Spiritual
Leaders

You know,

humans have two different understandings of creation.

They have what they see as the world outside themselves,

that they are part of through their senses,

a world that they can

see, hear smell, touch and taste,

a world that is one with their bodies.

Then they have an inner world of feeling

thought and imagination and understanding,

a world that gets information from the outside world,

but isn't part of it,

a world of who they are.

Who they are is their self,

their nafs, their soul,

and it does not seem solid like the outer world,

but it can be heard as an inner voice

or seen as an inner vision,

and is strong enough to control how the outer world appears,

making good seem bad and vice versa.

And when the body sleeps, the self can even imagine itself in an outer world

that seems as solid as the one that it lives in when it is awake,

though the dream world doesn't always seem to follow the same rules

as the one that they see when they think they are awake.

The outer world is understood by the mind,

situated in a brain in the head,

a mind which also controls the way that world is seen and understood,

but the inner world is understood by the heart,

and that is where the power lies,

because the heart can control the mind.

The heart does not need understanding,

or words or numbers to describe its experience of its world.

It goes by too fast for words to describe,

and is not solid enough to be counted.

It is the heart that is there to deal with

all those things that are beyond description,

and so it is the heart that is needed to experience the existence of God.

Humans may try to express God's Will

in terms of laws to be followed in the outer world,

but without the experience of God

those laws make no sense.

The Qur'an makes clear that God can change the rules of the outer world at will,

and such events are seen as miracles,

and it also makes clear that God is beyond human understanding.

Whatever we can imagine, God is Greater.

So from the very beginning of the Revelation,

what the Messenger was communicating

was not just a set of laws, but an experience of God's reality,

the Truth of God's existence,

and that truth was transmitted from person to person down the years

in a way that was quite independent of lawyers,

each guiding another on a path that had stages that could be named,

even though words could not adequately describe them.

The followers of the Inner Way became known as Sufis,

and their lines of transmission through history are traced back to the Messenger

through famous sufis from whom the different branches derive their names,

and although these are usually men,

there are many women in muslim history who were also famous

for the holiness of their state,

and their ability to guide and help others along the path.

Perhaps the most famous is Rabi'a al-Adawiyya,

born less than a hundred years after the Messenger's death,

and someone who tried to put her experience in words,

and for the first time we get to hear

language expressing the longing for union with God

in terms of love,

and God as the Beloved,

and to the Beloved we surrender,

a very different language

to that of submission to God's law.

Not that sufis didn't feel the need to do what God required of them,

they prayed and fasted,

and made dzikr of remembrance,

if anything more than most,

they just approached the law in a different way,

with a different understanding,

less "submission" which suggests unwillingness,

and more "surrender" which suggests freely given,

everything you have

surrendered through the heart.

And although the best known sufis were saintly men,

women were always there,

if slightly less visible,

but many of the great sufi masters had teachers,

students and spiritual friends who were women.

Bayazid Bestami said his master was an old woman he met in the desert,

and he also voiced great respect for Fatima of Nishapur,

and Ibn 'Arabi studied with two women,

serving for several years as a disciple of Fatima of Codova.

In some sufi circles women were integrated with men,

while some had their own separate circles.

Women are historically less visible,

perhaps because their communication is more verbal

and personally communicated

rather than texts specifically written for future use.

There were those that would weep,

and those that would rejoice,

and those have a different kind of permanence.

But some couldn't help being famous,

like Jahanara,

as she was the daughter of Emperor Shah Jahan

and his wife Mumtaz Mahal,

for whom he built the Taj Mahal.

Jahanara could write,

and wrote biographies of a number of saintly sufis,

as well as writing of her personal sufi journey.

She is buried close to the tomb of the Chisti master Nizam al-Din 'Awliya in Delhi,

in a grave open to the weather,

quite unlike the Taj Mahal