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| Excrepts from KASHF-AL MAHJUB The oldest persian treatise on Sufism |
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| by
Ali B. Uthman Al-Jullabi Al Hujwary (Popularly known as Hazrat Data Gunj Baksh) |
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| Translated by Reynold A. Nicholson |
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| Abu Yazid Bastami would argue that rapturous longing of God and intoxication of Love cannot be acquired by human beings, and is idle to claim, and absurd to imitate, anything that lies beyond the range of acquisition. It is the gift bestowed by God Himself on the chosen few. (P. 184) |
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| Intoxication is Evil? |
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| This website has been created and maintained by Seema Arif |
| INTOXICATION & SOBRIETY |
| Junayd (ra) and his follwers prefer sobriety to intoxication. They firmly held the view that �intoxication is evil�. Intoxication involves the disturbance of one�s normal state and loss of sanity and self-control. Whether one seeks subsistence or annihilation, the principle of verification cannot be reached unless one is sane. Intoxication blinds, and the phenomenon takes super hold. It means that people begin to appreciate the feelings and mental state produced by intoxication and original goal union with The Truth is compromised. Being overpowered by such mental and physical states is also a phenomenon, which should be under control. |
| Sobriety and intoxication resemble each other when the end is reached, the vision of The True One. It is the path where true mystics tread and both become baseless, source of difference (ikhtilaf) on the way; and become intruders (tufayli) when the Sultan of Truth manifests its beauty. Because the boundaries of both are joined, one leads to another, the painful feeling of separation persists, though a relative existence. In union all separations are negated as the poet says: |
| �When the morning-star of wine rises,
The drunken and the sober are as one.� |
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| Sobriety and intoxication are two attributes of Man, and man is veiled from his Lord until his attributes are annihilated. |
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| The state of 'Intoxiction' is not permanent, and some people in urgency of having it again and again, may start using hallucinogens. Wine being the major instrument of drinking, develops human dependence on it. Yahya b. Mu�ad, had warned Abu Yazid in one of his writings to him. � The man of sobriety is he who is unable to drink even one drop, and the man of intoxication is he who drinks all and still desires more.� (p.187) Some are of opinion that listening to certain Music (sama) and dancing (whirling) may help to acquire such state. They are of belief, to awaken inner self one has to put the wakened self (five senses: hawwas-e-khamsa) to sleep. Here one hazard lies, that a state becomes the goal rather than a mean to some ulterior end � spiritual transformation. |
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| Real Intoxication is not Acquired. |
| Intoxication and Sobriety both are same |
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