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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1280
of God. It is held to retain a memory of its former blissful state, and the
natural appreciation for Beauty is held to be due to a faint recollection of
the Beauty of the Spiritual Existence in the One. The Universe, as we have
said, was conceived of as a panoramic phantasmagoria, the scenes and
actors constantly changing, making their appearance, playing their part,
and passing off the scene. Man’s Spirit was an emanation of God, and his
body was but an incidental covering, created for the purposes of the showworld,
and therefore of but little value except as a part of the play. Fate
and Destiny are the directions of the Divine Stage Manager—the Divine
Purpose and Will, which may not be avoided or disobeyed. But the Spirit
was always homesick, repining, and longing to be reunited with its Beloved.
As Avicenna, the Sufi poet hath sung in his great poem on the mourning soul,
seeking its Beloved:
“Lo, it was hurled
‘Midst the sign posts and ruined abodes of this blessed world.
It weeps, when it thinks of its home and the peace it possessed,
With tears welling forth from its eyes without pausing or rest,
And with plaintive mourning it broodeth like one bereft
O’er such trace of its home as the fourfold winds have left.”
Strictly speaking then, Sufiism is the Philosophy of Oneness—of all-
Godness, in the strictest sense of the word. And Sufism, as a religion, is the
Religion of the Love of God, in the strictest sense of the term. Even the most
radical and advanced Vedantist can conceive of no more absolute Godness,
than the Sufi; and even the love-stricken Bhakti Yogi of India can claim no
more “divine love-sickness” than the Sufi. And therefore Sufiism is Love-of-
God in its most active form—therefore let us consider this Love-of-God and
the Sufi expression of it, in verse and action, and in connection with the
Hindu Bhakti Yoga.