Sufism and Gnosticism

Homoplasmate is a forum for the discussion of Gnostic Christianity and Mysticism. The author Jesse writes a nice post about Sufism and Gnosticism. Its quite thoughtful. Some excerpt of the post:

"The key to the religious revelation afforded by Sufism is their understanding of the identity of the human being. Human beings, they assert, are earthly in status and animalistic by nature, but divine in origin. In every person, a remnant of this divine nature sleeps waiting to be discovered.

The normal person does not see the divine within themselves, but seek it externally and so believe that the nature of God must be external. The Sufi however redefines their idea of God to include themselves, concluding that since they are created of God, they must share his identity. The human’s individual soul is an offshoot, or manifestation of, God’s eternal soul. Everything in the universe shares this soul:

Everything which is found in the cosmos is to be found in the soul; equally everything in the soul is in the cosmos. Because of this fact, he who masters his soul most certainly masters the cosmos, just as he who is dominated by his soul is certainly dominated by the whole cosmos. Reinterpreting the search for God from a search for something external to a search within, the Sufi master “finds within himself all that he had sought outwardly, for being united with God he is separate from nothing.”

This revelation brings about both a drastic reinterpretation of the universe, seeing it through the lens of the knowledge that all is God, and a drastic reinterpretation of the Sufi’s own self. The Sufis refer to a thusly enlightened person as a Universal or perfect person."

Read the complete post here.