Love, the Foundation of Sufism

I went to the Doctor.
'I feel lost, blind with love.
What should I do?'
Give up owning things and being somebody.
Quit existing!
Rumi



 Stay in the company of lovers.
Those other kinds of people, they each
want to show you something.
Rumi


"The foundation of Sufism is love . The Sufis even say of their teachings as of “hymn to the Divine Love” and call it tassawuri — love-vision. Love is considered in Sufism as the power which strengthens one’s feeling of being contained in God. This process results in understanding that in the world there is nothing but God, Who is the Lover and the Beloved at the same time.

One of the tenets of Sufism is: God is Lover and the Beloved. A truly loving Sufi gradually submerges, sinks, and becomes dissolved in the Creator — in his or her Beloved. The principle of regarding God as the Beloved originated from the Sufi direct experience. The Sufis describe this in the following way. When man traverses a certain part of the Path of Love, God begins to help him more actively by drawing him to His Abode. And then man begins to feel more intensely God’s Divine Love. Let us see how such love, leading man to God, develops according to the views of Rumi . This happens:

1) through the development of the emotional, cordial love for all the beautiful and harmonious in the world;

2) through active, sacrificial love-service to people;

3) and then — through extending this love to all manifestations of the world without discriminating between them; the Sufis say: “If you make a distinction between things originating from God — you are not man of spiritual Path. If you think that a diamond can ennoble you and a stone lowers you, then God is not with you” .

4) such developed love for all elements of the Creation is redirected then to the Creator — and man begins to see that, according to Rumi, “the Beloved is present in everything” .

Obviously, this concept of love is identical to the one described in the Bhagavad Gita and the New Testament: it has the same milestones and accents. The true love is regarded in Sufism in the same way as in the best spiritual schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity — as the only power capable of bringing man to God.

The Sufis believe that one does not need seclusion to go to God. They say that the worldly activity by itself does not separate you from God if you are not attached to its fruits and if you remember about Him. Therefore on all steps of the spiritual ascent, man may be involved into social life. Moreover according to Sufism, it is social life that provides one with the possibilities for perfecting oneself. If every life situation is considered as educational, then one can live side by side with the most awful and despising people. One can be subjected to the most coarse influence — and do not suffer from it; on the contrary, one can be joyful and calm, and perfect oneself through these social contacts given by God.