10 AN INTRODUCTION TO SUFI DOCTRINE

  

between the candidate and the spiritual master
(al-murshid) who represents the Prophet. This pact
_ implies perfect submission of the disciple to the master
| in all that concerns spiritual life and it can never be
dissolved unilaterally by the will of the disciple.

The different “ branches ” of the spiritual *family
tree ”” of Sufism, correspond quite naturally to different
“paths” (turng). Each great master from whom the
start of a specific branch can be traced has authority to
adapt the method to the aptitudes of a particular
category of those who are gifted for spiritual life. Thus
the various ““ paths’’ correspond to various ““ vocations
all of them orientated to the same goal, and are in no
sense schisms or ““sects”” within Sufism, although partial
deviations have also arisen from time to time and given
birth to sects in the strict sense. The outward sign of
a sectarian tendency is always the quantitative and
““dynamic’ manner in which propagation takes place.
Authentic Sufism can never become a “movement ! for
the Very good reason that it appeals to what is most
‘““static’ in man, to wit, contemplative intellect.”

In this connection it should be noted that, if Islam
has been able to remain intact throughout the centuries
despite the changes in human psychology and the ethnic

. In some turiig, such as the Qadiriyah. the Dergawiyah and the
Naqshbendlyah the presence of ‘‘ outer circles’’ of initiates in addition to the
inner circle of the elite results in a certain popular expansion. But this is not to
be confounded with the expansion of sectarian movements, since the outer
circles do not stand in opposition to exotericism of which they are very often
in fact-an intensified form.

2. What is'in these days usually called the * intellect » is really only the.

discursive facu_ylf the ny_dynamLsm and agitation of which distinguishes. it
!rom the “intellect proper-which is in itself motionless being always direct and
Screne in operation.