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All of which has a very familiar sound to the ears of the Western reader, has it not? By many of the students of the Higher Criticism, the book of Job (which is distinctively non-Hebraic) is believed to have been derived from Zoroastrian, or pre-Zoroastrian, sources. And, students of comparative religion have long been familiar with the striking resemblance between certain portions of the book of Revelations and the Zoroastrian teachings, the latter ante-dating the former by seven centuries. Moreover, it is claimed by careful students of the subject that many of the ceremonials, holy-days, etc., of Mithraism (a branch of Zoroastrianism) were incorporated into the early Christian church during the first two or three centuries of its existence. Other religions have been materially influenced by this almost forgotten religio-philosophy of the past.

Zoroaster’s moral teachings were excellent. His Triad summed up the law as follows: I. Humata , or good thoughts; II. Huxta , or good words; and III. Hvarsta , or good deeds. He taught universal brotherhood and universal kindness to all, irrespective of race, country or creed. Kindness to animals was enjoined. Personal cleanliness was made a religious duty. Work, likewise, was held to be a religious duty and virtue, the tilling of the soil being regarded as a sacred work. Zoroaster’s “Golden Rule” was: “Think of, speak to, and act toward your brothers (and all men are your brothers), as you would desire that they should think of, speak to, and act toward you.”

SUFIISM

Sufiism is the mystic and inner-teaching found within the body of the Mohammedan religion, principally in Persia and Arabia. It undoubtedly existed long before the time of Mohammed, and is believed to have been incorporated in the religion of the Prophet in order that it might not be destroyed by his conquering faith. The legends are that Ali, the favorite disciple of Mohammed, was a Sufi, and managed to save his mystic faith by persuading the Prophet to admit it into the new religion as an inner-teaching. The Sufis have a legend which relates that “The seed of Sufiism was sown in the time of Adam; germinated in the time of Noah; budded in the time of Abraham; began to develop in the time of Jesus; and produced pure wine in the time of Mohammed.” The term “Sufi” is derived from the Persian word “ suf ,” meaning “wool,” its use arising from the fact that the ancient Sufi teachers wore a single garment of undyed and unbleached wool.

Sufiism has exerted its principal influence upon the thought of the outside world by reason of its poetry. Nearly all of the great Persian and Arabian poets have been Sufis, and have woven in their mystic religion by veiled metaphors, the terms “wine,” the “vine,” the “grape,” and also the “rose,” the “nightingale,” the “beloved one,” and similar terms familiar in Oriental poetry, having a mystic significance. Briefly, it may be said that in the Sufi poetry, such terms as “the grape,” “the wine,” “the vine,” etc., have reference to the mystic teaching of the Sufis; while terms such as “the beloved,” “the damsel,” “the rose,” refer to the Sufi conception of the Divine One, “the lover” and “the nightingale” being the Sufi worshipper. As for instance this verse from Omar Khayyam, who was a Sufi:

“And David’s lips are lockt; but in divine

High-piping Pehlevi, with Wine! Wine! Wine!

Red Wine!—the Nightingale cries to the Rose

That sallow-cheek of her’s to incarnadine.”

Or this verse from Jalal-ud-Din Rumi:

“The souls love-moved are circling on,

Like streams to their great Ocean-King.

Thou art the Sun of all men’s thoughts;

Thy kisses are the flowers of Spring.

The dawn is pale from yearning Love;

The moon in tears is sorrowing.

Thou art the Rose, and deep for Thee,

In sighs, the Nightingales still sing.”

Sufiism may be described as an absolute idealistic monism, tinged with a devout and fervent mysticism . An authority says: “Sufiism is the mystical and pantheistic doctrine of the Sufis. They consider that God alone exists; that He is in all nature, and that all nature is in Him, the visible universe being an emanation from His essence.” The fundamental principles of the Sufis may be simply stated in these words: God is all there is; besides Him there is naught; the universe is but a reflection or idea in the mind of God, and has no existence outside of Him .

To the Sufi the universe is a great stage upon which is enacted the eternal drama of life, in which the Divine One creates, moves, and then destroys the characters and the scenery—all being but mental creations and existing but in His mind. Old Omar Khayyam, that much misunderstood Sufi poet, states this in bold simplicity in his Rubaiyat , when he sings:

“Whose secret presence, through Creation’s veins

Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains;

Taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi; and

They change and perish all—but He remains;

A moment guessed—then back behind the Fold

Immerst of Darkness round the Drama rolled

Which, for the pastime of Eternity,

He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.”

“We are no other than a moving row

Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go

Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held

In Midnight by the Master of the Show;

But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays

Upon His Chequer-board of Nights and Days:

Hither and Thither moves, and checks and slays,

And one by one back in the Closet lays.

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,

But Here and There, as strikes the Player, goes;

And He that tossed you down into the Field,

He knows about it all—He knows—He knows!”

But this pessimistic and apparently hopeless outlook upon life does not bring terror to the soul of the Sufi. While recognizing that the universe is but an illusion, and life but a puppet-show, he remembers that if God is all there is, then the individual must be a part of or phase of God —and toward the union with God he bends all his soul and life. Discarding the sugar-plum reward of heavenly bliss in future worlds, as taught in the Mohammedan creed, he seeks to fly straight to the heart of Being, and seeks his comfort and security there in the bosom of God.

The Sufi is a true mystic, and seeks ever for the union with The Beloved One. He strives to enter into conscious union with God here in earth-life; and hopes for absorption in God in the future when his soul leaves the body. He leaves the thousand heavens of the orthodox Mohammedan—he will have none of them—but piercing through the illusion which embraces even the highest heavens, like the arrow to the mark, or the homing-pigeon to its nest, he flies straight to the embrace of the Beloved. During his life-time, he indulges in meditations, reveries, and “silences”—he also favors sacred dances to slow music accompanied by rhythmic movements of the body. He feels strange longings of the soul, which he holds to be dim memories of his previous blissful state in the bosom of the One, and the natural craving to return thereto. He believes that his ideas of the good, the beautiful, and the true, are but memories of his previous bliss. He believes in fate and destiny, but holds them to be but the Divine stage-machinery in the drama of the universe. His soul is ever home-sick for the One. And, in this spirit, Avicenna, the Sufi poet, sings of the mourning soul, sighing, over its loss, and longing for its home-journey and return to 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,