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Sufis and the Enneagram (long)

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Jan 7, 1998, 3:00:00 AM1/7/98
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As-salaamu alaikum wa ramadan mubarak,

A few days ago a poster wrote a note about his research into the
relationship between the Sufis and the meaning and practices associated
with the Enneagram (also known as the Enneagon), a nine-pointed figure
with both exoteric and esoteric significances. This note was a response to
a quotation from Shaykh Hisham Kabbani's book, The Naqshbandi Sufi Way,
which describes a meeting between George Gurdjieff, the famous 20th
century adventurer, and Grandshaykh Abdullah al-Daghestani, at that time
the leader of the al-Haqqaniia branch of the Naqshbandiia Sufis. (Shaykh
Hisham is the Khalifa, or representative, of the current head of this
branch, Shaykh Nazim al-Qubbrusi al-Haqqaniia.)

This is the original note:

This is a response to various people who have written about the
supposed relationship between the teachings of Gurdjieff and the
Naqshbandi sufi tradition. I wrote a doctoral dissertation in psychology
in 1986, "Interrater Reliability and Validity of Judgments of Enneagram
Personality Types," and concluded that the enneagram teaching does not
derive from sufi orders, but is part of an esoteric tradition which has
survived in an Islamic environment-- a tradition linked to the "Hermetic
sciences" such as alchemy, astrology, and "sacred" numbers.
I was an early student of the transpersonal psychiatrist C. Naranjo,
who learned about the nine ego-essence types from O. Ichazo in Arica,
Chile, in 1970. Ichazo originally claimed to be a sufi master who
learned from the same secret "School" as Gurdjieff did. He told stories
of being in Afghanistan and contacting the chiefs of the "School of the
Bees" (= Gurdjieff's "Sarmân brotherhood"). This is how the designation
"sufi enneagram" originated. Gurdjieff, who first presented the
enneagram diagram in the West, claimed to have gone to a secret (Sarman
or Sarmoung) monastery in Afghanistan. Idries Shah, in Tales of the
Dervishes, later claimed some of his dervish tales originated from
"Sarman sufis." In other books and articles, which he probably wrote
under pseudonyms, are descriptions of a "secret monastery" in
Afghanistan which supposedly preserved the knowledge of the "noh-kunja"
(Persian for "nine corners") and suggested that the Sarman sufis were
the esoteric core of the Naqshbandi order. JG Bennett, a student of
Gurdjieff wrote extensively about his views that the source of
Gurdjieff's teachings was closely linked to the "Khwajagan" sufis of
Central Asia-- a lineage later called "Naqshbandi ." However, there is
no evidence whatsoever that sufi masters knew or used teachings of the
enneagram to transform their disciples-- despite the inevitable
assertion of this myth in most books about the "sufi enneagram."
Ichazo subsequently changed his story and claimed that his knowledge
came from the (Qabbalistic) angel "Metatron." He has also reportedly
said that he never met or heard of any sufis that had any knowledge
about the enneagram. Bob Ochs, a Jesuit priest who was in the same group
I was in (Naranjo's first group, in Berkeley, which started in 1971),
was quick to spread the enneagram teaching to the Jesuits, from where it
spread to other Catholic monastic orders in a Christianized format.
Helen Palmer learned the enneagram teachings some years later from
students of Naranjo and took a few classes from him as well. All these
people and their students have continued to teach and publish books
about the "sufi enneagram."
Shaykh H. Kabbani and his collaborators who helped him write his
book have simply capitalized upon all this by drawing on previously
published claims and speculations in order to assert that Gurdjeff
learned about the enneagram from his (Kabbani's) branch of the
Naqshbandi sufi order. He has "planted" brief references to the
knowledge of the "nine points" in his book on the history of the
Naqshbandi order and his own branch. It is true, though, that Gurdjieff
did visit one of the Daaghistani Naqshbandi masters (of this same
branch), and this is mentioned in a book by JG Bennett. But Gurdieff
himself wrote somewhere that he visited spiritual teachers in order to
gain spiritual energy from them-- i.e. to increase his own personal
power and development. And, besides, his writings reveal contempt for
religion, despite his claim that his teaching was "esoteric
Christianity." As for Kabbani's claims, this is clearly an example of
his practice of what I call "spiritual lying" (which I have personally
witnessed), in order to promote and increase membership in the
Naqshbandi branch of Islamic sufism that he is a part of-- a practice
which I detest (and contronted him personally about some years ago).
I myself accept that certain teachings from this esoteric tradition
are objectively true, such as the nine ego-essence types and the three
spiritual centers in the body, but I make a sharp distinction between
two paths of mysticism: that of Occultism and that of Religion. The
former emphasizes divinization of the developed human being (such as
Gurdjieff's "man number seven"); the latter emphasizes that only God is
divine and that man and woman must become ego-annihilated in order to
fully appreciate, love, serve, and glorify our Almighty Creator, the
Only Beloved. After being a student of non-Islamic sufism for years, I
converted to Islam in 1984 when I became convinced that sufism is the
heart of Islam and that the sufis of the past were all practicing
muslims (meaning "surrenderers" to the Divine Will).

At the request of my fellow dervishes in the Order, I agreed to post a
reply to this article from Dr. Lahleh Baktiar, a writer, scholar, and
Naqshbandi dervish:

From kazi...@kazi.org Tue Jan 6 16:41:53 1998
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 1998 18:41:52 -0600
Subject: Response to Bill Gamard

Dear Bill Gamard,

I had studied your well-written dissertation as I was doing my research
into the Sufi interpretation of the Enneagram. I have written a three-
volume work on the subject called God's Will Be Done. What I show is
that the original Enneagram, as passed to the Sufis from the Islamic and
Greek traditions, is a far cry from the Enneagram inspired to Oscar
Ichazo - which is the Enneagram as it is presently being used by most
teachers. If you are referring to the Oscar Ichazo Enneagram of
personality types, I could not agree more that it has nothing to do with
Sufism. However, if you are talking about the basic teaching which
Gurdjieff received in the concept of moral healing and the virtues and
vices as propounded by Plato and Aristotle as well as to be found in the
Old Testament, the New Testament and the Quran, my research has found that
Sufism and Islam had a great deal to do with it. In addition to
providing the womb for which Greek thought survived to be later taken by
the West (often without acknowledgement of the role of trustee that
Islamic civilization played), in the 13th century a third
category was added to that of Plato and Aristotle, which no one had seen
before, and which then made the 9 points possible. This was the
work of Nasir al-din Tusi, a neo-Platonist philosopher, who added to the
work of Plato. Before that time the categories were too much or too
little wisdom, temperance and courage, which deal with quantity. What
Nasir al-din Tusi noted was that there is also a third dimension, lack
of wisdom, temperance and courage in terms of quality. This made the
nine possibilities on the circumference of negative traits or vices as
the key is balance, moderation, the mean and not too much, too little or
depravity of a virtue. These nine negative points can be found in the
work of Rumi where I am now doing my research.

Therefore the problem is in talking about Sufi interpretation or
origins of the Enneagram presently being used (developed by Oscar Ichazo)
and not the original Enneagram, which came from
the ancient world and had to do with ethics and morality. The ancient
wisdom model is not a model of personality types but of types of
response to situations.

This latter, types of response to situations is what Gurdjieff learned
from the Naqshbandis. This is the original Enneagram. Therefore, it
would seem to me that if you wanted to be fair in regard to Shaykh
Hisham Kabbani's book, you would apologize for
not making the above distinction. I am sorry that you have witnessed
what you call spiritual lying but again I think it would only be fair to
yourself and others not to rush to judgment as you have done in your
letter. As Muslims, we believe in something called God's Will. We
believe that God's Will will be done whether we like it or not. The fact
that the Naqshbandi Sufi order is the fastest growing Sufi order in
America is God's Will and does not need to falsify anything. On the
other hand, our strength is not in our numbers which is quantitative but
in the quality of each and every one of our members because of the
quality brought to us by Shaykh Hisham Kabbani. I agree with your final
statement and have been practicing this under Shaykh Hisham's guidance
for several years and I quote what you say, the words in parenthesis
however are my own: "Only God is divine and that man and woman must
become ego-annihilated (a zero type, centered and balanced in justice)
in order to fully appreciate, love, serve, and glorify our Almighty
Creator, the Only Beloved."

Peace,

Laleh Bakhtiar

-------------------

A personal note: my email address is bogus to deter spam, but I can be
reached at: informe at best dot com.

Wassalaam,

Hamza

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