It is this tolerance and acceptance of the Indian culture that has enabled Sufism to develop in the way that it has, for although it did not originate in India, it is in India that Sufism was allowed to survive and proliferate. Sufism or tasawwuf, as it is called in Arabic has been under debate regarding its origins and how this school of inner knowledge was established. Although Sufism is open to all humanity, it was born out of Islam[9] and there are records of it going as far back as to the lifetime of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), fifteen centuries ago.
When the news of Islam spread, many people traveled great distances to hear the teachings of the Prophet because of their inner yearning to learn the reality of religion.
These individuals met on the platform (Suffe) of a mosque in Medina where they would discuss the ways to inner knowledge, the truths of revelation and the meanings of the Quran. This group of followers later became known as Ahle Suffe, the People of the Platform, one of the most influential groups in the history of spiritual civilization. They later returned to their nations as diverse and widely separated as Persia, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, North Africa and India in order to keep the Sufi tradition alive. Through this dispersion different orders and schools of Sufism have emerged, the four major ones being The Chishti Order, The Qadiri Order, The Suhrawardi Order and The Naqshbandi Order, yet all legitimate Sufi schools trace their roots back to the original groups of the Prophet's spiritual disciples[10].
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, one of the leading scholars of Islam, contends that Sufism is simply the name for the inner or esoteric dimension of Islam. The Sufi teachings are based on individual understanding and experience, not just on knowledge of texts and rote learning. The central concept in Sufism is love, which they believe is a projection of God on the universe[11].
Their practices are based on knowledge of the true self, which then frees them from the self centered personality characteristics that blind them from Reality, "freedom from the self", this process is called Fana[12]. The preoccupation people have with owning and controlling is in par with their inability to connect to God and see the true reality that is within themselves.
"What appears to be truth is a worldly distortion of objective truth" ' Hakim Sanai one of the classic authors on Sufism.
Sufism is akin to Advaita Vedanta. Their belief lies in the non dual Absolute and that the Truth (Haqiqa) lies at the heart of all things and yet is beyond all determination and limitation. The Sufis feel that it is an illusion to see human beings as different or separate from nature and the universe. God said, "My earth and my heavens contain me not, but the heart of my faithful servant contains me."[13] They view the world as a reflection of God. A Sufi discovers that the "lover and beloved come from love."[14]
Many Sufi poets compare consciousness to a cup and unconsciousness to the ocean, individually we are like the cup but all of us together with nature are the ocean, unconscious reality, or God. If we have the ability to lose the limitation of the cup by freeing the self we can be reunited with the ocean of being, which would enable us to lose the anxieties of separation, loneliness and isolation and gain the permanency of the everlasting ocean[15].
The philosophy of Advaita Vedanta is not easy to explain briefly and I do not presume to be able to explain what takes whole volumes for accomplished experts, but rather to just give an outline of the key features of the most popular Vedantic school of thought. The term Advaita means 'Non-Dual' which refers to the tradition's absolute monism and the Upanishads are the Vedanta, the 'end of the Veda'. Two specific passages from the Chandogya Upanishad provides a valuable insight into the foundation of the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta:
In the beginning, this world was just Being [i.e. Brahman] ' one only, without a second '. And it thought to itself 'Let me become many; let me multiply myself.
Cricket
