The heart can know God directly.
Islam's mystical current, running through both Sunni and Shia worlds: purification of the heart through remembrance, the guidance of a master, and love as the method — Rumi's path.
DeitiesOne God
Founded800 CE · Across the Islamic world
AfterlifeJudgment — and union sought before it
TextsQuran · Masnavi of Rumi
The map
Sufism’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →
610 CE Islam 800 CE Sufism
The heart can know God directly.
Beyond law and theology lies taste — experience no book can carry.
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The path is purification.
Stations and states, under a master — the ego polished down like a mirror.
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Love is the method.
Rumi's wager: longing itself is the road home.
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R
Rumi — drunk on the Beloved.
A sober jurist until a wandering dervish overturned him: the rest is 25,000 verses trying to say what happened.
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A
Al-Ghazali — the scholar who crossed over.
The greatest mind of his age abandoned his post, tried the mystics' path, and returned to report it was the real thing.
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Dhikr — the remembrance circle.
The Name repeated — chanted, breathed, sometimes whirled — until the heart keeps saying it alone.
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