Sufi Wisdom 1
Sufi Wisdom
There are three forms of culture:
worldly culture, the mere acquisition of information;
religious culture, following rules;
elite culture, self-development.
(The master Hujwiri, Revelation of the Veiled)
There is a story in Aesop's fables about a young mole who went to his mother and told her that he could see. Now, as most people know, sight is something traditionally lacking in moles. This one's mother decided to test him. She accordingly placed in front of him a piece of frankincense, and asked him what it was.
"A stone," said the little mole.
"Not only are you blind," his mother answered, "but you have lost your sense of smell as well."
Aesop, esteemed traditionally by Sufis as a practical teacher in an immemorial tradition of wisdom gained through the conscious exercise of the mind, body and perceptions, is not allowed much distinction by the overt meaning of this tale. The lameness of some of the morals (actually superficial glosses) of the Aesopian stories has been noticed by many students.
We can analyze the story to see what it really means, it we know something of the Sufi tradition and its method of concealing meanings in literature.
"Mole" in Arabic (khuld, from the radical KHLD) is written in the same way as khalad, which stands for "eternity, paradise, thought, mind, soul," according to the context. Because only the consonants are written, there is no way of telling, in isolation, which word is intended. If this word were used poetically in a Semitic language and then translated into Greek by someone who did not understand the double meaning, the play upon words would be lost.
Why the stone and scent? Because, in Sufi tradition, "Moses [a guide to his people] made a stone as fragrant as musk" (Hakim Sanai, The Walled Garden of Truth).
"Moses" symbolizes a guiding thought, which transforms something apparently inanimate and inert into something "as fragrant as musk"-something with what might almost be called a life of its own.
Our story now shows us that the "mother" of the thought (its origin, matrix, essential quality) presents "frankincense" (impalpable experience) to the thought, or mind. Because the individual (the mole) is concentrating upon "sight" (trying to develop faculties in the wrong order) it even loses the power to use the ones which it should have,
The human being, according to the Sufis, instead of reaching within himself in a certain manner in order to find and attain his development, searches outside, and follows illusions (metaphysical systems wrongly developed) which in fact cripple him. What is the inner potentiality of the "mole?" We can now look at the whole group of words in Arabic which belong to the root KHLD which we are considering:
Khalad (KHaLaD) = ever abiding, long-lasting
Khallad (KHaLLaD) = to perpetuate a thing
Akhlad (AKHLaD) = to lean toward, to adhere faithfully to (a friend) Khuld (KHuLD) = eternity, paradise, continuity
Khuld (KHuLD) = mole, field rat, lark (bird)
Khalad (KHaLaD) = thought, mind, soul
El-Khualid (EL-KHUAL;D) = mountains, rocks, supporters (of a pot)
To the Sufi, this grouping of words around a basic root conveys essentials for human forward development. It is almost a map of Sufism. The mole, because of coincidence, can be chosen as the symbol of the mind, or thought. In the same mind there is eternity, continuity, support. Sufism is concerned with the perpetuation of the human consciousness through its source in the mind. Faithfulness in association with others is an essential of this task.
The Aesopian story, therefore, does not mean, as its commentators would believe, that "It is easy to unmask an impostor." We need not deny that the tale could have fulfilled this function for centuries. But the use of the incense and the mole, plus the Sufi tradition that certain secrets are concealed in such words as those of Aesop, helps us to unlock the door. Looking at a great deal of literary and philosophical material in this light, we are irresistibly reminded of the message of Rumi, himself, like Aesop, a great fabulist of Asia Minor. He says that the canal may not itself drink, but it performs the function of conveying water to the thirsty. Those who are interested in this interpretation of the mole symbolism might well feel that the light-hearted potted wisdom of Aesop has been the carrier of the nutrition which we now find in it.
Rumi lived nearly two thousand years after Aesop, and he said: "A tale, fictitious or otherwise, illuminates truth."
There is no need to pursue the Arabic language itself as the actual source of the Semitic version from which this Aesopian tale comes. Arabic is useful to us as a tool because, as philologists have demonstrated, it retains in close association words grouped according to a primitive pattern whose meanings have become very corrupted in the other Semitic languages.
There are, in the West as well as the East, quite numerous examples of similar crystallization of teaching in literature, ritual and folk belief. Many such phenomena are considered unimportant: like the jokes attributed to Nasrudin, Joe Miller and others, read for their face value. Much of Omar Khayyam's poetry, intended to make the reader think clearly through reducing life to absurdity, has been taken in the superficial sense that Khayyam was a "pessimist." Platonic material, intended according to the Sufis to show the limitations of formal logic and the ease of falling into false reasoning, has been considered defective, and nothing more. In some cases, as with Aesop, the canal still carries the water, though it is not recognized as a canal. In other formulations, people carry on meaningless rituals and beliefs which they have rationalized until they have no real dynamic and are really only of antiquarian interest. The great Sufi poet Jami says of them: "The dry cloud, waterless, can have no rain-giving quality." And yet such cults, often mere counterfeits of carefully organized symbolism based on poetic analogy, are often seriously studied. Some people think that they contain certain metaphysical or magical truths, others that they are themselves of historical importance.
The relationship of parent to child (mole and mother) is used by Sufis to denote the training toward full "sight" as well as the ultimate relationship between the Sufi and the ultimate "sight" of objective truth. To the Sufi, religious incarnation or effigy conveying this relationship is merely a rough and secondary method of portraying something which has happened to an individual or a group - a religious experience showing them the way to self-realization.