Suhba
Companionship: keeping company with the guide and fellow travellers, held by the masters to be a condition of the journey.
Suhba is companionship, the fact of being together: the same verb gives sahabi, the Companion of the Prophet. Sufism made it one of the conditions of the road: one does not journey alone with books, but in the company of the guide and the brothers of the path. The formula attributed to Ibn ’Arabi and repeated everywhere: ‘We arrived through companionship, not through reasoning.’
Suhba has an educative function no text can replace: the disciple sees what the teaching yields in a living man, he is recognised where he is weak, he receives the sirr through presence as much as through words. The Qur’an inscribes it in the very gesture of faith: ‘keep them company (sahibhuma) in this world with propriety’ (XXXI, 15).
In France, suhba takes the simple form of the weekly sessions, the gatherings of the path, the bond with the muqaddem. See the dhikr session and how to come and journey.