Shaykh
The spiritual master of a Sufi path: one who has travelled the road and guides the disciples towards God.
Shaykh literally means ‘the elder’, the old man, and by extension the chief, the one in authority. In Sufism the word denotes the spiritual master: one who has travelled the road to its end, who has been extinguished in God, and who was sent back to mankind to guide it, independently of all personal will.
The shaykh’s function is not to teach a body of knowledge, as a teacher or jurist would. He transmits a state: he knows the stages of the road for having lived them, he discerns where each disciple stands and gives him what his soul needs. Tradition states this difference through a constant opposition between learnt knowledge and tasted knowledge.
The genuine shaykh has received the idhn, the authorisation to guide, from his own master within a verifiable silsila. Without that transmission, the office is usurped. On the bond between guide and disciple, read the state of the disciple and the page finding a Sufi master.