Sufism: Where Do We Draw The Line?
Personal experiences exist in all forms of spirituality in all religions and have been experienced since the dawn of human civilizations. There is no question of morality in these experiences either, absolutely immoral acts have been used to attain spiritual enlightenment. Most recent example is of Osho Rajnish First and foremost thing is to understand that reality of Nafs or soul will never be revealed to man. The spiritual masters of all major religions have claimed to know reality of soul and its relation to God but their answers are so diverse that you have to conclude that they are all wrong. Beside Allah clearly said that Soul is from Allah’s Amar and man is not given that knowledge ( They ask you ˹O Prophet˺ about the spirit. Say, “Its nature is known only to my Lord, and you ˹O humanity˺ have been given but little knowledge. 17:85 ) Secondly, there is good amount of spiritual experiences that can be repeated in lab using psycholedics like LSD, Psilocybin etc. This shows that brain creates these “experiences” in response to certain stimuli either by meditative practices or using drugs. Lastly, muslim sufi litrature is nothing but an imitation of greek mythology, Wahdat ul wujood, wahdat ul shahood, alam-e-Misal, Tanazullat-e-Satta. They used philosophy of Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus and gave it an islamic color. All conjecture and without any basis / evidence from Quran or sunnah. The real problem is to understand and identify the connection of the metaphysical (soul/ultimate reality) to physical (human brain and emotions) so far there’s no conclusive evidence and i do not think there ever will be. Because we can only know the physical and metaphysical will remain out of our reach because we r bound by laws of physics This is the reason that Quran never put forward any claim of “personal experience or spiritual experience” as proof of Allah’s existence or divinity. It always asked us to ponder in ourselves and the world around us be the most moral person outside and have the deepest possible connection with Quran. This is how sahaba practice their faith, pure and simple. Learn Quran and basic hadith so u know the boundaries yourself. Avoid notions like Tauheed of people and tauheed of ulema etc, aspects of Ilm-e-ludani, hadiths narrated from dreams, spiritual/sufi tafseer of ayahs that the words of ayah do not allow This is my understanding after spending sometime in reading sufi literature