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Tasawwuf
Muharram 1400 Link to this page
Tasawwuf is the name generally applied to that branch of the Science that treats of the human heart, and of the development of individuals and the interaction between them as they begin to express distinctly human qualities socially. It is an applied natural science and cannot be studied or known as an academic subject abstracted from its application; and although its Law and methods may be studied and known, their validity apart from application in the working social medium does not attain to the science itself, and they cannot be called tasawwuf. Thus tasawwuf is known as a science only to its practitioners, and only as a result of direct involvement in the application; beyond this it appears only as a system of mystical proportion and is recognizable as a science only in its result.
As with any applied science, tasawwuf relies for its existence on the activity of a scientist, without which there is no result. Further, tasawwuf is applied socially; thus the result of this activity is a society. Since that society is defined, structured, and animated by the science-in-application, it possesses a natural dynamism which obscures perception from without: thus the result, while readily recognizable, is not amenable to ready description and is generally incomprehensible apart from the on-going work. It is, however, the oldest science known to humanity, and has produced distinct and prominent evidences of its existence as a science in human history.
Sufism is largely an esoteric doctrine. Tasawwuf is a science wholly consummate of shari'ah. Although it is correct to say it is wholly consonant with shari'ah, the totality of shari'ah does not attain tasawwuf but rather aims toward it. Tasawwuf is not remotely a doctrine, creed, system, praxis or methodology, nor is it reliant on any such rational constructs. Departure from shari'ah or reductio of the mastery as rational process severs the relation between practitioner and application ~ absent an engaged, competent practitioner, there is no application ~ and the resultant social body, if any, is fatally defective, ultimately resulting in an ethnic nationalism. Our history is littered with broken and attenuated chains of transmission of the science that persist because the ancillary sciences of shari'ah conceal and mitigate the effects of the fatal defect at the foundation. This most commonly occurs as a result of a singular transmission failure ~ the practitioner may succeed in inducing development of most of the prototypical characters comprising the viable body, but lack the success of replication of his own character and resultant transmission of the working tools of the science. Upon his passing, the tools of the science are lost, reduced to memory of situation-specific mechanics that worked in the instances of success, but lacking the inductive orchestration of the dynamisms, which is a peculiar mastery of the practitioner. The detritus of such failures, and their signs, are the emergence of priestly castes among the ancillary sciences, orthodoxist institution, ecclesiastical hierarchy, political organization and resultant loss of personal liberty, and the inevitable calcification and demise of the ancillary sciences. |