Encoded Messages
Encoded Poetry
Almost all poetry contains some form of encoded meaning or message. Metaphors are one type of encoded use of words. Though somewhat simple, metaphors still demand interpretation for their mixed sense of images. Take the phrase, "the ship plowed the waves." The verb "plowed" does not strictly mean to cut through waves, but it does conjure up the image of how a boat does to water what a plow does to the farmer's plot of earth.
In most any repressive political environment, such as in the Soviet Union in recent times or in European countries under monarchies centuries ago, or under religious regimes such as strict, fundamentalist Muslim countries of today and hundreds of years ago, writers have been forced to use 
metaphors and much more complicated tropes or even codes to express symbolically what they really wanted to say explicitly but could not do so without grave risk. Under oppressive regimes, writers could be severely punished for stating clearly and overtly their political critiques.
In the sixteenth century France, Rabelais wrote satirical, humorous adventures that contained many veiled messages and symbols such as the divine bottle or the enigmatic plant of Pantegruelion, which suggested his steadfast unbelief in the Catholic Church. As a consequence, he often had to live in hiding whenever the Church decided to pursue him as a heretic.
As recently as the early years of the G.W. Bush administration, most mainstream journalists did not dare to criticize the president for fear of being labeled "unpatriotic," a term that could cost a writer's career.
In the early Renaissance era, writers like Rabelais wrote 
stories full of political and social critiques without overtly exposing what they actually thought. One of the main themes in Gargantua and Pantagruel sharply criticizes religious dogma in the face of scientific investigation. In these works, Rabelais used ambiguous scenes and situations to portray thoughts that could be interpreted. Other writers of the time did the same.
Likewise, centuries ago in the Middle East, the Sufis, mystical philosophers, devised encoded poetry in order to say one thing while meaning something else entirely.
The genius of Sufi poets and story tellers was evident in early, undated stories and parables and continued through the Middles Ages to the Enlightenment in Europe. Although the major Sufis usually wrote in Middle Eastern languages such as Arabic or Farsi, they greatly influenced the superstars of European literature--including Chaucer, Rabelais, Cervantes, and Goethe--as well as Hugues de Payen (who founded the Knights Templar in 1070) and even on to modern political leaders such as French President Charles de Gaulle.
Sufis and Mysticism
Do you want to live happily? Do you want to live an angry biting life? These questions, which Sufis often pose, remind me of the simple, logical approach to thinking that Socrates brings to us. Socrates, like many other ancient thinkers, often drew their inspiration from a metaphysical or spiritual realm. When you read a Socratic dialogue like the Symposium, you discover that Plato was mystical in character because of Socrates, who drew his source of insight from divine waters. In our Western, technologically oriented culture, our education focuses mainly on logic. Yet most of the platonic dialogues blend logic with intuitive induction for rich, imaginative thinking.
Plato's Symposium is a story about how a group of Socrates's friends join together at a feast of boisterous wine drinking while taking turns at delivering their discourse on the subject of love at one level and on how one knows anything at another level. Some opinions are silly; some are humorous, while others are serious and tightly woven logical explanations on the topic of love and of knowledge. Finally, after everyone else has given a speech, Socrates admits that logic fails him in this subject and he defers to his lady friend Diotima, a seer, a sort of mystical shaman, as an enigmatic figure of the divine feminine who intuitively understands the deeper spiritual significance of love and how a person might come to know anything despite the weak capabilities of human perception.
The ancient Greeks recognized the value of clear, logical thinking as only one step in understanding through human experience. Likewise, the Sufis call for an initiation process to a higher level of understanding and of living. They emphasize a practical way of thinking and learning through experiencing with the senses. One of their teachings is that we are all products of our ideas put into us by our parents, our culture, the Zeitgeist we live in, and what is authentic in us represents a small and precious seed that we should cultivate. Unfortunately, we too often leave that seed of authenticity to blow away into the winds of social conformity.
One need only look at the dogmas of any church, Catholic, Muslim or otherwise. In these places and elsewhere, we find the desolation of limited thinking, conformity, and the use of ideology for ulterior, political, or financial purposes. Jean Paul Sartre called this conformist approach to life “mauvaise fois.” Millennium ago the Sufis called it “the commanding self.”
A very old philosophy or way of life has been openly introduced into our Western culture. Sufi mysticism offers a rich blend of intuitive and logical thinking that breeds innovation.
Nevertheless, until the last forty years, Sufism has had little overt contact or exposure in the West. Although as a way of thinking, Sufism has influenced many of the greatest Western writers. Sufis bring a clear and intelligent form of mysticism to the West. As Shah demonstrates in his book, the Sufis use various forms of storytelling to formulate and teach their special mysticism.
All our associations with the word mysticism are biased – and probably for good reason. Hearing the mere mention of the word “mysticism,” educated Westerners respond by saying they have no time for séances with ghosts, card or palm readings, or mediums, or long-haired, bearded gurus.
Training or learning about mysticism has not been part of our requirements for college graduation. Perhaps for this very reason, people with 20 years of Western schooling all too often fall victim to a spiritual charlatan or a cult. At least partly because we are often highly developed in one technical or professional area, but left ignorant about and longing for broader understanding of ourselves, most of all our sense, emotions, and intuitions.
This blend of rigorous logic and wild imaginative intuition is what most often stirs at the root of great scientific discovery.
“Every age, every generation has its built-in assumptions—that the world is flat, that the world is round. There are hundreds of hidden assumptions, things we take for granted that may or may not be true. In the vast majority of cases, these conceptions about reality—which belong to the prevailing paradigm or worldview—aren’t accurate. So if history’s any guide, much that we take for granted about the world today simply isn’t true.” [Quoted from the book, What the Bleep Do We Know?] –John Hagelin, Ph. D., a world-renowned quantum physicist, educator, public policy expert, and leading proponent of peace, and conducted pioneering research at CERN (the European Center for Particle Physics) and SLAC (the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). His scientific contributions in the fields of electroweak unification, grand unification, super-symmetry and cosmology include some of the most cited references in the physical sciences. |
In his book, The Sufis, Idries Shah stresses that “Sufism” is not an “ism.” For the Sufis “isms” are foreign to the nature of their spiritual development. “Sufism” is a term coined by a German academic. The Sufis originally refer to themselves as ‘We friends’ or ‘people like us.’
A main difficulty in teaching is to prevent the material from becoming a system or, heaven forbid, a catechism or dogma—yet another church, cult or rigid framework of ideas. Sufis say it took a good 800 years of using metaphors and subtle expressions in order for Islam to allow Sufis to live in a Muslim culture.
Later, some groups in Islam claimed the Sufis as part of their cultural heritage, their property, even though the Sufis preceded Mohammad. The prophet Muhammad himself said “He who hears the voice of the Sufi people and does not say ‘Amen’ is recorded in God’s presence as one of the heedless.” Sufis might characterize Islam as a ‘shell’ that they carry as a mere appearance for social conformity. Though, religious dogma has at times destroyed them.
Unlike fundamentalists, Sufis express themselves in metaphor and symbols which others can interpret for more than a literal meaning. Imagination is given full reign as well as living spirit. Like Jesus Christ, Sufis also take full advantage of parables. In some ways learning ‘sufism’ might be similar to learning the Socratic method. It’s a liberal and liberating way of thinking.
For many Sufis, as for Socrates and for Christ, enlightenment comes from love. An insecure person, one who seeks simple, cookie-cutter answers to life’s big questions, would first have to open up, relax and enjoy uncertainties before taking steps toward creative, innovative living.
The theme of love plays a central role in all the Sufis that Shah reviews in this book. This love theme gave rise to the romantic Western tradition of love poetry and song that grow out of the Dark Ages and blossomed in the chivalric tradition of nobility, knighthood, and the later ideals of humanism.
This love theme was later used in an ecstatic cult of the Virgin Mary, who until the Crusades, had occupied only a small role in the Christian religion. Her greatest veneration today is precisely in those parts of Europe that fell under the Sufic influence.
The 12th century Sufi poet Ibn El-Arabi captures much of this:
I follow the religion of Love. Now I am sometimes called A Shepherd of gazelles [divine wisdom] And now a Christian monk, And now a Persian sage. My beloved is Three— Three yet only one; Many things appear as three, Which are no more than one. Give her no name, As if to limit one At sight of whom All limitation is confounded. |
In order to understand secret meanings of many Sufi poems, the reader needs to use any one of several methods of coding, used originally in the long tradition of Sufi poets as well as in other forms of literature, including the Koran. The messages are often coded using numeric code, a sort of Sufi numerology.
Sufi Mysticism in the novel, A Sufi's Ghost
In A Sufi's Ghost, Carmen understands how to decode Kabir's notebook because she discovers that his rosary contains keys to the coded text. By using the keys on Kabir's rosary, Carmen unlocks the real meaning of Kabir's notebook as well as the phrases that he quotes in his notebook. Once Carmen and Larson understand Kabir's notebook, they are able to follow instruction he left behind for them, which takes them on a special journey, one of tremendous consequences for the global religious institutions.
