I first learned about the Sufi view of rationality and the role of reasoning during my adolescent years. Rumi, Attar, Shah Nimatullah, Hafez, Iraqi and my own father all warned in their poetry against the pitfalls of rationality and the intellect. I was puzzled by their assertion that the intellect cannot guide us on the path to the truth. Does that mean we have to give up rationality altogether? Is it possible to conduct one's life without acting rationally? How are we to cope with the problems of life if we do not use our reasoning and intellect? My puzzlement was compounded by the fact that all the Sufis around me were rational human beings. They all had jobs and had to deal with the day-to-day problems of life by making rational decisions. Furthermore, most of the Sufis of the past, including those mentioned above, were men of learning and spent most of their lives reading and writing books.
There are numerous stories in Sufi literature warning us of the danger of being mesmerized by our own intellect. Rumi's story about the grammarian is a good example. A grammarian boards a ship to travel. As it starts its journey, he turns to the boatman who happens to be a man of God and asks, "Do you know anything about grammar?" "No," the man replies. "Then half of your life is wasted!" the grammarian exclaims. After a while the ship is hit by a storm and, as the boat rocks, the man turns to the grammarian and asks if he knows how to swim. "No!" replies the grammarian. "Then your whole life is wasted," says the man to the grammarian. Rumi then goes on to say that on the path of God you need to know about non-existence, not grammar!
Attar, Rumi's predecessor, has gone as far as to present a man of God as someone who has given up his intellect completely and has become crazy. In one of his stories he relates that Waseti, a scholar of jurisprudence, once passed a lunatic asylum and saw a madman acting like a drunkard, screaming while dancing and clapping his hands. Waseti was astonished at the man's behavior and ventured to ask, "Why are you so happy? Don't you understand that you are detained in a lunatic asylum?" In reply the madman said:
My heart is not in chains and that is the main point, When my heart is open, I am in union.
Surely I have many difficulties, But even if my feet are in chains my heart is free.
Dive into the ocean hidden in your chest, and discover a new hidden world in yourself.
Don't look at yourself with the eye of the intellect, Don't think that you only exist in both worlds.
If you kindle your heart with His love, You will never burn in hell's fire.
Later in my life, I noticed a great similarity between the way of the Sufis and the views on religion and the spiritual practice of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), one of the great philosophers of the twentieth century. By all accounts, Wittgenstein was not a religious person, but he thought one should have a religious attitude in life. He believed that the truth of religious or spiritual discourse lies in its practice, its rituals and symbolism but not in explanations and justifications of its claim.
Wittgenstein, like the Sufis, did not see any use for rationality and justification in religious discourse. The validity of any religion or school of spirituality lies in the potential it has to shape people's behavior for the better. It is the spiritual practice, not the theory, that assists people in becoming more charitable towards their fellow human beings. In his view, we should not, for example, be concerned with a rational explanation of the nature of God and His relation to the world; instead we should strive to be pure like God in our words, thoughts and actions.
However, while Wittgenstein thought that explanations and justifications of religious discourse are at best suspect, the Sufis believe for a different reason that the intellect is not fit for the purpose of finding spiritual truth. The intellect is a true servant of the ego, and the ego is the main obstacle in our search for the truth. It is important here to understand that this correlation of the intellect and the ego is only relevant in the context of religious or spiritual discourse. It sounds implausible, for example, to think that a scientist's extensive research on cancer cells does not represent the truth because scientific discovery is somehow clouded by ego. It is therefore only a rational approach to spiritual truth that is rendered prejudicial due to egotistical concerns according to Sufis.
In evolutionary terms, intelligence in Homo sapiens very likely developed for reasons of survival. Survival may have been physical at first but later it may have also encompassed ideas, beliefs and ways of thinking. Thus, it is perhaps natural to think that the primary function of our intelligence is self-preservation; intelligence may seek to preserve not only our lives but also our beliefs and ways of thinking. Of course, the Sufis do not approach the relation between the intellect and the ego from this evolutionary standpoint. Their understanding of how the intellect is used to serve the ego is based on their own direct experience.
Sufis have always warned against becoming bewitched by the intellect on the path towards the truth. Religious discourses and moral principles are often presented in absolute terms. Those who approach spirituality by way of rationality will have the illusion of understanding divine words in absolute terms and judge others accordingly. This is the crux of the Sufi critique of the rational approach to spirituality. It gives one the appearance of understanding the words of God, thereby creating a deluded feeling of superiority over others. Here the intellect only feeds the ego in its enterprise. Moreover, this false sense of understanding prevents one from applying spiritual principles in one's daily life due to self-satisfaction.
A yet more dangerous aspect of a so-called rational approach to religion is the insistence that one's own spiritual tradition is the only path towards the truth. This, of course, is the main cause of religious fanaticism and dogmatism. Such fanaticism stems from accepting religious principles literally as absolute and the words of God. The rational conclusion from this premise then is to think that others who do not adhere to such principles are lost and damned for eternity.
For the Sufis spiritual truth is the realization that we are an insignificant part of the Whole from which we have been separated. Our purpose in life is to return to the Whole and to become once again unified with It. Such realization is only possible through love, purification of the self, and years of struggle with the ego.
To give up intellect and rationality in Sufism means to practice love first and foremost. Practicing love means to love indiscriminately. Love, unlike reason, is blind. It does not ask questions; it does not listen to pros and cons. The path of love is inclusive. It is not concerned with gender, sexual orientation, color or race. Nor is it concerned with self-preservation. The right instrument on the path of love is the heart. The heart, unlike the intellect, is an instrument of intuitive and direct knowledge of the divine. While the intellect has its seat in one's brain, the heart cannot be localized. It consists of the entire being of a human being. Just as the physical heart keeps us physically alive, the spiritual heart keeps us alive spiritually. It guides us through our struggles with the ego, the practice of loving and ultimately the return to the Source.
It goes without saying that not every religious or spiritual practice can free us from the bond of the intellect and the ego. For this reason we need some degree of rationality to discern what is true and plausible. To use a metaphor borrowed from Wittgenstein, the power of our intellect and reasoning is like a ladder we should use to find the right spiritual path, but once we climb the ladder we will have to discard it.
I first learned about the Sufi view of rationality and the role of reasoning during my adolescent years. Rumi, Attar, Shah Nimatullah, Hafez, Iraqi and my own father all warned in their poetry against the pitfalls of rationality and the intellect. I was puzzled by their assertion that the intellect cannot guide us on the path to the truth. Does that mean we have to give up rationality altogether? Is it possible to conduct one's life without acting rationally? How are we to cope with the problems of life if we do not use our reasoning and intellect? My puzzlement was compounded by the fact that all the Sufis around me were rational human beings. They all had jobs and had to deal with the day-to-day problems of life by making rational decisions. Furthermore, most of the Sufis of the past, including those mentioned above, were men of learning and spent most of their lives reading and writing books.
There are numerous stories in Sufi literature warning us of the danger of being mesmerized by our own intellect. Rumi's story about the grammarian is a good example. A grammarian boards a ship to travel. As it starts its journey, he turns to the boatman who happens to be a man of God and asks, "Do you know anything about grammar?" "No," the man replies. "Then half of your life is wasted!" the grammarian exclaims. After a while the ship is hit by a storm and, as the boat rocks, the man turns to the grammarian and asks if he knows how to swim. "No!" replies the grammarian. "Then your whole life is wasted," says the man to the grammarian. Rumi then goes on to say that on the path of God you need to know about non-existence, not grammar!
Attar, Rumi's predecessor, has gone as far as to present a man of God as someone who has given up his intellect completely and has become crazy. In one of his stories he relates that Waseti, a scholar of jurisprudence, once passed a lunatic asylum and saw a madman acting like a drunkard, screaming while dancing and clapping his hands. Waseti was astonished at the man's behavior and ventured to ask, "Why are you so happy? Don't you understand that you are detained in a lunatic asylum?" In reply the madman said:
My heart is not in chains and that is the main point, When my heart is open, I am in union.
Surely I have many difficulties, But even if my feet are in chains my heart is free.
Dive into the ocean hidden in your chest, and discover a new hidden world in yourself.
Don't look at yourself with the eye of the intellect, Don't think that you only exist in both worlds.
If you kindle your heart with His love, You will never burn in hell's fire.
Later in my life, I noticed a great similarity between the way of the Sufis and the views on religion and the spiritual practice of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), one of the great philosophers of the twentieth century. By all accounts, Wittgenstein was not a religious person, but he thought one should have a religious attitude in life. He believed that the truth of religious or spiritual discourse lies in its practice, its rituals and symbolism but not in explanations and justifications of its claim.
Wittgenstein, like the Sufis, did not see any use for rationality and justification in religious discourse. The validity of any religion or school of spirituality lies in the potential it has to shape people's behavior for the better. It is the spiritual practice, not the theory, that assists people in becoming more charitable towards their fellow human beings. In his view, we should not, for example, be concerned with a rational explanation of the nature of God and His relation to the world; instead we should strive to be pure like God in our words, thoughts and actions.
However, while Wittgenstein thought that explanations and justifications of religious discourse are at best suspect, the Sufis believe for a different reason that the intellect is not fit for the purpose of finding spiritual truth. The intellect is a true servant of the ego, and the ego is the main obstacle in our search for the truth. It is important here to understand that this correlation of the intellect and the ego is only relevant in the context of religious or spiritual discourse. It sounds implausible, for example, to think that a scientist's extensive research on cancer cells does not represent the truth because scientific discovery is somehow clouded by ego. It is therefore only a rational approach to spiritual truth that is rendered prejudicial due to egotistical concerns according to Sufis.
In evolutionary terms, intelligence in Homo sapiens very likely developed for reasons of survival. Survival may have been physical at first but later it may have also encompassed ideas, beliefs and ways of thinking. Thus, it is perhaps natural to think that the primary function of our intelligence is self-preservation; intelligence may seek to preserve not only our lives but also our beliefs and ways of thinking. Of course, the Sufis do not approach the relation between the intellect and the ego from this evolutionary standpoint. Their understanding of how the intellect is used to serve the ego is based on their own direct experience.
Sufis have always warned against becoming bewitched by the intellect on the path towards the truth. Religious discourses and moral principles are often presented in absolute terms. Those who approach spirituality by way of rationality will have the illusion of understanding divine words in absolute terms and judge others accordingly. This is the crux of the Sufi critique of the rational approach to spirituality. It gives one the appearance of understanding the words of God, thereby creating a deluded feeling of superiority over others. Here the intellect only feeds the ego in its enterprise. Moreover, this false sense of understanding prevents one from applying spiritual principles in one's daily life due to self-satisfaction.
A yet more dangerous aspect of a so-called rational approach to religion is the insistence that one's own spiritual tradition is the only path towards the truth. This, of course, is the main cause of religious fanaticism and dogmatism. Such fanaticism stems from accepting religious principles literally as absolute and the words of God. The rational conclusion from this premise then is to think that others who do not adhere to such principles are lost and damned for eternity.
For the Sufis spiritual truth is the realization that we are an insignificant part of the Whole from which we have been separated. Our purpose in life is to return to the Whole and to become once again unified with It. Such realization is only possible through love, purification of the self, and years of struggle with the ego.
To give up intellect and rationality in Sufism means to practice love first and foremost. Practicing love means to love indiscriminately. Love, unlike reason, is blind. It does not ask questions; it does not listen to pros and cons. The path of love is inclusive. It is not concerned with gender, sexual orientation, color or race. Nor is it concerned with self-preservation. The right instrument on the path of love is the heart. The heart, unlike the intellect, is an instrument of intuitive and direct knowledge of the divine. While the intellect has its seat in one's brain, the heart cannot be localized. It consists of the entire being of a human being. Just as the physical heart keeps us physically alive, the spiritual heart keeps us alive spiritually. It guides us through our struggles with the ego, the practice of loving and ultimately the return to the Source.
It goes without saying that not every religious or spiritual practice can free us from the bond of the intellect and the ego. For this reason we need some degree of rationality to discern what is true and plausible. To use a metaphor borrowed from Wittgenstein, the power of our intellect and reasoning is like a ladder we should use to find the right spiritual path, but once we climb the ladder we will have to discard it.
