Gharib Nawaz Ajmer

“It is the privilege of the men of God to see the sublimest mysteries of the spiritual world and instruct men in Righteousness; they warn and shield men against evil.” - The Holy Quran

“Tasawwuf or Sufism - the Islamic mysticism - means scrupulously maintained moral character and religious discipline which one must necessarily cultivate and observe towards all the creatures of God in the interests of peace and happiness of mankind.”- Hazrat Khwaja Moinuddin Hasan Chishty (R.A.)

Jacques de Marquette remarks in his introduction to Comparative Mysticism : ‘In fact mysticism seems to be able to solve most of the dilemmas confronting our generation in nearly all the avenues of thought and activities. Hence the timely character of our attempt to study its modalities and to interpret whatever message it may have in store for puzzled modern man’ (P. 18). Much the same is the raison d’ etre for this study : the relevance of Sufism to the needs of modern society.

Mysticism, it is said, has no genealogy. It is as old as man himself and echoes the eternal quest of the human soul to have direct experience of the Ultimate Reality. It proceeds on the assumption that ‘The divine disclosed itself in the human race as a whole’ and that it is possible for all human beings – irrespective of their caste, colour or creed – to have direct communion with Him. The spark of divine love shines alike in the heart of the learned and the illiterate, the Hindu, the Christian, the Muslim and the Sikh. It is not the exclusive privilege of higher religious intellects to strive to understand the essence of Divine Reality; a shepherd also, as Rumi has shown, may communicate with God while grazing his herd in the lonely valleys.