Sufism and Its Power

Lecture by: Prof. Seyyed Hossein Nasr

What is Integration?
First of all, I want to address myself to a very important metaphysical question and that is: What do we mean by integration? Of course, from the point of view of pure metaphysics, - not only Sufism but also all other forms of metaphysics -, Oneness in its absoluteness belongs to the Absolute alone. It is only the One who is one ultimately. This is not simply a repetition of terms. It is reasserting the fact that we always forget: we are chasing after that One in its reflections in the lower levels of reality. But we must always remember this metaphysical truth: Oneness, in its highest and absolute sense, belongs to God as the Absolute the Brahman, Allah, the Godhead, and the Ultimate Reality. Precisely because of that, no plane of manifestation can be fully one, by virtue of participating in multiplicity. However, pure multiplicity itself also could not exist: it would be non-existent. Because multiplicity always issues from the One, always issues from the Supreme Principle. Remembering this, we shall understand what integration is really. We always talk about integration. Everyone is in favour of integration. We always try in the modern world to achieve integration by bringing forces together on a single plane of reality. This

is metaphysically impossible. It is only a transcendent principle that can integrate the various elements on a lower level of reality. This repeats itself through all of the hierarchies of the universe. For the whole universe, it is only the Divine Principle God- who integrates the whole universe. On the all levels of the devas, the archangels, - in the Abrahamic world, whatever language you wish to use - of the psychological world, physical world, - it is always the higher principle (and the elements and forces involved in that level of reality) that can integrate that level of reality. Let me give you a concrete example. Take the human being. We are composed by body, soul and Spirit. There is no way we can integrate our body without the presence of the soul. Thats why when the soul departs, the body falls apart into dust. And all of this remarkable integrated functioning of the various parts of our body ( which is one of the greatest miracles to which we pay very little attention, using this idiotic metaphor of the body as a machine, invented by Descartes which has landed us into the crisis that we are now. The body is not a machine at all -) If you look at the body, you see the remarkable integrated function that it has. But the moment the soul is not there, the whole integration falls apart. The same is true for the soul. Our soul is scattered like particles flowing out of a centre. We live in a scattered world. The common everyday English usage of the word scattered brain is not false in the sense that our mind is a scattered mind. There is absolutely no way to integrate it without the presence of the Spirit. It is only the Spirit that is able to integrate the psyche. This principle of integration does not only relate to God as the Supreme Reality but to every level of reality down to the physical level of reality. To talk of integration, we must accept the vertical dimension of reality. The reason that we cannot integrate anything in our world is because of the eclipse of knowledge of that vertical dimension. We always try to integrate. We talk about how people should be friends, races should be friends, religions should be friends, - but, of course, thats a lot of talk. We know what is going on in our world. The most

fundamental unit of our society the family is going the other way. The family is breaking up; because we are breaking up within ourselves. Because there are so few people who possess an integrated inner being. Thats because of the forgetting of the vertical dimension. It is in light of this principle that I wish to discuss Sufism and its relationship with the integration of man, first inward and then outward.

Sufism
Sufism is the esoteric dimension of Islam. This you have heard a thousand times. Islamic esoterism is not exhausted by Sufism. It has certain manifestation within Twelve Imam Shiism -Ithna Ashri - and in Ismailism in its classical form which are not strictly speaking Sufism but they all issue from the same source. Its most important central crystallisation (of Islamic esoterism) is Sufism. What do I mean by esoterism? It is a word which is very dangerous to use in the modern world because it is confused with occultism. It is strange that it is only the West that a phenomenon such as occultism arose. There is no occultism in the Buddhist, Hindu or Islamic civilisation; because the esoteric was always present. By esoteric, I do not mean occultism. By esoteric, I mean the inner dimension of both religion, and of reality itself (manifested reality). Now in the same way everything in this world comes from the hidden to the manifest. We ourselves are born from the wombs of our mothers. From darkness unto light we come. As you know, the fountain of life in all mythologies flows from a dark cave. This darkness is not emptiness: it is in fact the non-manifested. Everything in the world that we are able to experience (even in the field of quanto-mechanics, if I were to give an example from modern physics) goes from the nonmanifested to the manifested, therefore from the hidden to the known. Metaphysically speaking, the hidden can be juxtaposed from being the inward to being the Transcendent. The transcendent and the inward are

really the same. The most transcendent reality is the most inner reality. The esoteric also means the transcendent. If instead of using the image (inside-out), you use the image of (up and down) this is more familiar for you who come from a Western background. For Hinduism, and the school of Advaita Vedanta, it would be the other way. Lets go back to the hierarchy of things. In Islam, you first of all have God, the One. The One, one of his names, is Al-Haqq: The Truth (to which Christ referred in the Gospels) Al-Haqiqah in Arabic. That is the highest level of reality. Haqiqah and Al-Haqq are related to one another: one means truth as we can grasp. One is the name of God that is associated with that Truth. That is the heart of Islam. Then, you have the level of the Tariqah (The Path): which is associated with Sufism. The word turuqila-allah (paths towards God) is the same as Sufism although in its early history up to the end of eleventh Christian century, Sufism had not been ordered and crystallised into what we call Tariqas today. After that period, the turuq have names: Shadhiliyyah, Qadiriyyah, Nimatullahi, Chishti, and so on. Nevertheless, the idea of Tariq ila Allah goes back to the Hadith of the Prophet of Islam himself: There are as many ways to God, as there are children of Adam. This means that there is a path (tariq) which connects each of us to God. That does not mean that there are 5.5 billion Tariqas but these are crystallised into major paths that lead us to God. The actual orders come somewhat later. The reality of Sufism starts with the inner dimension of the Qurn and the Sunnah of the Prophet. Then, we have the Sharih which defines Islamicity on the external plane of action. We have a vertical hierarchy of Sharih, of Tariqah, of Haqiqah. The goal of everything Islamic on all levels of Islamic reality is of course Tawhid (unity). This Arabic word (which entered all Islamic languages even Hindi and Bengali) in its original Arabic is really untranslatable. It is a noun but it is also a verbal noun that implies

action. It means : oneness, unity as a noun but it also means tawhid from bb al-tafil which according to Arabic grammar means : integration, bringing into oneness, unification, the act of brining into one. In English, you have to choose one or the other. There is no word that implies both. But this is very important if we want to understand the meaning of integration. Integration means to achieve Tawhid: To become Godlike because God is One. The Supreme Tawhid belongs to God alone. We can never achieve complete Oneness unless we realise that we are nothing, and that God is everything. Fan is the awareness of our nothingness. It is only at the stage of Fana that you achieve that supreme unity. That corresponds very much to: That art thou Tat tvam asi. In that state, you can have supreme unity. Every aspect of life points towards that. Everything that we do should direct us more and more towards Tawhid. This beings with the level of the Shariah which I will not deal with tonight, but I will just mention a few points. There are too many imponderables in the world of multiplicity for our intelligence to be able to solve; especially in the chaotic world in which we live. So that we no longer have need of Gods law. That is impossibility in this age. This has been discussed not only by Sufis but also in the classical texts of Hinduism concerning the Kali-Yuga in which we live. Therefore, it is not what many apathetic or Sufis have written: cast away the Shariah and you will reach the Divine. Today, of course, it is much easier to cast away the Shariah without reaching the divine at all. You fall to the bottom of the well. The reason why the books of Idries Shah were selling is that unfortunately that is what he said. You do not need to do the hard work: just read the poetry of Rumi and you will achieve integration. Thats not possible, if we look at it seriously. We first of all must begin with accepting the Shariah as that which integrates life. That is closes you into a cadre which prevents the soul from falling into various pitfalls. By limiting the soul horizontally, it prepares the soul to journey vertically. There is no possibility of the vertical journey without limitations on the horizontal plane. He who seeks to achieve freedom horizontally will never achieve freedom

vertically. I think the history of the modern world has shown that enough to us. We do not have to think much about it. According to the Sharih, on that level of the understanding of Islam, God judges us by the actions that we perform. If you have the intention of murdering someone but do not do it, you are not punished by the law. Sufism begins from that point: Sufism is interested in niyyah (intention). According to the Hadith of the Prophet:

God judges actions by intention. It is important to follow the Sharih, but more than that, you must be able to integrate the soul. It is more difficult to integrate the soul than to integrate the body. How many of us are healthy physically but become psychologically depressed? We know that too well. This is one of the maladies of the modern world: scattered psyches. Sufism begins on concentrating on that level. That is not the goal. That is not the end. The end of Sufism is not a healthy psyche, according to modern psychology. Modern psychology is only a parody of traditional psychology. The end of Sufism is Tawhid, is to achieve unity. Sufism turns to the second level of the human macrocosm without neglecting the first (which is the physical, and is extremely important by trying to integrate the psyche. How does it achieve that? Sufism always emphasizes the affect that the body has upon the psyche. Sufism never deals with the psyche as a dismembered mind floating in the air. The body is very important: postures, sitting down, what you do at the table, the adab (traditional courtesy, manners, comportment) It is a very difficult word to translate. All of these play a role. The body must help. You cannot do anything with the body, the way people used to dress, the people used to show their humility, certain postures and so forth. The body plays a role in enabling Sufism to integrate the psyche. This is very complicated. Sometimes also it

does not have to play a role. There are all kinds of possibilities. Generally, the training of the soul does not divorce the soul from the body. The body is the horse which we ride on this life. There is a very profound relationship between the steed and where we are going to go. More than that, Sufism is based upon certain forms of prayer, of meditation and of cultivation of virtues. I want to mention this three just briefly.

Prayer
All practicing Muslims pray five times a day. That itself is a miraculous possibility to have so many people breaking the routine of life systematically (which we call life, but which is really daydreaming) to stand before the Absolute, before the One - that is the foundation of all other prayers. But then the soul can fall into forgetfulness. The Sufis, first of all, try to expand this experience into the Prayer of the Heart at all times of the day, and even in sleep. The ideal is not only to pray at certain moments, not only to pray at all moments, but to become prayer. The very substance of the soul must become prayer. It must be identified with prayer. That is why the Qurn mentions more than almost any other word, the word dhikrallh (Remembrance of God) the Remembrance of God goes all the way from the Remembrance of God at the Centre of our Heart (where God Himself resides; there, he is always remembered anyway. It is we who have forgotten that centre) to the body itself. I always like to quote this from Jalal al-Din Rumi. He says in the Mathnavi: Go sit cross-legged in a corner. Take a rosary into your hand. And invoke the name of God. Say Allah Allah Allah, until your very toe is invoking Gods name. It is not sufficient that your tongue invokes. Prayer is essentially remembering God. To remember God is to pray. It is impossible to pray without remembering God. It is impossible to remember God without praying, in one way or another.

Sufism has extraordinary methods and spiritual techniques on how to apply this prayer to all levels of human existence; from the physical (which I gave I gave example) to that of the tongue (this is of course part of our body), to the air that comes of our lungs, and that corresponds very much to the Sanskrit Paran, to the mental prayer, and finally to the prayer of the Heart. The goal of Sufism is in prayer. Every-time our heart beats it repeats the name of God. Every-time we breathe, we invoke God. We take this breathing so much for granted. I have been having a shortage of breath for the last month and now I understand that breathing is a great blessing. Because when the breath goes in, you do not know if it comes out or not. Do not be sure of yourself either. We never know when the last breath comes out. We must always be reminded, always aware, always mindful. This idea of mindfulness which is found in Buddhism is also there is Tasawwuf. Every breath, coming in or going out must be identified with the remembrance of God. To this is added communal practices, invocations of groups, combined with sometimes beautiful music, with poetry those are all added elements to help the soul to pay attention. The soul loves to do everything except pay attention. This makes prayer very difficult. This makes the second element necessary: meditation.

Meditation
We are not only a soul and a body. There is part of the soul which is like a mirror that reflects the Intellect but is not the Intellect itself. In Sufism, Intellect and Spirit are the same. Intellect is not reason. By Intellect, I do not mean the modern usage of the English word. Al-aql and al-Ruh are the same. According to Hadith,

The first thing that God created was Intellect. According to another Hadith:

The first thing that God created was the Spirit Therefore, they really must be the same thing or that they are two aspects of the same reality. That intellect, at the centre of our heart, is also reflected upon the mirror of the mind (soul). The mind is a modern invention. Descartes invented it. It is very interesting that in French, the word for Spirit and Mind is the same: l'esprit. In German, the word Geist means both. In English, fortunately we have two words. So we can at least make the necessary distinction between spirit and mind. We are not just as a mind. But there is a part of our inner being in which ideas keep rising without our control. Then we have another part of the soul which creates not ideas, but images: that is the imagination - both in its negative and positive sense. The late Henry Corbin, on the basis of major Persian philosophical and mystical texts and also writings of Ibn Arabi, the great Andalusian Sufi has made known to the West what he calls mondus imaginalis : The Imaginal World. Imagination has both its positive and negative aspects. In any case, we are not the masters of that world. All of you are sitting here are trying very hard to listen to what you say. My words are too humble and if I were to play the B-minor in Mass, your mind would begin to go astray and after a few minutes you have to bring it back to listen. It is extremely difficult to control these ever-flowing forms that the imagination creates and the concepts/ideas that come into the mind and again to quote Rumi, he says: You think you are the master of your thinking, whereas it is your thinking that is the master you. You are the horse and it is riding upon you.

We have this very difficult problem on how to concentrate. All spiritual techniques have for their end to enable us to concentrate. All of these things you have heard about yoga, about Tantra, about Daoist practices, about Sufism, about traditional Christianity about the tradition which is still alive on Mount Athos Sufism has a very elaborate method of meditation. In contrast to many other traditions, it has written very little about it. It is passed through oral tradition. Each Sufi order has different types of meditation. The goal is to integrate the mind: that aspect of our soul, in which there is this constant change, coming and going of ideas.

Cultivation of Virtues
The cultivation of virtues is so central that the early books of Sufism used to be simply books of virtue. Many people who have fled from a kind of unintelligible moralism are put off by works that deal with virtue. They like works of the East which have nothing to do with virtue and just talk about metaphysical matters. Of course, that is impossible. Truth belongs to God. It does not belong to us. How do we participate in that Truth? We only participate by participating in Gods virtues. All virtues, according to Sufism, come ultimately from God. In a more palpable way, they were embodied in the character of the Prophet of Islam. In the same way that in Christian universe, all virtues are possessed by Christ, thats absurdity and blasphemy. In the same in Islam, there is no virtue that any Muslim has possessed which was not possessed by the Prophet. This might sound astonishing for you because of the negative image of the Prophet which has been presented in the West, all these terrible biographies which have been written in the West, until finally they were corrected by the wonderful biography of my friend Dr. Martin Lings which came out in England a few years ago. But even now the esoteric virtues of the Prophet are not wellknown in Western sources. There is also need of an esoteric biography of the Prophet,as it exists in Arabic Persian Turkish poetry. Like Al-

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Burdah, the famous song of the cloak in Arabic, and its equivalents in Persian and in other Islamic languages. How to cultivate this virtue? That is a very difficult thing. It is easy to talk, very difficult to be. God gives certain people to understand, thats metaphysics, which is a gift from heaven, a sacred science but between the mental knowledge and its actualisation in our being there is a very long way. I always compare it to seeing the mountain and climbing the mountain. Thats easy: if you look, and if you have been given the grace of God to be present in this beautiful sight, you see the mountain. How much more difficult it is to climb it, to get to the top of the mountain. That is the only element which makes the prayers and meditations completely efficacious and can transform the chaos of our soul into unity and can integrate and once that is achieved then the spirit which is the only of our being which is already integrated (Gods viceroy in us: Heart/Intellect) Spirit within. We should allow that viceroy to rule within us, the spiritual king to rule within us. All of the chaos of the psyche and the body will become integrated. The goal is reaching unity ultimately. Before we get to the very ultimate stage of reality, which is the Divine Essence, on the pathway, one already transcends the world of forms. We live in the world of forms. All those ways of integration are really integration of various elements in the world of forms. Our body, our psyche, our ideas, are all forms in the formal world. Our Imaginal faculty produces forms: we close our eyes and we see a winged horse that carries us to the sky. One reaches the stage where one transcends the formal order and reaches the Formless. Here, the question of integration with the outer world comes in. There are two parts tp the outer world: one is our immediate immediate outer world (the world of our family, of our town, of the Sufi order itself, of our country, of Islamic world), there is another outer world which is the world of forms alien to us (belonging to another religion, belonging to another interpretation of our religion for example the difference between Catholicism and Orthodox in Christianity, Mahayana and Theravada in Buddhism, Bhakti and Jnani in India) in

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both Sufism, plays a very important role and has played a very important role historically. How can you really integrate one form with another form unless you have access to the Formless which enlivens and ensouls and gives life and spirit to the form of the other? How do we come to terms with the other? This is the great issue of other times. Of course, the answers already given in an unparalleled way by a number of people and especially by the F. Schuon who just died a year ago, , in his book: Transcendent unity of religions. That unity is transcendent vis--vis the world of forms. There is no possibility of integration in the formal plane. That is only an external and expedient integration. Real integration is to see the other as manifestation of the formless: to which our own soul and our spirit has gained access by virtue of our own inner integration. It is not accidential that throughout the history of Islam and most other religions, the real profound of integration of relationships between one religion and another. Because, in the olden days, it was religion that determined civilisation. Everything else was secondary. Culture, literature, art were all based on religious perspective which was central. Integration came through people who were men and women of Spirit they had reached their own inner centre. I could give a thousand examples between Islam and Christianity (thousands of dialogues, on the theological juridical level) that were made before modern times were made by a person such as a Nicholas of Cusa who was a Catholic esoterist and metaphysician of a very high order. There is no work up to modern times written by an orthodox traditional Catholic which is as aware of this transcendent unity as this work of Nicholas of Cosa who went to Istanbul in the 15th century. And there are many examples in Spain: Islam/Judaism Islam/Christianity. I do not want to get into that. Let us concentrate in India: The great land of India is the arena in which a sense the worlds oldest and youngest religion met: Hinduism and Islam. Many battles were fought. humans being are what they are. I am not at all denying that. That is not surprising. What is surprising is the really remarkable harmony that prevailed upon much of the history over the last seven hundred years

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over much of India. I am using my words very carefully. I did not say all of India or all of the last seven hundred years. Traditional Muslims and Hindus were much friendlier with each other than modern Hindus and Muslims in India. Because Modernism wants to base friendship upon secularism. That destroys the possibility of spiritual and religious understanding. And then the backlash of Hindu nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism. Let me recount a story for you. When I visited the Maharaja of Benares, I was treated royally, really royally- on a royal palace on this side of Ganges. Since I was an untouchable from the point of view of Hindu law (which I respected highly), I was not allowed to go into his palace. For four days, I was treated like a king. You cannot imagine how I was treated. That is why I became so spoiled. After 1979, life became so difficult! The last day, there was a concert being given by one of the classical singers of Sanskrit and Hindi songs. There were all these saddhus, and yogis, (noone had a Western dress), all these great pundits and all these pillars of Hinduism, orthodox traditional Hindus. I was the only Muslim there and I was not wearing Western dress either. I was sitting in the very front. Coommaroy began to sing from the Gita, divine beautiful voice. After that, he said in English: In honour of the one Persian guest we have here, I am going to sing a ghazal of Hafez. Hafez is the most difficult poem of Persian language. This Hindu, who has as orthodox a Hindu you can find, sang a couple of ghazals of Hafez without any mistake, as beautiful as you can imagine. I was absolutely astounded. When he finished, I said: Thank you very much, but I dont think anyone here understood what you sang. He said: Everybody understood what I sang. It is those people in Delhi who have forgotten their Hinduism and also do not know Persian anymore. This is 1962, not that far back. This was the traditional attitude and in the cultivation of this traditional attitude on both sides: both Muslims and spiritual Hindus from Shivaite and Vishnavaite branch. They all had a role to play. That side

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is for others to discuss. From the Islamic side, Sufism helped a lot to achieve this integration. Islam did not spread into India by an army. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna got as far as Lahore. The main lands of India was not captured by an army. It was due to the influence of Sufism. It was received very strongly. A large number of Sufi saints were deeply venerated by Hindus. I always repeat that. Everyone today is interested in Upanishads. Very few people know that it was Sufism who brought the Upanishads to England, to this very country. As some of you know, Prince Dara Shikoh translated the Upanishads into Persian in Benares. That Persian translation was translated into Latin and then that book was presented to Napoleon. That book suddenly became a great interest. One of the copies of this book landed in the library of William Blake. Everybody, including the late Ananda Coomaraswamy, always wrote that how strange it is that Blake sometimes wrote things so close to the Upanishads. Sufism played a role in introduction of Upanishads to the West. In India itself, Sufism created the necessary bridge for Hindus and Muslims to understand each other metaphysically spiritually and in the popular form in everyday living. In everyday living, societies that are religious, people within that society have a sense of smell of the sacred. They experience the Sacred in the same way that a cat does. We have two beautiful cats at home one of whom is very sensitive to prayers. Nobody taught her that, it is in her nature. It is too bad that we have lost that sense to a large extent today. People had a sense of the sacred, even when there were wars and they were fighting against each other. There was this sense of belief that the other side also belonged to the spiritual world. A great master of Tantra, whom I visited in Benares, once told me this. He knew nothing about Islam. He was sitting by the beautiful Ganges, north of Benares. He said: you know these Muslims, we fought against them. And we came across and we destroyed the bridge. They all had prayer rugs. They prayed and got on it and put the carpets on water. And they

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defeated us. He expressed this mutual understanding of the sense of sacred: presence of the sacred in the other. In addition, Sufism played a role in India as it did everywhere else, of making the wall of separation less opaque, of making it translucent. Not everyone was a Sufi. Even within Sufism, not everyone can achieve the ends. Many are called but few are chosen. Sufism

prevented bigoted positions from being taken. You see that also in Egypt: Sufism influenced the relationship between Copts and Muslims. You see that in my own country in Persia. Sufism opened the soul of ordinary people into greater receptivity of the other. There is no literature in the world as Persian literature as rich in discussing the unity of religions. Every other page of Hafez, of Mawln Jalal-al-Din Rumi is filled with verses of this kind. There are few people who understand Persian here, I shall refrain from quoting. But trust me. There are many poems like this. And they are often quoted by people who are not practicing Sufis, but because of the influence of a figure such as Rumi, in Bengali/Sindhi/Gujrati/Punjabi/Turkish culture, people knew these poems. Through this, Sufism had an effect on people vis--vis other religions, other cultures, other communities. Not to talk about language and race which Tasawwuf always deemphasized. Language was irrelevant. Language of the Heart was supreme. Colour of skin was irrelevant. To be a king or a beggar is totally irrelevant. In a traditional Sufi order, a beggar might have a higher rank and a more exalted station than a prime minister. All of this made possible a situation in which integration between various communities took place. I do not mean total integration which is in the hands of God but it created harmony between people. It is a mistake to think harmony is a modern invention that came with the locomotive. Harmony between people is not a modern invention. Thats a total misunderstanding of human history. Muslims, Christians, Jews lived in much greater peace in Cordoba a thousand years ago than they do now. There is no comparison. The sooner we learn that, the better. We are so proud of what we think we have achieved that we forget what

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we have lost. Sufism played a very important role within Islam: modifying excessive opposition between various schools; especially concerns Sufism and Shiism. I do not want to go to politics of Islamic world but I will say a few words about this. As all of you know, of all the greatest religion of the world, there is no religion in which there is one school which has a such a great majority as Sunnism has in Islam. It is estimated that around 86% of all Muslims are Sunnis and that something between 13-14% of Muslims are Shites. This is not the case of Theravada and Mahayana branches in Buddhism. This is also not the case of Catholicism, Protanestanism, Orthodox Church, and et cetera. Or Ashkenazi and Sephardic in Judaism and other religions. Sunnism is a large majority. So you might think there are no problems but there are problems actually in the sense that Shism is located in the middle parts of the Islamic world. All of Bengal, all of Chinese Islam, all of Indonesian and Malay Islam is completely Sunni. Thats about 400 million people. African Islam, and now it was not like that in the Middle Ages from Lebanon, Syria, to Morocco is again Sunni. So the middle part of the Islamic world stretching really from Northern India to Lebanon has a mixed population of Sunni and Shites. During most of history, Sunnis and Shiites lived in peace with each other. But sometimes they did not. Especially when important political issues were involved. Especially when the Ottomans were one of the most powerful Sultans in the world of that time and facing Europe suddenly found a major power behind them : that is the Safavid dynasty who were Shis. Since then, a lot of rivalry and tension came about that has survived to this very day. In India and Pakistan (which was then ruled by the Mughal Empire), there was not this political tension. There was no conflict between Sunnis and Shias in India. If India had any problems, it was not that. The southern kingdom in Hyderabad was predominantly Shia for a long time. There were Sunnis and Shiites living together in peace and harmony and Sufism always acted as an intermediary as the Spirit always dominated. There was a remarkable give and take not only

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between Hindus and Muslims but also between Sunnis and Shites. The problems which now India faces has come about (regarding the SunniShia relationship) were resulted through the spread of a particular interpretation of Islam unfortunately supported through shortsightedness by the United States. The result of this is Taliban in Afghanistan and these massacres that you see in Pakistan and in India. This particular interpretation of Islam is based first of all on the negation of Sufism. It is not accidential. That is why even from the point of view of expediency, it is important (not to use it politically and throw it away) but at least not to put obstacles before Sufism. Unfortunately, the modernists had a role to play in this because they hated Sufism even more than fundamentalists. It was first the modernists that turned against Sufism. But then came this fanatical religious movement which is based on the forgetting of Tasawwuf and forgetting the inner dimension of religion. Ultimately, Tawhid is not there for us to make use in order to have worldly peace. We will never have peace unless we have Tawhid for itself. One of the names of God is Al-Salam that is Peace, Giver of Peace. There is no possibility of peace with the forgetfulness of God. We should not use religious or spiritual teachings as means for political expediency. The integration of Sufism should be thought of in its inner aspect. He or she who is integrated within will integrate the immediate world about him or her. If there are enough people like that, they will transform and change the scene. I want to conclude by saying that Sufism is important and crucial in bringing about integration in the lives of human beings in the outer world. More important than that is for us to integrate ourselves. If we integrate ourselves, we can integrate the world without. Without integrating ourselves, we cannot integrate the world around us. We have to integrate ourselves: by integrating ourselves, we take a great step to reach that Peace for which all soul yearns, the Love which controls inwardly everything that we do Love of Truth, Love of Nature and Love of fellow human beings -. Without that inner integration, this remains a dream. But let us at least dream on

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until the dream is insha Allah one day realised through the integration of our being and our becoming what God wants us to be on this earth, reflecting His Love and His Unity.

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