Feeling A Personal Connection With God Just Like Sufis
Strictly speaking, we can’t prove the existence of God with philosophical arguments. The Quran as a miracle of literature is only accessible to a very small group of people in the world, even then the criteria is subject to personal aesthetic understanding. The only way to prove the existence of God is to receive a response from God, not in an imaginary sense but a direct response, in the form of beatific vision. This was the conclusion reached by Ghazali, Rum and Iqbal many centuries later. But after reading the work of Mujadid Alif Thani, I think we have to believe in God in the sense of Iman Bil Ghaib, God is beyond comprehension by vision or intellect. As for shaikh and mureed relation. We don’t really need a proof. It’s meant as a teacher student relationship. This relationship is found in every serious endeavor and besides a prodigy, everyone is need of a teacher. You don’t need to join a tareeqah but it’s good to take advice from the people of Sufism. Personally speaking, l am disappointed and dissatisfied with the current Sufi tareeqahs so l am forced to read classical sufi books to gain the neccessary psycho-spiritual knowledge. If you want a very traditional treatise on Sufism, you can read Madarij Al Salikeen, which is a balanced sufi-ethic book devoid of excess asceticism found in work like Risala al Qushayriya or Qut al Quloob and the theosophy of Ibn Arabi in books like Fusus. Avoid speculative sufism and focus on ethics based sufism. No one will condemn this approach, not even Javed Ghamidi sb.