of discipleship
For the disciple, more than acting and doing, what counts first is making himself receptive. To do so, he must develop within himself a genuine state of discipleship, which is the right attitude for one who wishes to receive: “for alms are for the poor”, as a verse of the Qur’an reminds us. If the term fuqara’ is used to designate the disciples of a spiritual path, a term meaning “the poor”, it is to show the absolute necessity of this state of poverty. The Qur’anic verse “O men, you are the poor in relation to God, and God, He is the Rich, the Glorious” echoes the Gospel sentence “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. To realise this state of spiritual poverty, one must first learn to renounce within ourselves our state of master. Our present master is the ego, our despotic self. To become poor is to rid oneself of that illusory self. Often, man is not aware of his egoistic tendencies, and attributes them to all sorts of outward circumstances. To become a disciple is to embark on that great struggle against the whole of the soul’s negative tendencies. It means unifying the different tendencies which govern us, of simplifying our being by concentrating it; in other words, in the end, of rediscovering what has always been present deep within us. It is not a matter of constructing a new being, but of becoming ourselves. For this, one must first become aware of one’s limits and of the necessity of an inner work. One must free oneself from this feeling of “me” which occupies our whole mind, which we take for our true identity, and abandon this so-called wealth in order to take the path of inner knowledge, which belongs to intuition and unveiling. For as a Sufi master points out, “he does not remember God who does not forget himself”. As the ego’s grip disappears, the divine reality appears.
The first disciple is the shaykh. He who guides others is above all the one who has fully realised the condition of disciple within himself. The guide does not do what he wants; he is only the instrument of the universal reality. Totally effaced in it, he can only do what must be done, at the moment it must be done. It is through this effacement before the divine reality inhabiting him that his teaching can be genuinely operative, and transform us. The Sufi is often described as the one who possesses nothing and is possessed by nothing. The spiritual secret is not the guide’s property, which he could use and distribute as he pleased: he is only its custodian. If, at the moment when he is called to join his Lord, no one in his entourage has attained the state of spiritual divestment needed to receive that secret, it cannot be transmitted, and the initiatic chain stops there. The path then becomes a path of blessings. It is for this reason that a shaykh on the point of dying once said to the disciples who were waiting to know who his successor would be: “I hand the keys back to their owner”. The sirr belongs to God alone. The guide is simply, through the particular transparency that is his by virtue of his inner divestment, a call, and a door through which one may enter the house.
In the same way, we must understand that we possess nothing, that we give nothing: we let things pass through. Certain things can pass through us, if God wills it, but they do not belong to us. The Prophet used to say: “Were it not for sin, I would fear something worse still for men”. That worse thing is pride, that feeling of wealth which is one of the main obstacles to spiritual progress. Humility is perhaps the only thing absolutely necessary for the one who claims to follow a path. To make oneself receptive is to accept the idea that nothing belongs to us, but that everything can be given to us. It is learning to listen and to receive, before wanting to give and to act. It is not seeking to take, to do, but rather to read the signs that are sent to us. It is accepting what comes, what happens to us. It is putting ourselves at the disposal of what we receive, for what is sent to us is always more important than what we wish to do.
To become a disciple is also to do what seems right to us, while accepting in advance that the outcome of our actions may be different from the one we expected. This detachment from the fruits of action pacifies us inwardly, and teaches us little by little to trust God to guide our lives. It often happens that we ardently desire certain things, and that when they finally occur, we do not feel the expected happiness. Or conversely, that we dread certain things which turn out in the end to be beneficial. Acting while detached from the outcome of our actions keeps us available at every instant. Instead of clinging to what we have decided, we remain open to all the other possibilities that might arise. It is in this sense that the path speaks of the importance of letting go. And this has strictly nothing to do with laissez-faire.
In the Sufi perspective, the quality of acts transcends the individual who accomplishes them, and its effects fall directly on the plane of being: “Sufism is nothing but excellence of conduct (ihsan). He who surpasses you in excellence of conduct surpasses you in Sufism”. And the Prophet said: “I was sent only to perfect the nobility of character”. Thus the whole science of the knowledge of God can be summed up by excellence of conduct, that search for the attitude fitting each moment, each person and each situation. Aiming as it does at an inner transformation, the spiritual path obviously cannot let itself be locked inside the circle of mere morality. It transcends that morality, without denying its social virtues. Excellence of conduct is not a social norm, but a means of spiritual education, and at the same time a putting oneself into conformity with the world around us. That is why it is said to be both a germ and a fruit of the path. What matters is not what one knows, but what one puts into practice.
Some have been able to define Sufism as “being upright, without expecting others to do likewise”. For it is a marked tendency of our ego to demand of others what we ourselves manage to do. The ego has difficulty accepting that not everyone does as it does, and often attributes this to incapacity, if not to ill will. For it is its own norm, and claims to judge everything and everyone according to its own criteria. On the spiritual path, what matters is not letting oneself be troubled by what one sees around us, but becoming a man, quite simply. What is essential is the relationship that binds us to God. Everything has its reason for being, in its own place. The propensity to judge is one of the ego’s major characteristics. Sidi Hamza tells us: “The fault and the ugliness are not in things and in beings, but in the impurity of the gaze we cast upon them. The more the soul is appeased, perfect and pure, the more it will be disposed to see in every being a manifestation of the divine Light: everything is beautiful; only the unpolished heart of the disciple renders things ugly”. And he exhorts us to “break the scales” that are in our heads. As long as we go on judging, whether men or situations, we remain within the limited sphere of the ego. It projects onto each thing its own experience, its own values, without taking the trouble to truly discover it in the reality that is its own. Instead of enriching us with another’s experience, it impoverishes us by reducing it to what it already knows of it. Non-judgement therefore has nothing to do with morality: it is a matter of opening oneself to another form of knowledge.
In the same perspective, the spiritual journey gradually leads one to magnify all beings. To magnify does not mean losing one’s capacity to appreciate the rightness of a behaviour, a remark or a situation. Magnification does not consist in idealising others by striving to see greatness where it is not, but in perceiving that each thing, and each created being, is a manifestation of the divine Reality. It means becoming a witness to what beings truly are; that is, the faces through which God manifests Himself to us.
Excellence of conduct also consists in putting oneself as often as possible at the service of others, and in practising generosity towards one’s neighbour.
Of course, all these spiritual virtues are not innate. Whatever each person’s spiritual predispositions, these virtues require a deep work on oneself, and the key to it is to be found notably in the practice of invocation.
A group of disciples of the Qadiriya Boutchichiya path.
Previous chapter: Islam; next chapter: spiritual work.
See also: Finding a Sufi master in France, how to recognise an authentic path.
