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Sufi

Sufi

Sufism (Arabic تصوف taṣawwuf) is a mystic tradition of Islam based on the pursuit of spiritual truth as it is gradually revealed to the heart and mind of the Sufi (one who practices Sufism). It might also be referred to as Islamic mysticism. While other branches of Islam generally focus on exoteric aspects of religion, Sufism is mainly focused on the direct perception of Truth or God through mystic practices based on divine love. Sufism embodies a number of cultures, philosophies, central teachings and bodies of esoteric knowledge. Sufis are active in a diverse range of brotherhoods and sisterhoods, with a wide diversity of thought. Sufi orders ("tariqas") can be Shi'a Islam, Sunni Islam, both or neither.

Etymology

A few etymologies for the word Sufi have been suggested. The first etymological theory states that the root word of Sufi is the Arabic word "saaf", meaning pure, clean or blank. This etymology refers to the emphasis of Sufism on purity of heart and soul. Another view is that the word originates from Suf (صوف), the Arabic word for wool, implying a cloak and refers to the simple cloaks the original Sufis wore. Some scholars (see Tor Andrae's Garden of Myrtles) have suggested that this derivation might give credence to early Sufism's link with Syriac Christian monastic orders, because woolen clothes were common in these monastic orders, but uncommon amongst orthodox Muslims of the time. However, it is well documented that early Muslim ascetics were known to don the coarse garments as a symbol of their renunciation of worldly comforts. Historically, the most noteworthy example is the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, who insisted that all representatives of his administration wear wool and live a life of simplicity. Others have suggested the origin of the word Sufi is from "Ashab al-Suffa" ("Companions of the Veranda") or "Ahl al-Suffa" ("People of the Veranda"). They are mentioned in the hadiths. These were a group of poor Muslims during the time of the Prophet Muhammad who spent much of their time on the veranda of the Prophet's mosque devoted to prayer and who renounced worldly trappings. The Greek words Sophos/Sophia, literally meaning wisdom or enlightenment, have also sometimes been asserted as the source of the word Sufi. Although this etymology has now largely been discredited, it was popular amongst orientalists in the early 20th Century. This origin was also advocated by Biruni. Most Sufis agree with the first definition, while most scholars tend to adhere to the second or third. The two were combined by the acclaimed Sufi, Junayd al-Baghdadi (d. 920 CE) in the famous saying, "The Sufi is the one who wears wool on top of purity...." Idries Shah writes in "The Way of the Sufi" about the word Sufi being said to have no etymology.

History of Sufism

The history of Sufism can be divided into the following principal periods:

Origins

Sufism may have begun in the eighth century. It does not seem to have a single founder and it isn't clear when the term Sufi was first used to refer to early Sufis. The general opinion holds that initially, Sufis were individuals in search of communication with God through ascetic practices without any doctrines of their own and it was not until the doctrines of divine love, union with God, and necessity of following a spiritual guide were formulated that Sufism became recognized as a tradition. It is not known who first proposed these ideas but Rabia al-Adawiya and Bayazid Bastami are some famous early sufis who are known to have held such opinions. As Sufism cannot be traced back to a single definite origin, different theories have been presented which highlight the expanding of Qur’anic mysticism through the new perspective originated from the synthesis of Persian civilization with Islam [http://www.khamush.com/sufism/persian_sufism.htm], an emphasis on spiritual aspects of Islam as a reaction against the prevailing impersonal, formal and hypocrytical practice of religion [http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/sufism/67134], and possibility of the incorporation of ideas and practices from other mystic systems such as Gnosticism and Hinduism into Islam. The evidences in support of non-Islamic influences in formation of Sufism include the existance of similiarities between Sufism and mystic systems outside Islam. Some Muslim and Western scholars belive that these theories show errors and biases of orientalists specially in early 20th century [http://www.unc.edu/~cernst/articles/wheeler.doc]. There are also claims regarding ancient Egyptian roots of Sufism which are not widely accepted.[http://www.egypt-tehuti.org/articles/sufism.html],[http://www.kheper.net/topics/Islamic_esotericism/Universal_Sufism.htm] Traditionally many Sufis believe that Sufism is only the mystic aspect of Islam and date back the origins of Sufism to a group of companions of Muhammad known as Ahl as Suffa (People of the Veranda) that lived lives of poverty and piety, many of whom were of foreign origin (like Bilal from Ethiopia, Salman from Persia and Suhaib from Rome) and consider Ali ibn Abi Talib as the first point of the line of transmission of mystic heritage from Muhammad to Sufi tradition. Some of these beliefs lack historic evidence. Some scholars believe that Sufism was essentially the result of evolution of Islam in a more mystic direction. For example, Annemarie Schimmel proposes that Sufism in its early stages of development meant nothing but the interiorization of Islam. And Louis Massignon states: "It is from the Qur’an, constantly recited, meditated, and experienced, that Sufism proceeded, in its origin and its development."

Influences

A number of scholars percieve influences on Sufism from pre-Islamic and non-Islamic sources and schools of mysticism and philosophy. From Animism and Shamanism to Neoplatonic immanentism, from Gnosticism and Hermetic writings to the panvitalism of Paracelsus, from Zoroastrianism to the the concept of qi and transmigration found in Taoism, Vedic religions, and other forms of Eastern philosophy, the number of possible influences on Sufism ranges far and wide. Others oppose the idea of extensive non-Islamic influences on Sufism and believe that these theories are based on misunderstanding Islam as a harsh and sterile religion, incapable of developing mysticism.[http://meti.byu.edu/mysticism_chittick.html] Those who adopt a phenomenological approach to mysticism belive that an argument can be made for concurent lines of thought througout mysticism, regardless of interaction[http://www.csp.org/experience/james-varieties/james-varieties16.html]. Some Western scholars with a mystic tendency go on to say that : "Of all the strands of thought, tradition and belief that make up the Islamic universe, Sufism in its doctrinal aspect stands out as the most intact, the most purely Islamic: the central strand" [http://www.kheper.net/topics/Islamic_esotericism/introduction.htm] The distinction is quite key, as Islam is not generally seen to be a faith inclusive of interdenominationalism, yet Sufism is sometimes seen to be the exception to this. Some Sufi orders emphasize the influence of some pre-Islamic traditions on ethics of Sufism[http://nimatullahi.org/us/DJN.html#Chivalry].

The great Masters of Sufism

At a time when Iraq was the centre of the Muslim Caliphate and an intellectual crucible and crossroads of various influences, there were mystical circles in cities such as Basra and Baghdad, and Sufism appears in the historical record as a discipline and school bearing this name. The Sufis dispersed throughout the Middle East, particularly in the areas previously under Byzantine influence and control. This period was characterised by the practice of an apprentice (murid) placing himself under the spiritual direction of a Master (shaykh or pir), as exemplified in the original Prophetic model. Schools started to form around some famous masters, such as Junayd in Baghdad and Al-Tustari in Basra. These were developed in a very open and public way, and were then written up as treatises concerning such topics as: mystical experience, education of the heart to rid itself of baser instincts, the love of God, and especially the approach towards Allah through a series of progressive stages or stations (maqaam) and states (haal). These schools were formed by reformers in reaction to the disappearance of values and manners in the society of the time, which was marked by a material prosperity that was seen as eroding the spiritual life. The Qur'anic verses which were the favourites of the Sufis included: :"We [God] are closer to him [man] than his jugular vein." :"Say, surely we belong to God and to Him do we return." :"He is the First and the Last and the Manifest and the Hidden." :"God is the light of the heavens and the earth." Hasan Ul-Basri is regarded as the first mystic in Islam. Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya was renowned for her love and passion for God. Junayd was the first theorist of Sufism, known for his teachings on ‘fanaa and baqaa’, the state whereby the annihilation of the self occurs in the divine presence and is accompanied by a great clarity towards the world of phenomena. In addition to these famous names Soulami (325-416 AD) quotes more than one hundred Shaykhs (spiritual masters) in his book ‘Tabaqat’. The most famous of them are: Foudail Bin Ayad, Dhu Nun Al Misri, Ibrahim Bin Adham, Sari Saqti, Al Harith Al Muhassibi, Abu Yazid Al Bustami, Marouf Khalkhi and Ibrahim Al Khawass. The revolution of religious thought engendered through the Sufism of this time did not go without causing some reactions. Certain attitudes of the Sufis were not considered to be very orthodox. The crisis culminated in the famous case of Al Hallaj, who was executed for making what were considered to be heretical remarks in public whilst in a state of spiritual intoxication (sukr).
Formalisation of Philosophies of Sufism
Sufism was now recognized and understood by virtue of the spiritual values that it propagates, and because of the intellectual efforts of the great thinkers of this time. These scholars used all due discretion when they addressed matters of high spirituality. They respected the social and cultural hierarchies of their time, and spoke to everyone according to their level of understanding. This time was marked primarily by a proliferation in the number of treaties on Sufism and in particular by the personality of Al Ghazali, considered by some as the greatest philosopher of Sufism. His works influenced influential Western thinkers such as Kant. His famous treatises - the "Reconstruction of Religious Sciences," the "Alchemy of Happiness," and other works - set out to convince the Islamic world that Sufism and its teachings originated from the Qur'an, and were compatible with mainstream Islamic thought and theology. It was Al Ghazali who bridged the gap between traditional and mystical Islam. It was around 1000 CE that the early Sufi literature, in the form of manuals, treatises, discourses and poetry, became the source of Sufi thinking and meditations. Another very important Sufi of that period was Ibn Arabi . Ibn Arabi was a contemporary of the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes). The relations and relationship between this exceptional trio ( Ghazali, Ibn Rushd and Ibn Arabi ) is worthy of study. Ibn Arabi met with Ibn Rushd and attended his burial. At their first meeting, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was an elderly man renowned for his books of learning and Ibn Arabi was a young man known as a ‘wali’ (saint). Contrary to the traditional view that a man must pass through three stages (sharia, tariqa and haqiqah) to reach realization, Ibn Arabi received the ‘fath’ (literally ‘the opening’ or direct Gnostic knowledge) when he was barely ten years old. It was only thereafter that he followed the tariqa (the spiritual way) and acquired book knowledge. Ibn Rushd is to some extent the ‘father’ of modernistic thought, and Ghazali and Ibn Arabi the ‘fathers’ of post-modernist thought. The Malamatiyya (the blameworthy) order can be considered a proto-Sufi order that arose in the 9th century CE before the crystallization of the Sufi orders.
Propagation of Sufism
It was during 1200 - 1500 CE that Sufism enjoyed a period of intense activity in various parts of the Islamic world. Hence this period is considered as the "Classical Period" or the "Golden Age" of Sufism. Lodges and hospices soon became not only places to house Sufi students and novices but also places for "spiritual retreat" for practising Sufis and other mystics. This period is characterized by the propagation of Sufism starting from its centre in Baghdad in Iraq, from where it spread towards Persia , India , North Africa & Muslim Spain. It is characterized by tests of conciliation between Sufism and the other Islamic sciences (sharia, fiqh, etc.) and starting of the Sufi brotherhoods (turuq). One of the first orders to originate in this period was the Yasawi order, named after Khwajah Ahmed Yesevi in modern Kazakhstan. The Kubrawiya order, originating in Central Asia, was named after Najmeddin Kubra, known as the "saint-producing shaykh" , since a number of his disciples became great shaykhs themselves. The most prominent Sufi master of this era is Abdul Qadir Jilani, the founder of the Qadiriyyah order in Iraq. Others included Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, founder of the Mevlevi order in Turkey, Shihabuddin Yahya as-Suhrawardi in Asia minor, Moinuddin Chishti in India and Ashraf Jahangir Semnani, founder of the Ashrafi Order. Although each order had a regional flavour, their fundamental teachings and practices remained substantially the same. After having gained influence over the whole of the central Islamic world, the brotherhoods (turuq) became the focus for Islam in the new territories that came under Muslim domination or influence. This included the Indo-Malay territories in the East, and West Africa and Andalusia in the West. The brotherhoods made a significant contribution throughout the centuries in presenting the true face of Islam – the Islam of beauty and love. Sufism not only represented a practical and specific stream of religious thought, but also played an important cultural role in Islam. It played an important role in the development of literature, in Persian, Turkish and Urdu. Sufism also appears in other art forms, such as dance and music (like Qawwali ) and the Indo-Persian miniatures which decorate the philosopher’s stones in verse and prose). It became an integral and fundamental element of religious thought and Islamic sensitivities, and became fully absorbed into the culture of the time.
Modern Sufism
This period includes the effects of modern thoughts on Sufism, and the advent of Sufism to the West. Important Sufis of this period include Hazrat Inayat Khan , Idries Shah, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, Muzaffer Ozak, Javad Nurbakhsh, Nazim Adil Al-Haqqani & Nuh Ha Mim Keller, who have tried to explain Sufi concepts in the light of modern culture.
Basic beliefs
The central concept in Sufism is love. Dervishes—the name given to initiates of sufi orders—believe that love is a projection of the essence of God to the universe.They believe that God desires to recognize beauty, and as if one looks at a mirror to see oneself, God looks at himself within the dynamics of nature.This is substantiated using the famous Hadith Qudsi (extra-Quranic utterance of God): "I was a hidden treasure, and I wanted to be known, so I created Creation." Since they believe that everything is a reflection of God, Sufis try to see the beauty inside the apparently ugly, and to open arms even to what is considered the most evil one.The Sufi conception of divine love is not restricted to what the term "love of God" implies, it also includes human loves with a perspective that views everything a manifestation of God. The central doctrine of Sufism, sometimes called Wahdat al-Wujud or Unity of Being, is the Sufi understanding of Tawhid. Put very simply Tawhid states that all phenomena are manifestations of a single reality, or Wujud (being), which is indeed al-Haq (Truth, God). The essence of being/Truth/God is devoid of every form and quality, and hence unmanifest, yet it is inseparable from every form and phenomenon either material or spiritual. It is often understood to imply that every phenomenon is an aspect of Truth and at the same time attribution of existence to it is false. The chief aim of all Sufis then is to let go of all notions of duality (and therefore of the individual self also), and realize the divine unity which is considered to be the truth. Ibn Arabi describes this doctrine in a poetic language: :It is He who is revealed in every face, sought in every sign, gazed upon by every eye, worshipped in every object of worship, and pursued in the unseen and the visible. Not a single one of His creatures can fail to find Him in its primordial and original nature. Sufis teach in personal groups, believing that the intervention of the master is necessary for the growth of the pupil. They make extensive use of parables, allegory, and metaphors, and it is held by Sufis that meaning can only be reached through a process of seeking the truth, and knowledge of oneself. Although philosophies vary between different Sufi orders, Sufism as a whole is primarily concerned with direct personal experience, and as such may be compared to various forms of mysticism such as Zen Buddhism and Gnosticism. The following metaphor, credited to an unknown Sufi scholar, helps describe this line of thought. :There are three ways of knowing a thing. Take for instance a flame. One can be told of the flame, one can see the flame with his own eyes, and finally one can reach out and be burned by it. In this way, we Sufis seek to be burned by God. A large part of Muslim literature comes from the Sufis, who created great books of poetry (which include for example the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the Conference of the Birds and the Masnavi), all of which contain profound and abstruse teachings of the Sufis.
Sufi Concepts

Lataif-e-sitta (The Six Subtleties)
Drawing from Qur'anic verses, virtually all Sufis distinguish Lataif-e-Sitta (The Six Subtleties), Nafs, Qalb, Sirr, Ruh, Khafi & Akhfa. These lataif (sing : latifa) designate various psychospiritual "organs" or, sometimes, faculties of sensory and suprasensory perception. In a rough assessment, they might appear to correlate with glands, organs, Chinese traditional, or vedic chakras. In general, sufic development involves the awakening, in a certain order, of these spiritual centers of perception that lie dormant in every person. Each center is associated with a particular color and general area of the body, and oft times with a particular prophet, and varies from Order to Order. The help of a guide is considered necessary to help activate these centers. The activation of all these centers is part of the inner methodology of the sufi way or "Work". After undergoing this process, the dervish is said to reach a certain type of "completion" or becomes a Complete Man. These six "organs" or faculties: Nafs, Qalb, Ruh, Sirr, Khafi & Akhfa, and the purificative activities applied to them, contain the basic orthodox Sufi philosophy. The purification of the elementary passionate nature (Tazkiya-I-Nafs), followed by cleansing of the spiritual heart so that it may acquire a mirror-like purity of reflection (Tazkiya-I-Qalb) and become the receptacle of God's love (Ishq), illumination of the spirit (Tajjali-I-Ruh) fortified by emptying of egoic drives (Taqliyya-I-Sirr) and remembrance of God's attributes (Dhikr), and completion of journey with purification of the last two faculties, Khafi & Akhfa. Through these "organs" or faculties and the transformative results from their activation, the basic Sufi psychology is outlined and bears some resemblance to the schemata known as the kabbalah or to some the Indian chakra system. It is important to mention that "Great Soul", "Human Soul", and "Animal Soul" are actually "levels of functioning" of the same soul and not three different souls. These three parts of soul are like three rings of light infused in one another and are collectively called the soul, the indivisible entity, Lord's edict of simply the man. Man gets acquainted with them one by one by Muraqaba (Sufi Meditation), Dhikr (Remembrance of God) and purification of one's psyche/life from negative thinking patterns (fear, depression), negative emotions (hate, contempt, anger, lust) and negative practices (hurting others psychologically or physically). Loving God and loving/helping every human being irrespective of his race, religion or nationality, and without consideration for any possible reward, is the key to ascension according to Sufis.
Sufi cosmology
Although there is no consensus with regard to Sufi cosmology, one can disentangle various threads that led to the crystallization of more or less coherent cosmological doctrines. Reading various authoritative texts, one can see that practitioners of Sufism were not much bothered with inconsistencies and contradictions that have arisen due to juxtaposition and superposition of at least three different cosmographies: Ishraqi visionary universe as expounded by Suhrawardi Maqtul, Neoplatonic view of cosmos cherished by Islamic philosophers like Ibn Sina/Avicenna and Sufis like Ibn al-Arabi, and Hermetic-Ptolemaic spherical geocentric world. All these doctrines (each one of them claiming to be impeccably orthodox) were freely mixed and juxtaposed, frequently with confusing results – a situation one encounters in other esoteric doctrines, from Hebrew Kabbalah and Christian Gnosticism to Vajrayana Buddhism and Trika Shaivism. The following cosmological plan is usually found in various Sufi texts: See also: Plane (cosmology) Esoteric cosmology.
Sufi practices

Muraqaba
Muraqaba is the word used by many Sufis when referring to the practice of meditation. The Arabic word literally means observe, guard or control, in this context referring to controlling and guarding one's thoughts and desires. In some Sufi orders (such as some of the Shadhili orders) muraqaba may involve concentrating one's mind on the names of God, or on a verse of the Quran, or on certain Arabic letters that have special significance. Muraqaba in other orders (such as some among the Naqshbandi) may involve the Sufi aspirant focusing on his or her murshid, while others (such as the Azeemia order) imagine certain colors to achieve different spiritual states.
Dhikr
Dhikr is the remembrance of God commanded in the Qur'an for all Muslims. To engage in dhikr is to have awareness of God according to Islam. Dhikr as a devotional act includes the repetition of divine names, supplications and aphorisms from hadith literature, and sections of the Qur'an. More generally, any activity in which the Muslim maintains awareness of God is considered dhikr. The Sufi orders engage in ritualized dhikr ceremonies. Each order or lineage within an order has one or more forms for group dhikr, the liturgy of which may include recitation, singing, instrumental music, dance, costumes, incense, meditation, ecstasy, and trance. (Touma 1996, p.162). Dhikr in a group is most often done on Thursday and/or Sunday nights as part of the institutional practice of the orders.
Qawwali
Qawwali is a form of the devotional Sufi music common in Pakistan and North India.
Sama
Sama or Sema' (Arabic "listening") refers to Sufi worship practices involving music and dance (see Sufi whirling). In Uyghur culture, this includes a dance form also originally associated with Sufi ritual. See Qawwali origins and [http://www.osa.co.uk/qawwali_history.html Origin and History of the Qawwali], Adam Nayyar, Lok Virsa Research Centre, Islamabad, 1988.
Orders of Sufism

Traditional orders
The traditional Sufi orders all emphasize the role of Sufism within Islam. Therefore the Sharia (tradional Islamic law) and the Sunnah (customs of the Prophet) are seen as crucial for any Sufi aspirant. Among the oldest and most well known of the Sufi orders are the Qadiri, Naqshbandi, Mevlevi, Chishti and the Ashrafi. One proof traditional orders assert is that almost all the famous Sufi masters of the Islamic Caliphate times were also experts in Sharia and were renowned as people with great Iman (faith) and excellent practice. Many were also Qadis (Sharia law judges) in courts. Most of the greatest Scholars of Islam such as Imam Ghazzali, Imam Suyuti, Imam Nawawi and others were also practitioners of Sufism and great supporters of the discipline so long as adherents did not transgress the limits and disobey the Sharia. They held that Sufism was never distinct from Islam and to fully comprehend and live correct with Sufism one must be a practicing Muslim obeying the Sharia. For a longer list of Sufi orders see: :Category:Sufi orders
Non-Traditional Sufi Groups
There also exist some Sufi groups that do not exist within the framework of Islam, or that pay little attention (even in name) to the Qur'an or the traditional Sharia and Sunna. These can be generally categorized as non-traditional Sufi groups. In the Indian Subcontinent there exist several syncretic Sufi groups that have blurred the boundary between Islam and Hinduism (see for example Sai Baba of Shirdi or Kabir Das). Also, see Sikhism below. In West Africa, the Mourides of Senegal don't observe the Islamic prayer or other traditional Islamic rituals, as they are instead encourage to do work in the service of their murshid (spiritual guide). The Sidis of Gujarat migrated from East Africa to India in the twelfth century. In recent decades there has also been a growth of such non-traditional Sufi movements in the West. Some examples are Universal Sufism movement, the Mevlevi Order of America[http://www.hayatidede.org/], the Golden Sufi Center[http://www.goldensufi.org/], the Sufi Foundation of America[http://www.sufifoundation.org/], Sufism Reoriented. For more about non-tradtional Western Sufism read [http://www.uga.edu/islam/sufismwest.html#Quasi "Sufism, the West, and Modernity" on the website of Dr Alan Godlas].
Universal Sufism
Sufism is usually seen in relation to Islam and is largely practiced by Muslims. However, there is also a major line of non-Islamic or offshoot-Islamic Sufi thought that sees Sufism as predating Islam and being a universal, Perennial Philosophy that is independent of the Qur'an and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad. This view of Sufism has been popular in the West but is opposed by traditional Sufis who practice it within the framework of Islam as the science of Sufism was always practiced as a discipline in Islam and could never be separated from it. Inayat Khan founded Universal Sufism, and Idries Shah advocated similar concepts. There is also an attempt to reconsider Sufism in contemporary Muslim thought from within. According to this view, Sufism represents the core sense of Islam that gives insight to God and His creation.
Sikhism
Along with certain forms of Hinduism (Bhakti, monism, guru ideal, and bhajans), Sikhism is heavily influenced by Sufism and makes up the backbone of Sikh thought. These reform movements in Islam and Hinduism at the time moved Guru Nanak Dev Ji and led him to fuse them together to the now established Sikhism. However, the notion of Sikhism being directly linked to Islam or Sufism is controversial for both Sikhs and Muslims and is not widely accepted.
Traditional Islamic schools of thought and Sufism
Islam traditionally consists of a number of madhhabs (i.e of Sunni, Shi'a and of their subdivisions). Sufis do not define Sufism as a madhhab. What distinguishes a person as a Sufi is practicing Sufism, usually through association with a Sufi order. Belief in Sufism is not sufficient for being recognized as a Sufi. These facts lead to some ambiguity because Sufism has characteristics of a tradition and, for example, use of the term "Sufi Islam" is generally accepted. W. Chittick explains the position of Sufism and Sufis this way: :In short, Muslim scholars who focused their energies on understanding the normative guidelines for the body came to be known as jurists, and those who held that the most important task was to train the mind in achieving correct understanding came to be divided into three main schools of thought: theology, philosophy, and Sufism. This leaves us with the third domain of human existence, the spirit. Most Muslims who devoted their major efforts to developing the spiritual dimensions of the human person came to be known as Sufis The relationship between traditional Islamic scholars and Sufism is complicated due to the variety of Sufi orders and their history. In the history of Sufism, the founders and early scholars of the schools (madhhabs) had positive attitudes towards Sufism, for example Imam Hambal used to visit the Sufi master Bishr al Hafi frequently[http://www.crescentlife.com/spirituality/early_scholars_on_sufism.htm]. Later, there were some scholars who considered some aspects of Sufism rank heresy as well as those like Al-Ghazali who defended Sufis as true Muslims. In time, even the controversal words of Al-Hallaj came to be accepted by some scholars. Today, most Muslims hold Tasawwuf, in the sense of Sufi doctrines and philosophies, to be the science of the heart or gnosis (as distinct from other branches of Islmic knowledge which are exoteric in nature) and appreciate Sufis for their extensive contributions to Islamic arts and philosophy. Many muslims who are not themselves Sufis are influenced by Sufi teachings. Liberal movements within Islam consider Sufism one of their sources of inspiration in their reforms. Modern criticism of Sufism by Muslims has different aspects, the most important being criticizing the lifestyle of some Sufis like the wandering dervishes, and holding rigid beliefs in Sufi Shaykhs. Some Muslim movements (such as Salafism, alternatively called Wahabism, a fundamentalist Islamic movement) hold Sufism to be a form of reprehensible innovation inspired by non-Islamic sources[http://www.allaahuakbar.net/sufism/index.htm],[http://www.qss.org/articles/sufism/sufi7.html].Although most of the Islamic scholars hold their view on the issue to be baseless and assert the position that the core spirituality of Sufism is Islamic, and in fact is necessary to Islamic practice.[http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/sufitlk.htm] Although Sufism as a whole is approved in Islamic thought, there is a tendency to distinguish between different Sufi thoughts and practices in terms of their conformity with Shari'a and hence the introduction of an Islamic or authentic form of Sufism by religious authorities.[http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503545786] For example in Shi'a Islam, a form of Sufism held to be in conformity with Shari'a is called Irfan (lit. gnosis).[http://al-islam.org/LWM/],[http://www.al-islam.org/al-tawhid/islamic_gnosis_wisdom/]
See also

- List of Sufism related topics
- List of famous Sufis
- Qawwali Sufi devotional music from the Subcontinent
- Sufi Taqaruf In East Asia
- Spiritual healing
- Theosophy
- Sufi Texts
- Haqiqa
Sources

- [http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/IbnArabi.html Articles on mysticism of Ibn Arabi] from Ibn Arabi Society
- [http://meti.byu.edu/mysticism_chittick.html Mysticism in Islam] a lecture by W.Chittick
- [http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/sufism A spiritual approach to Sufism]
- [http://www.kheper.net/topics/Islamic_esotericism/Sufism.htm Sufism] From a site dedicated to various esoteric systems
External links

- [http://www.quranicstudies.com/listbook1.html Jila' Al-Khatir (Purification of the Mind)] - (A complete book by Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani)
- [http://www.tasawwuf.org/basics/what_tasawwuf.htm What is Tasawwuf?] Sufism and Islamic Shariah
- [http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/sufitlk.htm The place of Tasawwuf in traditional Islam] A non-Sufi Muslim point of view
- [http://www.sunna.info/Lessons/islam_343.html Sufisim vs Sufi Claimers]An Islamic authority' point of view
- [http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/islam/sufi/index.html Graphical illustration of some of the traditional Sufi schools]
- [http://www.sufism.20m.com/sufi.htm Tasawwuf -- Sufism] Sufism & Sufi Orders in Islam
- [http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/Sufism.html Sufism -- Sufis -- Sufi Orders] by Dr. Alan Godlas, University of Georgia
- [http://www.fonsvitae.com/MG1.html Books on Sufism Resource] Translations of classic works on Sufism
- [http://www.faizani.com Islam Way Online - Allah Muslims Spiritual Healing and al Quran] Mainly concerned with spiritual aspects of Shari'ah , not directly with Sufism
- [http://pages.britishlibrary.net/edjason/friends/ Sufi Practices] Practices of the Friends , incorporation of some basic Sufi practices into worship of non-Sufis
- [http://muslim-canada.org/sufi/ The Sufi Study Circle] of the University of Toronto associated with Chishti order of Sufism
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/features/sufi/index.shtml BBC - Religion & Ethics - Sufism]
- [http://walikutub.tripod.com/makrifat/makrifat.html Sh.Nadzir As Saghir Sufi Order]
- [http://www.tasawwuf.org/ The Islamic Science of Spirituality (Sufism)] Audio and articles on Sufism
- [http://www.tazkiya.info/ Information on Tazkiya (purification)]
- [http://www.muraqaba.netfirms.com/ Muraqaba], Sufi Meditation
- [http://www.roadjunky.com/iran/sufis.shtml Roadjunky], Insights into Sufi culture in western Iran
- [http://www.khamush.com/sufism/index.html Sufism]From a site dedicated to Rumi
- [http://www.sufiblog.com/ SufiBlog ]Sufism online spiritual magazine of Sufi Meditation (Muraqaba) and Healing
- [http://beautyislam.org/ The Beauty of Pure Islam]
- [http://www.penkatali.org/ Divine Feminine in Sufism] by a feminist Sufi
- [http://world.std.com/~habib/sufi.html#websites A list of Sufi-related resources on the Internet]
- [http://www.sunnah.org/tasawwuf/scholar.htm Ideas of the Imams of different madhabs about Sufism]
- [http://www.nimatullahi.org/ Nimatullahi Sufi order]
- [http://sufi-mystic.net/index.htm Gudri Shahi order]
- [http://www.zahuri.org/ Zahuri Sufi website]
- [http://www.sufiajmer.org/ Sufiajmer.org] Site dedicated to Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti
Online resources

- [http://ashraf786.proboards15.com/ Ashrafi Board] Discussion board of the Qaadreeya, Chistiya and Ashrafiya Silsila
- [http://www.azeemiaspirituallibrary.coms.ph/LIST_BOOK.htm Azeemia spiritual library] Books on sufism from silsila-e-azeemia
- [http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/index.htm www.sacred-texts.com] Some books by Rumi, Saadi, Kabir, Khayyam & Ghazali
- [http://www.poetseers.org/spiritual_and_devotional_poets/sufi/ Collection of Sufi Poetry]
- [http://www.liberalislam.net/birds.html Excerpts from 'The Conference of the Birds'] by Fariduddin-al-Attar
- [http://www.islamfrominside.com/Pages/Podcasts/Fall%20of%20Adam%20podcast.html Sufi views on Adam's Fall] William Chittick lecture on Ahmad Samani
Imams on Sufism

- [http://www.crescentlife.com/spirituality/early_scholars_on_sufism.htm Early scholars on Sufism]
- [http://www.islaam.org/Tasawwuf/Tasa_12.htm Statments of Sufiya]
- [http://ddc.aub.edu.lb/projects/pspa/al-ahbash.html A Sufi response to Islamism]
Bookstores

- [http://www.fonsvitae.com/sufism.html Fonsvitae.com]
- [http://www.its.org.uk/moss.html Islamic texts society]
- [http://www.al-baz.com/ Al-baz.com]Books by Abdul Qadir Jilani
- [http://www.ibn-arabi.com/ Anqa publishing press] Books by Ibn Arabi
- [http://www.sufibooks.com/ Sufi Books and Pir Press]
- [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-4875889-3304044 Amazon.com]
- [http://www.ibnarabisociety.org/Library.html Library of Ibn Arabi Society] Category:Islam Category:Theology Category:Mysticism Category:Spirituality Category:Occult Category:Esoteric schools of thought Category:Religious behaviour and experience ja:スーフィズム simple:Sufism

Mystic
Mystic may refer to:
- Mystic BBS, a bulletin board software with integrated telnet capabilities.
- Mysticism, the belief in realities beyond perceptual and/or intellectual understanding.
- Christian mysticism
- Mystic (rapper), a rapper.
- Mystic (Mustang), a uniquely colored 1996 Ford Cobra.
- Mystic, Connecticut, a historic seaport and tourist center.

Exoteric

Exoteric knowledge is knowledge that is publicly available, in contrast with esoteric knowledge, which is kept from everyone except the initiated. The word traces to Greek roots meaning "outer." See also: Esoteric

External link

[http://www.kheper.net/topics/esoteric_and_exoteric.htm Esoteric and Exoteric] An article on the use of these terms in mystic and occult literature Category:Esotericism

Truth

When someone sincerely agrees with an assertion, they are claiming that it is the truth. Epistemology, the study of knowledge, seeks solutions for the many philosophical problems associated with truth. The first problem for philosophers is deciding what sorts of things are true or false, the so-called truth-bearers. At stake is the terminology we use to discuss truth. Then there are a range of theories about what makes these truth-bearers true. Some, the robust theories, treat truth as a property; others, the deflationary theories, suggest that it is no more than a convenient tool in our language. Developments in formal logic have thrown light on the way in which truth is used both in formal systems and in natural languages. Standing beside these problems are the issues of how we know something to be true. The way in which one knows that one has a toothache seems different from the way in which one knows that the Earth is the third planet from the sun; perhaps one is subjective, and determined by introspection, while the other objective, and determined by a combination of shared observations, reasonings, and calculations. Similarly, some truths seem to be relative to one's position or background, while others appear absolute. Philosophers have diverse opinions on each of these issues.

Bearers of truth

Philosophers call any entity that can be true or false a "truth bearer." Propositions, sentences, statements, ideas, beliefs, and judgements are said to be truth bearers. Thus, a truth bearer, in the philosophical sense, is not a person or god. Some philosophers exclude one or more of these categories, or argue that some of them are true (or false) only in a derivative sense. These claims are made on the basis of theories about truth such as those discussed below. For example, propositions are often thought to be the only things that are literally true. A proposition is the abstract entity which is expressed by a sentence, held in a belief, affirmed in a statement or judgement. All these things (which are parts of a language) are called true only if they express, hold, or affirm true propositions. So plausibly sentences of different languages, such as the (English) The sky is blue and the (German) Der Himmel ist blau express the same proposition. On the other hand, many philosophers have claimed that propositions and similar abstract entities are mysterious and provide little explanation; surely sentences, or even utterances of sentences, are a more clear-cut and fundamental truth bearer.

Theories about truth

Philosophers and logicians have proposed a number of broad theories about truth, which are now frequently sorted into two camps:

Robust theories

Some theories hold in common that truth is a robust (sometimes inflationary) concept. These theories all hold that the surface grammar of sentences that seem to predicate truth or falsity, such as "Snow is white is true" can be taken at face value. Truth is a property, just as red is a property predicated of a barn in the sentence in "The barn is red." The task for such theories is to explain the nature of this property. Hence, according to these theories, truth needs explanation and is something about which significant things can be said:
- The correspondence theory of truth sees truth as correspondence with objective reality. Thus, a sentence is said to be true just in the case that it expresses a state of affairs in the world.
- The coherence theory sees truth as coherence with some specified set of sentences or, more often, of beliefs. For example, one of a person's beliefs is true just in case it is coherent with all or most of her other beliefs. Usually, coherence is taken to imply something stronger than mere consistency: justification, evidence, and comprehensiveness of the belief set are common restrictions.
- The consensus theory holds that truth is whatever is agreed upon, or in some versions, might come to be agreed upon, by some specified group.
- Pragmatism sees truth as the success of the practical consequences of an idea, i.e. its utility.
- Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes, is historically and culturally specific, and that it is in part shaped through the power struggles within a community.
- The Indefinability theory of truth views the concept of truth along the same lines as a correspondence theorist, but it holds that truth cannot be defined in terms of simpler concepts.

Deflationary theories

Other philosophers reject the idea that truth is a robust concept in this sense. From this point of view, to say "2 + 2 = 4 is true" is to say no more than that "2 + 2 = 4", and that there is no more to say about truth than this. These positions are broadly called "deflationary" theories of truth (because the concept has been "deflated" of importance) or "disquotational" theories (to draw attention to the mere "disappearance" of the quotation marks in cases like the above example). In addition to highlighting this formal feature of the predicate "is true", some deflationists point out that the concept enables us to express things that might otherwise require an infinitely long sentences. For example, I cannot express my confidence in Michael's accuracy by asserting the endless sentence: :Michael says, 'snow is white' and snow is white, or he says 'roses are red' and roses are red or he says ... etc. But I can express it succinctly just by saying: :Whatever Michael says is true. Once we have identified the truth predicate's formal features and utility, deflationsists argue, we have said all there is to be said about truth. The primary theoretical concern of these views is to explain away those special cases where it appears that the concept of truth does have peculiar and interesting properties. (See Semantic paradoxes, and below.) From this point of view (see Gottlob Frege and F. P. Ramsey), truth is not the name of some property of propositions — some thing about which one could have a theory. The belief that truth is a property is just an illusion caused by the fact that we have the predicate "is true" in our language. Since most predicates name properties, we naturally assume that "is true" does as well. But, deflationists say, statements that seem to predicate truth actually do nothing more than signal agreement with the statement. For example, the redundancy theory of truth holds that to assert that a statement is true is just to assert the statement itself. Thus, to say that "Snow is white" is true is to say nothing more nor less than that snow is white. A second example, attributed to P. F. Strawson, is the performative theory of truth which holds that to say "Snow is white" is true is to perform the speech act of signalling one's agreement with the claim that snow is white (much like nodding one's head in agreement). The idea that some statements are more actions than communicative statements is not as odd as it may seem. Consider, for example, that when the bride says "I do" at the appropriate time in a wedding, she is performing the act of taking this man to be her lawful wedded husband. She is not describing herself as taking this man. A third type of deflationary theory is the disquotational theory which uses a variant form of Tarski's schema: To say that '"P" is true' is to say that P. One of the most thoroughly worked out versions of this view is the prosentential theory of truth, first developed by Dorothy Grover, Joseph Camp, and Nuel Belnap as an elaboration of Frank P. Ramsey's claims. They argue that sentences like "That's true" are prosentences (see pro-form), expressions that merely repeat the content of other expressions. In the same way that it means the same as my dog in the sentence My dog was hungry, so I fed it, That's true is supposed to mean the same as It's raining if you say the latter and I then say the former.

Formal definitions

Semantic theory of truth

The semantic theory of truth has as its general case for a given language: :'P' is true if and only if P where 'P' is a reference to the sentence (the sentence's name), and P is just the sentence itself. Logician and philosopher Alfred Tarski developed the theory for formal languages (such as formal logic). Here he restricted it in this way: no language could contain its own truth predicate, that is, the expression is true could only apply to sentences in some other language. The latter he called an object language, the language being talked about. (It may, in turn, have a truth predicate that can be applied to sentences in still another language.) The reason for his restriction was that languages that contain their own truth predicate will contain paradoxical sentences like the Liar: This sentence is not true. See The Liar Paradox. As a result Tarski held that the semantic theory could not be applied to any natural language, such as English, because they contain their own truth predicates. Tarski thought of his theory as a species of correspondence theory. Donald Davidson used it as the foundation of his truth-conditional semantics and linked it to radical interpretation in a form of coherentism.

Kripke's theory of truth

Saul Kripke contends that a natural language can in fact contain its own truth predicate without giving rise to contradiction. He showed how to construct one as follows:
- Begin with a subset of sentences of a natural language that contains no occurrences of the expression "is true" (or "is false"). So The barn is big is included in the subset, but not ' The barn is big is true', nor problematic sentences such as "This sentence is false".
- Define truth just for the sentences in that subset.
- Then extend the definition of truth to include sentences that predicate truth or falsity of one of the original subset of sentences. So ' The barn is big is true' is now included, but not either This sentence is false nor "' The barn is big is true' is true".
- Next, define truth for all sentences that predicate truth or falsity of a member of the second set. Imagine this process repeated infinitely, so that truth is defined for The barn is big; then for ' The barn is big is true'; then for "' The barn is big is true' is true", and so on. Notice that truth never gets defined for sentences like This sentence is false, since it was not in the original subset and does not predicate truth of any sentence in the original or any subsequent set. In Kripke's terms, these are "ungrounded." Since these sentences are never assigned either truth or falsehood even if the process is carried out infinitely, Kripke's theory implies that some sentences are neither true nor false. This contradicts the Principle of bivalence: every sentence must be either true or false. Since this principle is a key premise in deriving the Liar paradox, the paradox is dissolved.

Types of truth

Subjective versus objective

Subjective truths are those with which we are most intimately acquainted. That I like broccoli or that I have a pain in my foot are both subjectively true. Metaphysical subjectivism holds that all we have are such truths. That is, that all we can know about are, one way or another, our own subjective experiences. This view does not necessarily reject realism. But at the least it claims that we cannot have direct knowledge of the real world. In contrast, objective truths are supposed in some way to be independent of our subjective beliefs and tastes. Such truths would subsist not in the mind but in the external object.

Relative versus absolute

Relative truths are statements or propositions that are true only relative to some standard or convention or point-of-view. Usually the standard cited is the tenets of one's own culture. Everyone agrees that the truth or falsity of some statements is relative: That the fork is to the left of the spoon depends on where one stands. But Relativism is the doctrine that all truths within a particular domain (say, morality or aesthetics) are of this form, and Relativism entails that what is true varies across cultures and eras. For example, Moral relativism is the view that moral truths are socially determined. Some logical issues about Relativism are taken up in the article on the relativist fallacy. Relative truths can be contrasted with absolute truths. The latter are statements or propositions that are taken to be true for all cultures and all eras. For example, for Muslims "God is great" expresses an absolute truth; for the microeconomist, that the laws of supply and demand determine the value of any consumable in a market economy is true in all situations; for the Kantian, "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" forms an absolute moral truth. They are statements that are often claimed to emanate from the very nature of the universe, God, human nature, or some other ultimate essence or transcendental signifier. Absolutism in a particular domain of thought is the view that all statements in that domain are either absolutely true or absolutely false: none is true for some cultures or eras while false for other cultures or eras. For example, Moral absolutism is the view that moral claims such as "Abortion is wrong" or "Charity is good" are either true for all people in all times or false for all people in all times.

Other uses of "Truth"

In addition to its use in reference to propositions, there are other uses of "truth" and "true" in the English language: # most often applied to people, and is used as a commendation, synonymous with "loyal", as in she is true to her friends. This sense of truth should be contrasted with being fake, insincere, misleading and so on. # True can mean "in accordance with a standard or archetype," which is how it is used in "He is a true Englishman." # True in engineering and construction can be used as meaning "straight", not warped but in the same flat plane - as the spokes of a wheel.

Double truth

In thirteenth century Europe, the Roman Catholic Church denounced what it described as theories of "double truth," i.e. theories to the effect that although a truth may be established by reason, its contrary ought to be believed as true as a matter of faith. The condemnation was aimed specifically at a "Latin Averroist," (see Averroës), Siger of Brabant, but it was more broadly an attempt to halt the spread of Aristotle's ideas, which the reconquest of Spain and, accordingly, access to the libraries of the Moors had re-introduced into the Latin literate world. At the time, much of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church was based upon neoplatonic ideas, and Aristoteleanism struck many as heresy. Siger and others seem to have conceded this, and to have used the sharp reason/faith distinction that came to be known as "double truth" as a way of legitimizing discussion of Aristotle despite that concession.

True testimony

Witnesses who swear under oath to testify truthfully in courts of law, are not expected to make infallibly true statements, but to make a good faith attempt to recount an observed event from their memory or provide expert testimony. That what one witness says may differ from true accounts of other witnesses is a commonplace occurrence in the practice of law. Triers-of-fact are then charged with the responsibility to determine the credibility or veracity of a witness's testimony.

External links

- [http://www.foundationsmag.com/truth.html Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be]
- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-04 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] Double Truth
- [http://www.galilean-library.org/int10.html An Introduction to Truth] by Paul Newall, aimed at beginners.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/ Coherence theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/ Correspondence theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/ Deflationary theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-identity/ Identity theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-identity/ Revision theory of truth]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tarski-truth/ Tarski's definition of truth]
- [http://uk.geocities.com/frege@btinternet.com/cantor/joachim.htm Harold Joachim's The Nature of Truth]

References

- Blackburn, S and Simmons K. 1999. Truth. Oxford University Press. A good anthology of classic articles, including papers by James, Russell, Ramsey, Tarski and more recent work.
- Field, H. 2001. Truth and the Absence of Fact, Oxford.
- Grover, Dorothy. 1992. The Prosentential Theory of Truth, Princeton University Press.
- Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. Truth and Justification. MIT Press.
- Horwich, P. Truth. Oxford.
- Kirkham, Richard 1992: Theories of Truth. Bradford Books. A very good reference book.
- Kripke, Saul 1975: "An Outline of a Theory of Truth" Journal of Philosophy 72:690-716.
- Nietzsche, Friedrich. "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense".
- Rescher, Nicholas, The Coherence Theory of Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). ISBN 0198244010.
- http://www.ditext.com/tarski/tarski.html Tarski's classic 1944 paper on the Semantic Conception of Truth online.
- Williams, Bernard, Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) ISBN 0691117918. Category:Core issues in ethics Category:Epistemology Category:ISBN needed ja:真理 i love him and that is the truth

Culture

:For other uses of Culture or Cultures, see Culture (disambiguation) The word culture, from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. Different definitions of "culture" reflect different theoretical orientations for understanding, or criteria for valuing, human activity. Anthropologists most commonly use the term "culture" to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity is a defining feature of the genus Homo.

Defining culture

Different definitions of culture reflect different theories for understanding - or criteria for valuing - human activity. Sir Edward B. Tylor wrote in 1871 that "culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society", while a 2002 document from the United Nations agency UNESCO states that culture is the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs". http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002/unversal_decla.shtml UNESCO, 2002 While these two definitions range widely, they do not exhaust the many uses of this concept - in 1952 Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of more than 200 different definitions of culture in their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions [Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952].

Culture as civilization

Many people today use a conception of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. This idea of culture then reflected inequalities within European societies, and between European powers and their colonies around the world. It identifies "culture" with "civilization" and contrasts the combined concept with "nature". According to this thinking, one can classify some countries as more civilized than others, and some people as more cultured than others. Thus some cultural theorists have actually tried to eliminate popular or mass culture from the definition of culture. Theorists like Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) or the Leavises regard culture as simply the result of "the best that has been thought and said in the world” (Arnold, 1960: 6), thus labeling anything that doesn't fit into this category as chaos or anarchy. On this account, culture links closely with social cultivation: the progressive refinement of human behavior. Arnold consistently uses the word this way: "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world". http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/arnoldm_ca/ca_all.html Arnold, 1882 In practice, culture referred to élite goods and activities such as haute cuisine, high fashion or haute couture, museum-caliber art and classical music, and the word cultured described people who knew about, and took part in, these activities. For example, someone who used 'culture' in the sense of 'cultivation' might argue that classical music "is" more refined than music produced by working-class people such as punk rock or than the indigenous music traditions of aboriginal peoples of Australia. People who use "culture" in this way tend not to use it in the plural as "cultures". They do not believe that distinct cultures exist, each with their own internal logic and values; but rather that only a single standard of refinement suffices, against which one can measure all groups. Thus, according to this worldview, people with different customs from those who regard themselves as cultured do not usually count as "having a different culture"; but class as "uncultured". People lacking "culture" often seemed more "natural", and observers often defended (or criticized) elements of high culture for repressing "human nature". From the 18th century onwards, some social critics have accepted this contrast between cultured and uncultured, but have stressed the interpretation of refinement and of sophistication as corrupting and unnatural developments which obscure and distort people's essential nature. On this account, folk music (as produced by working-class people) honestly expresses a natural way of life, and classical music seems superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrays non-Western people as 'noble savages' living authentic unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly-stratified capitalist systems of the West. Today most social scientists reject the monadic conception of culture, and the opposition of culture to nature. They recognize non-élites as just as cultured as élites (and non-Westerners as just as civilized) - simply regarding them as just cultured in a different way. Thus social observers contrast the "high" culture of élites to "popular" or pop culture, meaning goods and activities produced for, and consumed by, non-élite people or the masses. (Note that some classifications relegate both high and low cultures to the status of subcultures.)

Culture as worldview

During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist movements - such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire - developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview". In this mode of thought, a distinct and incommensurable world view characterizes each ethnic group. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures. By the late 19th century, anthropologists had adopted and adapted the term culture to a broader definition that they could apply to a wider variety of societies. Attentive to the theory of evolution, they assumed that all human beings evolved equally, and that the fact that all humans have cultures must in some way result from human evolution. They also showed some reluctance to use biological evolution to explain differences between specific cultures - an approach that either exemplified a form of, or legitimized forms of, racism. They believed that biological evolution would produce a most inclusive notion of culture, a concept that anthropologists could apply equally to non-literate and to literate societies, or to nomadic and to sedentary societies. They argued that through the course of their evolution, human beings evolved a universal human capacity to classify experiences, and to encode and communicate them symbolically. Since human individuals learned and taught these symbolic systems, the systems began to develop independently of biological evolution (in other words, one human being can learn a belief, value, or way of doing something from another, even if the two humans do not share a biological relationship). That this capacity for symbolic thinking and social learning stems from human evolution confounds older arguments about nature versus nurture. Thus Clifford Geertz (1973: 33 ff.) has argued that human physiology and neurology developed in conjunction with the first cultural activities, and Middleton (1990: 17 n.27) concluded that human "'instincts' were culturally formed". People living apart from one another develop unique cultures, but elements of different cultures can easily spread from one group of people to another. Culture changes dynamically and people can (must?) teach and learn culture, making it a potentially rapid form of adaptation to change in physical conditions. Anthropologists view culture as not only as a product of biological evolution but as a supplement to it, as the main means of human adaptation to the world. This view of culture as a symbolic system with adaptive functions, and one which varies from place to place, led anthropologists to conceive of different cultures as defined by distinct patterns (or structures) of enduring, arbitrary, conventional sets of meaning, which took concrete form in a variety of artifacts such as myths and rituals, tools, the design of housing, and the planning of villages. Anthropologists thus distinguish between material culture and symbolic culture, not only because each reflects different kinds of human activity, but also because they constitute different kinds of data that require different methodologies. This view of culture, which came to dominate between World War I and World War II, implied that each culture had bounds and demanded interpretation as a whole, on its own terms. There resulted a belief in cultural relativism; the belief that one had to understand an individual's actions in terms of his or her culture; that one had to understand a specific cultural artifact (a ritual, for example) in terms of the larger symbolic system of which it forms a part. Nevertheless, the belief that culture comprises symbolical codes and can thus pass via teaching from one person to another meant that cultures, although bounded, would change. Cultural change could result from invention and innovation, but it could also result from contact between two cultures. Under peaceful conditions, contact between two cultures can lead to people "borrowing" (really, learning) from one another (diffusion or transculturation). Under conditions of violence or political inequality, however, people of one society can "steal" cultural artifacts from another, or impose cultural artifacts on another (acculturation). Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model for how, when and why people adopt new ideas. All human societies have participated in these processes of diffusion, transculturation, and acculturation, and few anthropologists today see cultures as bounded. Modern anthropologists argue that instead of understanding a cultural artifact in terms of its own culture, one needs to understand it in terms of a broader history involving contact and relations with other cultures. In addition to the aforementioned processes, migration on a major scale has characterized the world, particularly since the days of Columbus. Phenomena such as colonial expansion and forced migration through slavery became prominent. As a result, many societies have become culturally heterogeneous. Some anthropologists have argued nevertheless that some unifying cultural system bound heterogeneous societies, and that it offers advantages to understand heterogenous elements as subcultures. Others have argued that no unifying or coordinating cultural system exists, and that one must understand heterogeneous elements together as forming a multicultural society. The spread of the doctrine of multiculturalism has coincided with a resurgence of identity politics, which involve demands for the recognition of social subgroups' cultural uniqueness. Sociobiologists argue that observers can best understand many aspects of culture in the light of the concept of the meme, first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins suggests the existence of units of culture - memes - roughly analogous to genes in evolutionary biology. Although this view has gained some popular currency, anthropologists generally reject it.

Culture as values, norms, and artifacts

Another common way of understanding culture sees it as consisting of three elements: # values # norms # artifacts. (See Dictionary of Modern Sociology, 1969, 93, cited at [http://www.info.gov.hk/coy/eng/report/doc/Youth_Statistical/2002/app/Chp6_Cultural_Capital.pdf]) Values comprise ideas about what in life seems important. They guide the rest of the culture. Norms consist of expectations of how people will behave in different situations. Each culture has different methods, called sanctions, of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm; norms that a society enforces formally have the status of laws. Artifacts — things, or material culture — derive from the culture's values and norms. Julian Huxley gives a slightly different division, into inter-related "mentifacts", "socifacts" and "artifacts", for ideological, sociological, and technological subsystems respectively. Socialization, in Huxley's view, depends on the belief subsystem. The sociological subsystem governs interaction between people. Material objects and their use make up the technological subsystem. [http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~aforsber/ccsf/culture_defined.html] As a rule, archeologists focus on material culture whereas cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture, although ultimately both groups maintain interests in the relationships between these two dimensions. Moreover, anthropologists understand "culture" to refer not only to consumption goods, but to the general processes which produce such goods and give them meaning, and to the social relationships and practices in which such objects and processes become embedded.

Culture as patterns of products and activities

In the early 20th century, anthropologists understood culture to refer not to a set of discrete products or activities (whether material or symbolic) but rather to underlying patterns of products and activities. Moreover, they assumed that such patterns had clear bounds (thus, some people confuse "culture" with the society that has a particular culture). In the case of smaller societies, in which people merely fell into categories of age, gender, household and descent group, anthropologists believed that people more-or-less shared the same set of values and conventions. In the case of larger societies, in which people undergo further categorization by region, race, ethnicity, and class, anthropologists came to believe that members of the same society often had highly contrasting values and conventions. They thus used the term subculture to identify the cultures of parts of larger societies. Since subcultures reflect the position of a segment of society vis a vis other segments and the society as a whole, they often reveal processes of domination and resistance. The 20th century also saw the popularization of the idea of corporate culture - distinct and malleable within the context of an employing organization or of a workplace.

Culture as Symbols

The symbolic view of culture, the legacy of Clifford Geertz (1973) and Victor Turner (1967), holds symbols to be both the practices of social actors and the context that gives such practices meaning. Anthony P. Cohen (1985) writes of the "symbolic gloss" which allows social actors to use common symbols to communicate and understand each other while still imbuing these symbols with personal significance and meanings. Symbols provide the limits of cultured thought. Members of a culture rely on these symbols to frame their thoughts and expressions in intelligible terms. In short, symbols make culture possible, reproducible and readable. They are the "webs of significance" in Weber's sense that, to quote Pierre Bourdieu (1977), "give regularity, unity and systematicity to the practices of a group...".

Culture as stabilizing mechanism

Modern cultural theory also considers the possibility that (a) culture itself is a product of stabilization tendencies inherent in evolutionary pressures toward self-similarity and self-cognition of societies as wholes, or tribalisms. See Steven Wolfram "A new kind of science" on iterated simple algorithms from genetic unfolding, from which the concept of culture as an operating mechanism can be developed, and Richard Dawkins "The extended phenotype" for discussion of genetic and memetic stability over time, through negative feedback mechanisms, such as Wikipedia.

Cultural change

Cultures, by predisposition, both embrace and resist change dependence of culture traits. For example, men and women have complementary roles in many cultures. One sex might desire changes that affect the other, as happened in the second half of the 20th century in western cultures. Cultural change can come about due to the environment, to inventions (and other internal influences), and to contact with other cultures. For example, the end of the last ice age helped lead to the invention of agriculture, which in its turn brought about many cultural innovations. In diffusion, the form of something moves from one culture to another, but not its meaning. For example, hamburgers, mundane in the United States, seemed exotic when introduced into China. "Stimulus diffusion" refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention in another. Diffusions of innovations theory presents a research-based model for why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. "Acculturation" has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of the traits of one culture with those of another, such as happened to certain Native American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation.

Propagating culture

Insofar as culture grows and changes naturally within human society, it requires little or no formal propagation. Families or age-based peer-groups will instinctively foster (and develop) their own cultural norms. But few cultures act in such a laissez faire manner. Most societies develop some sort of religion or similar basis for inculcating and preserving established or "correct" cultural behavior. And many societies take the task of education out of the hands of priests and shamans and place it on a wider footing, so that the young (at least) gain a practical and emotional identification with a standardised version of their nurturing culture. Groups of immigrants, exiles, or minorities often form cultural associations or clubs to preserve their own cultural roots in the face of a surrounding (generally more locally-dominant) culture. Thus the world has acquired many Garibaldi Clubs, Pushkin Societies, and underground schools. On a broader scale, many countries market their cultural heritage internationally. This occurs not only in the promotion of tourism (importing money), but also in cultural development abroad (exporting ideas). Note the roles of cultural attachés in embassies and the function of specific organizations devoted to propagating the mother-culture, its language and its ideologies abroad, for example the work of:
- the Alliance française
- the British Council
- the Fulbright Program
- the Goethe-Institut
- the Instituto Cervantes

Cultural studies

Cultural studies developed in the late 20th century, in part through the re-introduction of Marxist thought into sociology, and in part through the articulation of sociology and other academic disciplines such as literary criticism. This movement aimed to focus on the analysis of subcultures in capitalist societies. Following the non-anthropological tradition, cultural studies generally focus on the study of consumption goods (such as fashion, art, and literature). Because the 18th- and 19th-century distinction between "high" and "low" culture seems inappropriate to apply to the mass-produced and mass-marketed consumption goods which cultural studies analyses, these scholars refer instead to "popular culture". Today, some anthropologists have joined the project of cultural studies. Most, however, reject the identification of culture with consumption goods. Furthermore, many now reject the notion of culture as bounded, and consequently reject the notion of subculture. Instead, they see culture as a complex web of shifting patterns that link people in different locales and that link social formations of different scales. According to this view, any group can construct its own cultural identity.

Sample list of cultures

Cultures of contemporary countries and regions

Main article: List of national culture articles.

- Albania
- Angola
- Australia
- Belgium
- Bhutan
- Brazil
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Canada
- Quebec
- Political culture of Canada
- Chile
- China
- Hong Kong
- Denmark
- Egypt
- Finland

- France
- Georgia
- Gibraltar
- Greece
- Hungary
- India
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Japan
- Jersey
- Korea
- North Korea
- South Korea
- Kuwait
- Lithuania
- Macedonia
- Mexico

- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Maori culture
- Pakistan
- Peru
- Portugal
- Russia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Turkey
- United Kingdom
- England
- Northern Ireland
- Scotland
- Wales
- United States

Contemporary local cultures

- Culture of New York City
- Culture of Stockholm
- Culture of Sydney

Other contemporary cultures

- Cassette culture
- Deaf culture
- Drug culture
- Esperanto culture
- Hacker culture
- Queer culture
- Underground culture
- Working-class culture
- Youth culture

Historic cultures

- Assyro-Babylonian culture
- Clovis culture — pre-historic in North America and Central America from about 13,500 years ago
- Indus Valley Culture
- Cemetery H culture
- La Tene culture — from the Iron Age in parts of Europe
- Natufian culture — in the Mediterranean more than 10,000 years ago
- Paideia — Classical Greek culture
- Romanitas — Roman Imperial culture
- Weimar culture
- Western culture

References

- Arnold, Matthew, Culture and Anarchy, 1882. Macmillan and Co., New York. Online at [http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction_u/arnoldm_ca/ca_titlepage.html].
- Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. 1977.
- Cohen, Anthony P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. Routledge: New York, 1995 (1985).
- Geertz, Clifford. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York. ISBN 0465097197.
- Hoult, Thomas Ford, ed. (1969). Dictionary of Modern Sociology. Totowa, New Jersey, United States: Littlefield, Adams & Co.
- Kroeber, A. L. and C. Kluckhohn, 1952. Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
- Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.
- [http://anthro.palomar.edu/tutorials/cultural.htm Cultural Anthropology Tutorials], Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marco, California, United States, as of December 12, 2004.
- UNESCO, "[http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002/unversal_decla.shtml UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity]", issued on International Mother Language Day, February 21, 2002.

External links

- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-72 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] "Cultural Development" in Antiquity
- [http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-73 Dictionary of the History of Ideas:] "Culture" and "Civilization" in Modern Times
- [http://samvak.tripod.com/class.html Classificatory system for cultures and civilizations], by Dr. Sam Vaknin zh-min-nan:Bûn-hoà ja:文化 simple:Culture

Esoteric knowledge

Esotericism refers to knowledge suitable only for the advanced, privileged, or initiated, as opposed to exoteric knowledge, which is public. It is used especially for mystical, occult and spiritual viewpoints.

Etymology

Esoteric is an adjective originating in Hellenic Greece under the domain of the Roman Empire; it comes from the Greek esôterikos, from esôtero, the comparative form of esô: "within". Esoteric refers to anything that is inner and occult. Its antonym is exoteric, from the Greek eksôterikos, from eksôtero, the comparative form of eksô: "outside". Plato (427-347 BC) uses in his dialogue Alcibíades (aprox. 390 BC) the expression ta esô meaning «the inner things», and in his dialogue Teeteto (aprox. 360 BC) he uses ta eksô meaning «the outside things». The probable first appearance of the Greek adjective esôterikos is in Lucian of Samosata's (aprox. AD 120-180) "The Auction of Lives", § 26 (also called "The Auction of the Philosophical Schools"), written around AD 166. [http://paginasesotericas.tripod.com/esoterismo.htm] Esoteric knowledge is knowledge that is secret or not generally known. Historically, esoteric knowledge is not generally known in large part because it is deliberately kept secret from those outside a select group. Such knowledge was confined within certain disciplines, such as magic and freemasonry. This is not the case any more as most groups, such as the Theosophical Society and the Rosicrucian Fellowship, teach freely to anyone, often without cost. Because of this openness, the reflexive aspect of the esoteric prevails: that it is complex and difficult to grasp except by the fewer, more perceptive or aware. Esotericism (also sometimes written as esoterism) is a word and concept created in the 19th century. It was first used as the noun substantive l�ésotérisme in the work Histoire critique du gnosticisme et de ses influences (1828) of Jacques Matter (1791-1864). Later, the occultist and cabalist Eliphas Lévi (1810-1875) made common the use of the terms «esotericism» and «occultism». The term became fashionable after Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) and other personalities of the Theosophic Society used it during the last quarter of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In this context, Esotericism refered to things which are or were forced to be kept private or secret, either from fear of persecution or because of likely misunderstanding and misuse by the outside world.

Esoteric vs. Esotericism

The word esoteric generally relates to that which is known and accepted by a restricted number of people (contrast exoteric). The word esotericism (or esoterism) used in a general sense can simply mean any knowledge which is secret or confidential. Used in its more specific sense it refers to the knowledge of those who claim to have had supernatural experiences. While these experiences typically are not validated by scientific experiments, scientific proof is not always necessary for belief. Esoteric experiences tend to be highly subjective and so are difficult to study with the scientific method. There exists some skepticism about these experiences due to this lack of empirical evidence and sufficient proof; however, among supporters of esotericism, most believe that measurement of this phenomena simply exceeds current scientific capabilities. Esotericism is one of the subjects studied under the discipline parapsychology.

Nuances

Esotericism largely overlaps with occultism which simply means "hidden knowledge." However, in the 20th century many esotericists avoid the latter term owing to negative connotations associated with it (for example, the presumption that it involves devil-worship or black magic). For the same reason, many (predominantly Christian) opponents of esotericism prefer the term "occultism." Much overlap exists as well between esotericism and mysticism. However, many mystical traditions do not attempt to introduce additional spiritual knowledge, but rather seek to focus the believer's attention or prayers more strongly upon the object of devotion. Thus Trappist monk Thomas Merton may be a mystic, but is probably not an esotericist. The New Age movement has many links with various esoteric traditions. However, many esotericists disavow the "New Age" label. Often they reject elements of the New Age movement as commercialism and/or naivite with which they do not wish to be associated. Another difficulty is that of describing as "new" esoteric traditions that may be hundreds or even thousands of years old. On the other hand, "traditions" that are actually rather new are often clothed in a fictional history and passed off as ancient in commercialized esotericism; it takes some discernment to see through such marketing techniques. "Theosophy" means "divine wisdom" and once—in the writings of Jacob Boehme, for example—meant something similar to "esotericism." Today, however, it has come to refer to the Theosophical Society founded by H.P. Blavatsky, and to other movements in this tradition. Finally, culturally speaking, many followers of Satanism do probably belong under the general category of esotericism. However, these are shunned by practically everyone else, and for that matter their relationships with one another have been strained as well. Esotericism has far deeper ties--both historically and in the present day--with Christianity, though conservative Christian groups may be uncomfortable with the forms that this Christianity has taken.

Scope

Many religious movements in various parts of the world claim to possess a higher, truer, or better interpretation of the wider religion of which they are a part. Whether they are correct is inevitably a matter of controversy. Not infrequently, the claims of one esoteric group may be rejected by the wider religious culture, or by other esoteric groups which make their own rival claims. While esotericism tends to focus on personal enlightenment and internal spiritual practice, organized religion or exotericism tends to focus on outer spiritual practice and ritual and on laws that govern the society. Nevertheless, esotericism also involves traditions, institutions, and other public aspects. Esotericism is often said to assume the existence of a spiritual elite, as distinct from the believing masses. While many elements within esotericism are rooted in folk traditions--examples would include the Western study of magic and witchcraft--these have arguably become transformed into elite traditions by virtue of their appropriation by later antiquarians. "Esotericism" often suggests an additional element of secrecy, for example the requirement that one be initiated before learning the higher truth (as in the case of the Freemasons). Note however that most "esoteric" teachings are widely available, and indeed often actively promoted. Some of this may be because it is now generally safer to promote alternative religious viewpoints than before. Another possibility is that such knowledge may be kept secret not by the intention of its protectors, but by its very nature—for example, if it is accessible only to those with the proper intellectual or spiritual background. An example would be alchemy, success in which is said to involve copious amounts of study, practice, and spiritual preparation. In some religious contexts, especially within Western Christianity, "esoteric" knowledge is seen as somewhat dangerous to the mainstream of that religion, involving the possibility of heresy. In other religious cultures such as Judaism, the leaders of the mainstream religion have historically also been recognized as the elite interpreters of its esoteric dimension, in this case Kabbalah. The English word "esotericism" is usually applied to Western spiritual traditions. However, it has occasionally been used for non-Western religions, or more often, interpreted in such a way as to include such phenomena as yoga or tantra. The criteria for inclusion under the label of "esoteric" are not always made explicit, and the result is often a matter of taste or historical usage. For example Emanuel Swedenborg, but not Mary Baker Ed

Sufi

Etymology

History of Sufism

Origins

Influences

The great Masters of Sufism

Formalisation of Philosophies of Sufism

Propagation of Sufism

Modern Sufism

Basic beliefs

Sufi Concepts

Lataif-e-sitta (The Six Subtleties)

Sufi cosmology

Sufi practices

Muraqaba

Dhikr

Qawwali

Sama

Orders of Sufism

Traditional orders

Non-Traditional Sufi Groups

Universal Sufism

Sikhism

Traditional Islamic schools of thought and Sufism

See also

Sources

External links

Online resources

Imams on Sufism

Bookstores

Mystic

Exoteric

External link

Truth

Bearers of truth

Theories about truth

Robust theories

Deflationary theories

Formal definitions

Semantic theory of truth

Kripke's theory of truth

Types of truth

Subjective versus objective

Relative versus absolute

Other uses of "Truth"

Double truth

True testimony

See also

Truth in logic

Major philosophers who have proposed theories of truth

External links

References

Culture

Defining culture

Culture as civilization

Culture as worldview

Culture as values, norms, and artifacts

Culture as patterns of products and activities

Culture as Symbols

Culture as stabilizing mechanism

Cultural change

Propagating culture

Cultural studies

Sample list of cultures

Cultures of contemporary countries and regions

Contemporary local cultures

Other contemporary cultures

Historic cultures

See also

References

External links

Esoteric knowledge

Etymology

Esoteric vs. Esotericism

Nuances

Scope