ASufiWay

A Sufi Way

"Th

Path of Hear

t --

Listening to the

Quietness"

Sufism

has

been attracting a lot of interest.

veryone knows the

mystic poetry of

Rumi

Sufism

expresses great love and surrender for the

ighest, while seeming

to be

relatively

free of fanaticism

Sufis

use music, poetry, whirling danc

, chanting and mantra as forms of

meditation. These

inspired

practices have contributed to

its

appeal. But the

practice I am introducing here is not so well known.

t purports to

come from

one of the very founders of

the path, called here Great Sufi Master.

The excerpt

below

from a conversation with him

. It is

expressed with incredible

beauty

and

a translucent light shin

thru it

A simple practice is described that anyone can

do.

“The Path of Heart implies embracing

the principles of Love and

Quietness.

“… He (Allah) taught Me to listen to the quietness…

“First, one has to learn listening to the sounds around: the sound

the

wind,

the

lapping

waves, the calls of birds, the crackle of

fire…

After

that, one

can

start

listening to

the

quietness.

“I came to know that all various sounds are local and transient,

while

the

quietness

omnipresent and eternal. Beneath all sounds

existing

the

universe, there

spreads

infinitely

the Great

Quietness.

“For hours I could listen to the sounds of the world — beautiful and

diverse,

and

then I

would

‘release’ Myself and ‘sink’ into it — into the

quietness.

There I could see the clear transpar

e of the

quietness, hear its

silence.

could

freely

and

easily swim in it, submerge to the very

Depths of it…

Gradu

ally

the

Great

Quietness

became

My home…

From there, I saw that all sounds of the worlds are as if created by

the

Great

Quietness. I

saw

how its breathing fills from within all

forms of life

—

and they

sound as a well-trained

choir of

various

musical ins

truments.

Like

flowers,

sounds

unfold for a moment in the

eternity of the

Great

Quietness…

By the way, for beginners it is more beneficial to listen to the space

around.

listening,

you

can embrace a much larger volume of space;

you

can even

hear that

which you

cannot

see.

He who has learned to listen can become the Master of Quietness.

The quie

tness gives

you calm.

The peculiar feature of the quietness is that it gets filled with you.

The quietness — as a result of studying and cognizing it — becomes

filled

with

you

and

with

God…

Allah suggests cognizing Him through this method.”

… We told Him:

“But You have missed an essential point: one has to listen to the

quietness

not

with

the

ears

which are on

the head, but with the

hearin

g of the

spiritual

heart…”

“… But the most confidential thing which I taught and which alone

opens

the

gate

to the

llah

Abode is what the

anahata chakra

(heart center) is,

how to

develop

oneself

through

it,

how

learn to

outside of it

in order

to settle

and live in the

new Home —

the

Abode

Allah.

These excerpts are taken

from

one of the

amazing

forest

conversations of

Vladimir

Antonov

with mystics

and

master

of the

pas

who seemingly just appear to him

uote

with

kind

permission

forest grn 006600