Sufis : The People of the Path

  Osho says:
" I am not talking on Sufism, I will be talking Sufism. If you are ready, If you are ready to go into this adventure, then you will attain to a taste of it. It is something that will start happening to your heart. It is something like a bud opening.You will start feeling a certain sensation in the heart- as if something is becoming alert, awake there; as if the heart has been asleep for long, and now, the first glimmer of the morning - and there you will have the taste."

(Review by Swami Kul Bhushan)
A small boy was playing in the garden. He was a very small boy and very much afraid of the large bulldog that occupied the yard next to his home. One day, feeling rather adventurous, the little boy climbed the fence and the huge bulldog rushed up to him and licked his face. The boy began to scream and his mother rushed to the scene almost immediately.
“Did he bite you, darling?”
“No,” whimpered the boy,” but he tasted me.”

If you are not ready to have a bite of Sufism, you can at least taste it. And Osho’s discourses in the book – ‘Sufis: The People of the Path’ is a superb aperitif.

But you must be warned. This book is fatal. Once you start reading it, you cannot stop for it hurtles you along a wondrous journey on the path of love. 

Sufism is a special kind of magic, a rare kind of magic. It can be transferred only from person to person, not from a book, says Osho. Yet this book succeeds in the impossible as Osho seems to be talking only to you alone through its pages. You can start on this journey only if you are courageous like the little boy. But don’t worry, instead of his mother, you have Osho to hold your hand.

Let us explore. So who is a Sufi? An ancient Persian dictionary says Sufi Chist – Sufi Sufist. A Sufi is a Sufi. This does not take us very far. An old Sufi master, has said, ”Sufism was once a reality without a name, and now Sufism is a name without reality.” Again, we are at a dead end.

Let us look at the word Sufi. The word came from German scholarship about 150 years ago. In Arabic, it is called ‘tasawwuf’. Both come from the root ‘suf’ which means wool. It is symbolic because Sufis wore woollen robes. The woollen robe stood for being without mind – tuning with existence, dropping all philosophies, to be innocent like an animal, not to know what is good or bad, not choosing, not repressing, then the highest good arises, explains Osho.

“The animal is one – hence the blissful of the animal. The animal has nothing whatsoever to be happy about. He has not a big palace to live in and he has not the TV and the radio and all that. He has nothing and yet you will find great peace, silence, joy celebration. Why? One thing is there; the animal is not a chooser. The Sufi is not a chooser. Choose and you deceive, choose and you start going false; choose and you become plastic,” says Osho. 

Sufi can also come from another word ‘ Sufia.’ Which means chosen by a friend of God. Sufis say you cannot search for God unless he has already chosen you. He knows, but how can you know? 

Another possibility is from the Greek word, Sophia meaning wisdom. Not knowledge that can be acquired or borrowed. Wisdom arises in your own being, from your experience, when you know and when you do not believe. One becomes Sufi only when one knows, when one touches reality, seen the face of God. Then one becomes wise - a Sufi.

Osho says, “Sufism is the path of love. It is more dancing than Zen, it is more singing than Zen, it is more celebrating than Zen. That’s why the countries where Sufism has existed have created the most beautiful poetry that has ever existed in the world. The Persian language became so poetic, and it has created the greatest poets of the world. They very language has become very juicy – because God is thought of as the beloved.”

The list of Sufi poets is magnificent but the West knows only Omar Khayyam whose ‘Rubaiyat’ was translated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859 and has become perhaps the most loved love poem. Osho maintains that Fitzgerald has committed the greatest crime against the Sufi Master Khayyam by rendering his poem only in terms of wine, women and romance.

The most quoted verse in its English translation is:
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of wine, a book of verse – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness –
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

Which bread, bough, wine, book, Thou, wilderness and paradise is Khayyam talking about?

Osho does not talk about Khayyam but of other Sufi masters in this book. Read Osho’s book and find out. It is love at its most lethal, if not fatal.