Every human life is a drama. Sometimes the elements of tragedy comedy or even farce prevail in it, but at its root, human life always remains a drama.
“Judge not, lest ye be judged,” Jesus once said, but people either do not remember these words, or ignore them when they undertake to make conclusions and inferences on the Work of certain mystics. To judge others means to justify yourself, and to discuss who has attained what and come to what – this is the best way not to remember where you yourself are. You can totally forget yourself only by switching to an analysis of the situations of those around you, and to know everything about everyone without knowing about yourself. Or by trying to forget what you know about yourself and what you do not at all want to know about yourself.
Without noting anything about themselves, people nevertheless undertake to judge the life and deeds of mystics. They judge them, as is appropriate, by their deeds; if one of the mystics has departed our world without leaving behind anything except a teaching; if those people now have no one to learn from, then usually such a result is evaluated as unambiguously unsatisfactory and unsuccessful. They do not know that the work of mystics does not have to be available for general view, and that it is not at all required that they must create comfortable conditions for “new” seekers. The chain of succession does not at all have be visible for all those who wish; taking into account that people fall under the influences of authorities and celebrities, it must be hidden , so that the successor does not drown under the flood of all sorts of idiots.
Nevertheless, for some reason it is considered that only the successor of a teaching equal to his predecessor, or best of all, superseding him in everything, will be an indicator of the success of the Work of a given mystic. Even so, no one imagines that the successor far from always must continue the cause of his teacher since his task, too, in the following of the Will is perhaps different, and he himself will obtain his unique experience from which he will begin to act. Ordinary minds like copies and a predictable path, but there is neither the one nor the other on the mystical Path. Modern adherents of Sufism yearn to discover the so-called idjaz (permission to teach people given by the same patented mentor) from each one who claims to possess Knowledge or a confirmation of membership in the chain of transmission of the silsila – that is, the list of teachers who preceded your Master, and through whom you and he received it. All of this spiritual bureaucracy appeared precisely because now there are no high-ranking mystics who do not need pieces of paper to understand with whom they are dealing; and it contributed to the fact that ordinary individuals could declare themselves true Sufis. A closed heart needs a mind in order to “understand” the spiritual level of a person, and a mind needs rules, rituals and certain confirmations of the right of the mystic to the possession of the Truth. God – as the Source of Truth and right to its transmission – is forgotten, and now everyone is ruled by dynasties and the names of those who have the right to transmit a right. This is exactly how mystical movements and schools degenerate.