A Framework for New Knowledge
“The desire for an 'awakening', often used as a technical term, may or may not be accompanied by the information and experience essential to precede this stage. The Teaching, for its part, is carried out — and is able to cross ideological boundaries — because of a knowledge of the objective: an objective which is at worst postulated as an assumption that it exists; at best glimpsed: and thenceforward is the subject of repeated attempts to devise a means to recover this glimpse.
“The working hypothesis or traditional framework provides the structure by which the would-be illuminate attempts to approach this goal. In the case of the School, knowledge alone provides the basis upon which the structure can be devised.
“‘Once you know the end, you can devise the means.’ The end does not justify the means - it provides it. The means, employed in this sense, is the structure referred to in some literature as ‘The Work’.”
~ Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way.
Sakina and Baraka
“Sufism is the teaching as well as the fraternity of the Sufis, who are mystics sharing the belief that inner experience is not a department of life, but life itself. Sufi means ‘love’. In the lower reaches the members are organized into circles and lodges. In the higher – sakina (stillness) – form, they are bound together by baraka (blessing, power, sanctity) and their interaction with this force influences their lives in every way.”
~ Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi.
Sakinah, the Purged House & the Indwelling Presence
QUTUB: “This is the reputed invisible head of all the Sufis. The word literally means the Magnetic Pole, Pivot, Polestar, Chief. Transposed into figures, it totals 111—the thrice-repeated unity, the threefold unity, the threefold affirmation of truth, which is a unity. If this is split up into 100, 10, 1, and substituted, we get the letters Q, Y and A. The word QYAA, spelled from these letters, means "to be vacant, voided." It is the vacant, voided, purged "house" into which the baraka descends (the human consciousness).”
~ Annotation “QUTUB” in Idries Shah, The Sufis.
“A Kind of Magic”
Performed by Queen
Footnotes
Under normal circumstances, the Sufis could fill their ranks by those few who have access to a Sufi circle, or manage to make their way to, and join, one.
These are not, however, normal circumstances. If there was a global DEFCON warning system (or “doomsday clock”) – one, that is, not only for military purposes – then we would surely be at DEFCON 2 (5 being the lowest, quiescent state, 1 being the highest), if you leave out the rise of neo-fascism, the rise of Christian nationalism (and other fundamentalisms); the threat to Europe and the world from Russia; and the threat to the Far East and the world from China. We’re teetering on the brink of DEFCON 1.
There is no time for the traditional route (the slow boat to China for the Few, like the old “11-Plus” exam that favoured a small elite and relegated the vast bulk of the population to second-class – or third class (underclass) – citizenship or subjugation), and there never has been sense in the absurd and elitist notion that there is only one way to skin a cat, be that “the Sufis” or Idries Shah.
Notes
Sakina: peace, stillness, serenity, tranquility, indwelling presence. See also Shekhinah.
Itmi'nan: satisfaction, peacefulness, surety.