I

AT-TASAWWUF

UFISM, at-Tasawwuf,! which is the esoteric or in-
ward (batin) aspect of Islam, is to be distinguished
from exoteric or “external’ (zahir) Islam just as direct
contemplation of spiritual or divine realities is distin-
guishable from the fulfilling of the laws which translate
them in the individual order in connection with the con-
ditions of a particular phase of humanity. Whereas the
ordinary way of believers is directed towards obtaining
a state of blessedness after death, a state which may be
attained through indirect and, as it were, symbolical
participation in Divine Truths by carrying out prescrib-
ed works, Sufism contains its end or aim within itself in
the sense that it can give access to direct knowledge of
the eternal. This knowledge, being one with its object,
delivers from the limited and inevitably changing state
of the ego. The spiritual state of baga@’, to which sufi
contemplatives aspire, (the word signifies pure ‘‘sub-
sistence”’ beyond all form) is the same as the state of

1. The most usual explanation is that this word means only ““to wear
wool (sif)”’, the first Sufis having worn, it is said, only garments of pure wool,
Now what has never yet been pointed out is that many Jewish and Christian
ascetics of these early times covered themselves, in imitation of St. John the

Baptist in the desert, only with sheepskins. It may be that this example was
 also followed by some of the early Sufis. None the less ““to wear wool’” can oply
be an external and popular meaning of the term Tasawwuf, which is equivalent,
in its numerical symbolism, to al-Hikmat al-ilahiyyah, *‘Divine Wisdom.*’
Al-Biruni suggested a derivation of s#fs, plural of s#fiya, from the Greek
Sophia, wisdom, but this is etymo ogically untenable because the Greek letter
sigma normally becomes s:# (s) in Arabic and not sad (s). Itmay be, however,
that there is here an intentional, symbolical assonancs.