ABSTRACT
The Sufis spoke of themselves as travellers or wayfarers, faring upon a way which was staked out, but on which, nevertheless, a guide, in the person of an experienced spiritual man, a Pir u Murshid, was indispensable. The Sufi includes, in an eminent way, the ascete and the faqir, but the converse is not the case. After he has reviewed a large number of definitions of Sufism, as given by leading mystics, his conclusion is that, taken all in all, Sufism is worship of God based on love. The Sufi views the relation between the Creator and the creature as that of a lover and the beloved. Much of what the Sufis write on the virtues for which the seeker should strive would with us be considered to form part of a normal moral and religious education, with no necessary bearing on mystical life.
