Tasawwuf: Metaphysics - Murshid Sam's Living Stream

Tasawwuf: Metaphysics—Gatha with Commentary Series I
Toward the One, the Perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty,
the Only Being, United with All the Illuminated Souls
Who Form the Embodiment of the Master, the Spirit of Guidance.
Gatha with Commentary Series I: Number 8
Logic
GATHA: Logic is a support that reason takes to strengthen itself; it may be called a fortification of
reason. The analytical faculty of the mind seeks for something substantial to make reason cut and
dry. In other words logic may be called authorized reason, or reason supported by the reason of others.
TASAWWUF: The term “Reason” is used differently by various people. It usually refers to deduction,
drawing conclusions, from accepted premises in a formal way. There is also induction which is
used in the sciences and elsewhere wherein facts are collected before any conclusion is reached.
In the actual world, there are different systems of deductive reasoning. The fact that there are different
systems questions the absolute validity of each and all. And the fact that the conclusions reached
by the deductive methods are often found to be defective in the course of time would seem to confirm
this. Besides, as man evolves, so does his reasoning.
GATHA: Logic has a larger field than reason, because the scope of reason is only the mind of one individual.
The scope of logic is vaster, it represents the minds of many individuals who have thought
on the same subject.
TASAWWUF: In presenting the Sufi Message to the West, Hazrat Inayat Khan used mostly the English
language and reasoned as if his basic thinking was with this language. His teachings were then
subjected to Western methods, and in the course of time, many difficulties arose. Perhaps all of them
could be obviated and are obviated when the intuitive faculty is developed.
In India, each of the six great Schools of philosophy has, more or less, its own logistics. In America
we find the methods of Aristotle, Hegel, Russell, Whitehead, and Spaulding, all differing in some
respects. In general, the Western world accepts one or more of these approaches. The question arises
by what Logic can we determine which of these men, and which of these methods, are suitable for
each or all, or for only limited occasions
In 1923 Hazrat Inayat Khan and Zenist Nyogen Sensaki met for the first time and both went into
Samadhi together. This was a joint experience at a very high level. But when they conversed in common
language before and with others, each found the other was using the nyaya system of reasoning.
This helped bring a great Sufi and a great Zen Buddhist closer together. But it bewildered their
immediate audience (those who were with them in 1923) even more than the joint mystical experience
did. Apparently, the logic of the East was not identical with the logic of the West.
GATHA: Logic is a degree higher in knowledge than reason. When one person gives a reason and
another person says there is no logic in it, that means that there is no support for this reason from
other minds which have thought about the subject.
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