Sufi brotherhood: the bond that unites the disciples of a path
Contents
In Sufism, brotherhood derives in the first place from the model that comes down from the Prophet Muhammad. It designates the privileged bond uniting the disciples of a path, a bond that proceeds from the spiritual influence of the guide of that path, acting as heir to the Muhammadan teaching. Not only is this brotherhood an eminent part of the initiatic journey; more than that, it nourishes it and anchors it in a deeply human dimension, offering the possibility of a mirror held up to oneself, in echo of the hadith declaring that the believer is the mirror of the believer. Thus Sufi brotherhood does not draw its foundation from a community of opinions, social conventions, or social and affective interests. Its source lies elsewhere: each person is bound to the others by the spiritual authorisation entrusted to the guide, who distils his spiritual influx into hearts and helps unite them.
What founds cohesion within the initiatic community is therefore the shaykh (the spiritual guide), or more precisely his spiritual state, guarantor of the investiture he has received. Sidi Hamza al-Qadiri Boudchich (1918-2017) spoke of spiritual brotherhood in these terms: “The love between fuqara’ (disciples), and between the fuqara’ and the guide, is infinite. It keeps on growing. One would wish never to part. This love is due to the sirr (spiritual secret), and it exists because we are gathered only for God. This love causes all cultural differences to fall away. When you are in a spiritual company, in a relationship of brotherhood (I am not speaking here of brotherhood in the ordinary sense, but of that brotherhood invested with love), hearts beat in phase, minds are in affinity, such a wine of love circulates between us! That is the royalty of God!”
The path as a crucible
Sufi brotherhood is one of the fruits of the dhikr and of the disciples’ spiritual work. It cannot last if it comes down to a simple desire for friendly relations, for what matters is the quest for the Face of God, in a trusting self-surrender to the guide. If brotherhood is so precious, it is certainly not to feed a sectarian behaviour that would shut others out, but on the contrary to give birth to the unconditional love owed to all creatures, and to cultivate it. The great majority of the disciples of a Sufi path are not saints; they are engaged in a process of evolution tending gradually to heal the “diseases” of their soul. Each person is thus on the way, and finds in the community of disciples a crucible that should tend to exclude, as far as possible, slander, ill will and rancour. The disciple must however be ready not to lose his temper when confronted with the hazards bound up with the “diseases” of one another’s souls which, in order to be healed, will manifest themselves. He will thus be led to endure certain “frictions” that are bound to arise in the course of relations with other disciples. These frictions must not be seen as trivial human quarrels: they are essential to the gradual polishing of souls, rather like the pebbles of a torrent that polish one another under the effect of the current.
In fact, the Sufi disciple can have no other enemy than his own ego, which is why he will try to keep as far as possible every form of rancour towards whoever might have bruised or wounded him. He must be vigilant about the despotic tendencies of his carnal soul, ever ready to impose its directives, very often at others’ expense. This vigilance shows itself notably in a capacity to scrutinise his own faults and discern the selfish tendencies commanding certain of his acts. When such a disposition is accompanied by a desire to magnify all that comes from others, one touches the state of the true disciple, who strips himself of all attribution and becomes a “poor one in spirit”, as the Arabic word faqir used for the disciple of a spiritual path reminds us. The spiritual practices proper to islam and to the Sufi path, lit up by the flavours of contemplating the Muhammadan model, make it possible to “keep on a leash” the soul that incites to evil, rather as one controls a bad dog. Sufi brotherhood is a support for this constant effort against the tendencies of the soul, and lets it cross, one by one, the stages of purification.
In the end, spiritual love (mahabba) cannot be expressed in words, but rather in a code of conduct and in acts. In love there are no words, only proofs, and it is those one must look to. These acts of love are a source of adab (spiritual courtesy) and let one progress along the path, as an adage suggests: “He who surpasses you in excellence of conduct surpasses you in Sufism.” This means that the disciple whose heart has been sufficiently “polished” adopts a rightness of conduct spontaneously, precisely the one the present moment calls for. The mahabba has then settled in his heart and spread its roots through the whole body. He is filled with the Muhammadan model.
The polishing of souls
The meeting of disciples delimits a sacred space within the field of social relations. Sincere disciples are like embers: together they form a blaze whose brilliance mingles with that of the divine light. Spiritual education is a path of inner liberation. The friction of souls is a good indicator of the distance taken from attachments, certainties and self-love. There are always problems in a community, and they have their function. “Your true companion is only he who keeps your company while knowing your faults. Thus is your generous master alone. The best of companions is he who seeks you without expecting profit from you” (Sufi wisdom).
A Sufi master used to tell his disciples that to blame the one who commits a fault, or to expose his errors to him in public, is to league oneself with Satan against him. He advised them instead to cover his faults and to pray, expressing during the sujud (the prostration) the intention that his heart be healed. Allah is the One who covers (al-Sattar) and veils the faults of His creatures, and He loves those who do the same.
It has been said that, on the path, souls rub against one another like pebbles in the current of a river. They rub so as to be polished, not hardened. The logic of the ego is to hold a grudge, to see the other, with all his dreadful faults, as the cause of the difficulties, the unease, the pain. Sufi brotherhood creates, in our time, the conditions necessary for a fundamental realisation: the other exists only through the prism of our own faults. We perceive him only as distorted by our passions, our attachments, our egotistic habits, our individual conformism or our mental habits. For mahabba to enter the heart and settle there, so that one can love all creatures, the disciple must free himself of all these shackles, rather like the bowl that must first be emptied in order to be filled again. The relational difficulties, which can be so wounding, become on the path a moment of teaching, of awareness, of polishing, of renunciation that opens onto what lies well beyond, for in the end “man infinitely surpasses man”.
By Marie-Hélène Dassa.
