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Accepted Paper:
"Waking from slumber": of Sufi aspirants beginning to perceive another reality
Jesko Schmoller
(Humboldt University Berlin)
The paper discusses a specific cosmology among Sufi Muslims in Russia that differs considerably from a secular outlook and to which one can adjust only in time; an adjustment that brings about not just a change in perspective but a transformation of the environment.
Paper long abstract:
This paper engages with matters of belief (iman) within the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi brotherhood (tariqa) in the Russian Federation. Just as Muslims constitute a minority in Russia, this particular Sufi perspective would again have to be recognised as a minority position among Muslims from the Russian Islamic community. According to their cosmology, we inhabit not one but several worlds and only one of them, the "99 names of God" or the divine kingdom, is real, whereas the other worlds are emanations of that one world. Sharply contrasting with a secular outlook, the material world that we live in is considered to be only an illusion or a matrix that keeps us engaged, while we should be focussed on God. To overcome the state of illusion, one must begin to process the truth, which is a difficult undertaking, as it requires thinking with the heart instead of the mind. Another precondition for seeing the world in its true shape would be a process of purification that one needs to undergo. If a success, these measures will bring about a transformation of our environment. The new perception that the Sufi aspirant (murid) gains is also described as "waking from slumber" or "opening one's eyes". Rather than considering this to be a switch from one epistemology to the other, it seems to be the case that the murids enter another ontological realm, where miracles (karamat) may manifest in everyday life in almost a routine fashion.