Tawba
The return to God: the first maqam of the path, a repentance that is not regret for an act but conversion of the heart.
Tawba comes from the verb taba, to return: it is the return to God, and the Qur’an makes it a command to all: ‘Return to God all together, O believers’ (XXIV, 31). In the manuals of the path, tawba opens the list of the maqamat: one does not journey without having turned back.
Sufi repentance is not the regret of some fault, soon forgotten. It is a turning of the whole heart, breaking with the habit of occupying oneself with other than God. Al-Qushayri reports the first masters’ requirement: true tawba leaves no ‘return’ to sin, and the repentant is never sure of himself, because the state lasts as long as vigilance lasts.
It is also the path’s act of entry: tradition recounts that every guide asked tawba of whoever knocked at his door, as a condition of transmission. The pact is, in this sense, a formalised tawba. On the concrete entry into the path, finding a Sufi master in France.