Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

A Sufi in Ecstasy in a Landscape — Mughal period painting, c. 17th century, LACMA collection. The ecstatic state (hal) that overtakes the Sufi in moments of deep practice is understood in the tradition not as a loss of consciousness but as a gain: the dissolution of the limited ego into the ocean of divine presence There is a verse in the Quran — 50:16 — that reads: "We are nearer to him than his jugular vein." It is among the most quoted in all of Islamic mysticism, and it expresses the foundational insight from which Sufism — the inner, mystical tradition within Islam — unfolds: that God is not distant, demanding, and separate from the human being, but intimate, present, and closer than the breath. The entire project of Sufism is to close the gap between the knowledge of this proximity and the direct experience of it. Sufism ( taṣawwuf in Arabic) is the esoteric dimension of Islam: the tradition of contemplative practice, poetry, sacred music, spiritual psychology, ...

At the center of Islamic civilization, running through its heart like a hidden river, flows a current of mystical experience that the religion's more legalistic forms have often tried to contain and sometimes to suppress — and that has always found a way to express itself anyway, in poetry, in music, in the ecstatic turning of the body, and in some of the most exquisite visual art ever produced in the history of human civilization. This current is Sufism — tasawwuf in Arabic — the inner dimension of Islam, its esoteric heart, the path of direct experience of the divine that runs alongside and sometimes athwart the path of law and doctrine. The name's origins are debated: some derive it from suf (wool), referring to the coarse woolen garments worn by early Muslim ascetics; others from safa (purity); others from the Greek sophia (wisdom). What is not debated is what Sufism seeks: fana — annihilation of the ego in the divine Beloved — and baqa — subsistence in that unity, ...

In the great desert cities of the medieval Islamic world — Baghdad, Cordoba, Cairo, Nishapur — there flourished a tradition of mystical practice so profound, so beautiful, and so radically centered on love that it transformed not just Islam but the spiritual vocabulary of the entire human race. It produced some of the greatest poetry ever written, some of the most sophisticated philosophical theology ever developed, and a vision of the relationship between the human soul and the Divine that still speaks directly to the deepest hunger of contemporary seekers. This is Sufism ( Tasawwuf in Arabic) — and it is, at its heart, a science of the heart. What is Sufism? Sufism is the mystical dimension of Islam — the tradition within Islamic spirituality that emphasizes direct, personal experience of the Divine rather than (or in addition to) external religious observance. Where conventional Islamic practice focuses on law ( Sharia ), theology ( Kalam ), and community duties, Sufism focuse...

In the 13th century, in the city of Konya in what is now Turkey, a scholar of Islamic law and theology experienced a meeting so shattering, so completely reorganizing of his inner world, that it turned a distinguished professor into one of the greatest poets who ever lived. The meeting was with a wandering mystic named Shams of Tabriz . The scholar was Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi . What happened between them remains mysterious — exactly what Shams said or did to transform the learned but spiritually unfulfilled Rumi is not recorded. What is recorded is the aftermath: six years of volcanic poetic production, including the Masnavi ( Masnavi-ye Ma'navi — Spiritual Couplets), 25,000 verses considered the greatest work of Persian literature and one of the supreme spiritual poems in any language. Today, in translation, Rumi is the bestselling poet in the United States. His words appear on Instagram, on yoga studio walls, in graduation speeches and wedding ceremonies. Some of this ubiq...