This scholarly anthology of essays on Sufism brought together by editors Jean-Louis Michon and Roger Gaetani contains 15 selections by American and European writers with a few French essays appearing for the first time in English. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University, writes in the foreword that "the editors have been very judicious in selecting texts that are authentic and yet represent different approaches to the study of Sufism as well as diverse aspects of the subject."
The essays cover a broad sweep of subject matter including Sufi doctrine and method, the prophetic model of the spiritual master in Islam, women and the feminine in the Islamic mystical tradition, Jesus in the Qur'an, and the quintessential esotericism of Islam. Titus Burckhardt writes about the importance of the oral tradition in Sufism, William Chittick delves into it as the inner dimension of Islam, and Martin Lings sees Sufism as a bridge between East and West.
The most fascinating essay is Nasr's, "The Spiritual Needs of Western Man and the Message of Sufism." He sees this tradition's influence coming in three ways: through those who practice it in an active way; through those who dip into it and help explain Islam to others; and through those who explore it as an aid to recollection and reawakening. Of the later, Nasr concludes:
"Because Sufism is a living tradition with a vast treasury of metaphysical and cosmological doctrines, a sacred psychology and psychotherapy rarely studied in the West, a doctrine of sacred art and traditional sciences, it can bring back to life many aspects of the Western tradition forgotten today."
