“I’m elated in this world for it belongs to Him
I’m in love (âshegh-e) with this whole world
For the entire world is derivative of Him.”
Was the evolutionary emergence of Erfân an attempt to give an earthly meaning to the fast-decaying religion of Islam? Did Erfân possess sophisticated secret messages under its cloak that if it could have survived and spread its social and political ramifications would have drastically altered the direction of today’s Muslim societies? Was Erfân a conscientious effort to place the highest unimaginable and immeasurable value on human beings? Was Erfân a manifest, a confirmation that the existence of man on earth was an evolutionary process? Was Erfân advocating a process to take the power off the hands of God and give it back to man; thus, internalizing the locus of what determines human beings’ values, so that man would accept the responsibility for his actions?
Rumi, as the voice of Shams, answers these questions with comprehensive volumes of over seventy thousand verses of poetry. As an example, in the following poem, Rumi addresses three issues eloquently: First, the evolutionary process of man’s existence on earth and his destiny. Second, the paramount and unimaginable importance he places on man by equating him to God and perhaps beyond. Third, he presents an undisputable, accurate and perfect definition of Erfân.
“I died as object-form - minerals, transformed to a plant,
I passed on from plant-form and appeared as an animal.
I died from realm of animal and became a human,
Then why should I be frightened of death?
For it would not reduce my stature as a human.
I will die as a human-form in another phase,
Only to metamorphose, growing feathers and wings like an angel.
As an angel, I must also leap over this barrier of water,
For everything except God will perish.
Then again, I will fly and soar as an angel,
And will become one whose entity is unimaginable by all.
Hence, I will be annihilated as the sound of a flute dose in the air,
Conveying: Everything except God will perish.
The two most important features of Erfân that can be attained after this inner experience are eshgh, which is the essence and, at the same time, a valuable fruit of the tree of Erfân, and the harmony a person experiences in his relationship with other beings and his surroundings. Many texts of Erfân and poetry related to Erfân, are artistic and unique expressions of the saga of this eshgh that have been expressed in a variety of forms.
The true Tassavof, Sufism, aside from its subsequent deviation from its original concept, should not have substantive differences with Erfân. In fact, there are many commonalities between these two forms of thinking. The harsh religious, political, and social conditions that persisted in the Islamic world, from the twelfth century onward, caused masses of people to become attracted to Erfân; thus, the evolutionary process for the development of various systems of thinking that Sufism became one of them had started.
The influence of Christian monks’ monastic lifestyle, and beliefs in Persian and Islamic Erfân in fragmenting it into different branches and forms of Tassavof, historically seems plausible. This influence becomes especially true when khâneghâhs, for housing dervishes and Sufis began to appear throughout the Muslim world, with their primarily functions very similar to monasteries.
To attain a personal freedom, a true Sufi would deny himself all worldly possessions, comforts, and pleasures, and would become a dervish, a true Fagheer, a destitute. Since living with this frame of mind would have eliminated the conflict between a Sufi and his unjust surroundings, Sufism became very attractive to those who felt powerless in their struggles against the harsh social, religious, and political conditions. The people under these rigid religious rules and laws that became the roots of political oppression, hard economic and harsh social conditions, sought refuge in Sufism that it gave them personal protection, comfort and security. The Sufi’s khaneghâhs, adopted the role of protectors and saviors. However, they gradually and invariably created the corrupt Tassavof, which instead converted the urgent needs of the people to an opportunity for personal gain by the leaders. As early as the thirteenth century we come across statements such as Abul Hassan Boshânji’s, “Tassavof is now a name without the truth, while before, it was a nameless truth.”
If we believe that to become a Sufi, a dervish, there are certain established rituals that one must observe and perform in order to achieve the title, we have inevitably considered the differences between Erfân and Tassavof, because to elevate one’s stature to a true Âref, the performance of these rituals are not pre-requisite thus not necessary. At least in the language of early Erfân, we see the expression that in order to become an Âref, one can employ the method of a Sufi. And also, though we find many people who wear the Sufi and dervish cloaks, they have never reached the level of insight, knowledge, wisdom nor eshgh of an Âref.
With the accumulated traditional rituals that today’s Tassavof carries as obligations for its practitioners, it has evolved into a lifestyle that appeals only to a certain class of people. The original Erfân, on the other hand, being an inner personal experience and without having the burden of any rituals, differs significantly with Tassavof, a difference, which is often ignored.
Faith means people believing in a higher power, a subtle and pleasingly delicate and pure, wisdom that can embrace all the facets of their lives. If this faith is not the derivative of an inner religious belief, it is invariably from an inner personal experience, and that is Erfân. The vast majority of people’s beliefs in God are from the religion that is prevalent in that culture and not from a direct inner experience. The religious God appears to differ from the higher being that a person acknowledges and believes in as a result of direct inner personal experience. The God of religion is the kind of God who has the role of a referee and a judge, who possesses polar characteristics; He is violently revengeful in one character and is unimaginably caring and merciful in another. He holds a carrot (heaven) in one hand and a whip (hell) in another. But the God of Erfân, with the inner personal experience, is far from this role of refereeing, judging, rewarding and punishing. He is the essence of giving life, wishing everyone well, and He is the source of eshgh. When a person becomes connected to this inner feeling and opens a relationship with it, he or she understands it fully but is unable to express it properly. This understanding is not transferable to another being and cannot be acquired through study. The “Unity of Being” of the Sufi’s belief differs from the inner experience in Erfân. The Erfân is noble and true when person dose not lose his own identity and individualism, and is able to establish a perpetual relationship and connection with the universe and all living souls.
Rumi often praises and criticizes the Sufis, but always highly praises the Âref. The following Rumi’s poem is an example of this claim.
“There is a lock on his lips and his heart is full of secrets.
His lips are silent, and his heart is full of songs.
Ârefs who have drunk the cup of the truth,
They have known secrets, but have hidden them.
Whoever learned the secrets of the truth,
They sew and sealed their lips.”
My curiosity for discovering and revealing the unknown is what motivated me to conduct research for writing this novel. Since my late teenage years, when I was first exposed to Molânâ Jalâleddin Mohammad-e Rumi’s poetry by my late brother, Hamid, a poet himself, I had been puzzled about the phenomena of how an ordinary clergy, a jurist at best, Rumi, meets with a wanderer – a drifter, Shams-e Tabrizi, for 30 or 45 days in seclusion, and thereafter becomes the most prolific renowned poet in Persian literature. The more I read Rumi’s poems, the more I became curious about Shams’ character and his secretive life. This drifter undoubtedly was the mentor who created Rumi, and remained an enigmatic figure