V1 AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE

mine the outlook of most occidentals), discursive
thought even becomes an obstacle. This it is which
explains why almost every erudite European who has
studied Sufism has mistaken its true position. Men of
modern culture are no longer accustomed to think in
terms of symbols and so modern investigations are un-
able to distinguish between what, in two analogous
traditional expressions, belongs to the external form and
what is the essential element, and for that very reason
the erudite European is led to see borrowings by one
tradition from another where in fact there is only a
coincidence of spiritual vision, and fundamental diver-
gencies where it is only a question of differences in
perspective or in mode of expression.! It is inevitable
that such confusions should arise since a university train-
ing and bookish knowledge are in the West deemed
sufficient authority for concerning oneself with things
which in the East remain naturally reserved to those
who are endowed with spiritual intuition and who
devote themselves to the study of these things in virtue
of a true affinity under the guidance of those who are
the heirs of a living tradition.

In what follows an attempt will be made to show
the intellectual perspective of Sufism and to this end its
own way of expressing things will be adopted with the
addition, where this is possible, of whatever explana-
tions are needed by a European reader. At the same
time analogies will be indicated between certain ideas

1. Cf. Frithjof Schuon : The Transcendent Unity of Religions, Faber,
London, 1953.