Customer Reviews

Sufism II: Fear and Hope, Contraction and Expansion, Gathering and Dispersion, Intoxication and Sobriety, Annihilation and Subsistence

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This is the second in a series of volumes on Sufism by the Nimutallahi Sufi shaikh Javad Nurbakhsh. I have read many books on sufism, including the available translations of Sufi classics, but the Nurbakhsh books are particularly useful to people who are trying to get a grasp of the sufi path. Nurbakhsh focuses on particular aspects of the sufi path in each of the volumes, using well-chosen citations from a very comprehensive group of the Sufi classics of earlier centuries. For someone who is trying to understand the sufi path without the assistance of a flesh and blood pir , murshid, or shaikh (preceptor or guide) you cannot do better than to use Nurbakhsh's books as a guide. The Sufi path, rather like Buddhism, from which it no doubt received some influences via Central Asia, is fundamentally a process of psychological self-refinement utilizing various exercises and meditative techniques. Those techniques help the "raw" individual who is still living at the mercy of his or her nafs al amarrah (soul inclining to ignorance and wrongdoing) to undergo a reorientation to a gradual merging with the qualities (ninety-nine names) of Allah. One does not become God but assimilates godlike qualities by gradually subtracting lower human tendancies governed by the nafs-al-amarrah. Finally at the end of a path of committed practice one will be rewarded with the goal of the sufi path--fana wa baqa --extinction of the lower self and persistence in the qualities of godliness. The means to this end is ma'arifat --gnosis, ie, the specialized knowledge whose goal is human enlightenment and liberation. Nurbakhsh's books show the way with the minimum of extraneous information and therefore are appropriate for people who are serious about exploring and learning from the sufi path.