Part 1 (2/2)
That there may be no misunderstanding about what has just been said it must be clearly stated that the Sufi also realizes an att.i.tude of perpetual adoration molded by the religious form. Like every believer he must pray and, in general, conform to the revealed Law since his individual human nature will always remain pa.s.sive in relation to Divine Reality or Truth whatever the degree of his spiritual identification with it. ”The servant (i.e. the individual) always remains the servant” (al-'abd yabqa-l-'abd), as a Moroccan master said to the author. In this relations.h.i.+p the Divine Presence will therefore manifest Itself as Grace. But the intelligence of the Sufi, inasmuch as it is directly identified with the ”Divine Ray”, is in a certain manner withdrawn, in its spiritual actuality and its own modes of expression, from the framework imposed on the individual by religion and also by reason, and in this sense the inner nature of the Sufi is not receptivity but pure act.
It goes without saying that not every contemplative who follows the Sufi way comes to realize a state of knowledge which is beyond form, for clearly that does not depend on his will alone. None the less the end in view not only determines the intellectual horizon but also brings into play spiritual means which, being as it were a pre figuring of that end, permit the contemplative to take up an active position in relation to his own psychic form.
Instead of identifying himself with his empirical ”I” he fas.h.i.+ons that ”I” by virtue of an element which is symbolically and implicitly non-individual. The Qur'an says: ”We shall strike vanity with truth and it will bring it to naught” (21:18). The Sufi 'Abd as-Salam ibn Mas.h.i.+sh prayed: ”Strike with me on vanity that I may bring it to naught.” To the extent that he is effectively emanc.i.p.ated the con templative ceases to be such-and-such a person and ”becomes” the Truth on which he has meditated and the Divine Name which he invokes.
The intellectual essence of Sufism makes imprints even on the purely human aspects of the way which may in practice coincide with the religious virtues. In the Sufi perspective the virtues are nothing other than human images or ”subjective traces” of universal Truth;3 hence the incompatibility between the spirit of Sufism and the ”moralistic” conception of virtue, which is quant.i.tative and in dividualistic.4 Since the doctrine is both the very foundation of the way and the fruit of the contemplation which is its goal,5 the difference between Sufism and religious mysticism can be reduced to a question of doctrine. This can be clearly expressed by saying that the believer whose doctrinal outlook is limited to that of exotericism always maintains a fundamental and irreducible separation between the Divinity and himself whereas the Sufi recognizes, at least in principle, the essential unity of all beings, or-to put the same thing in negative terms-the unreality of all that appears separate from G.o.d.
It is necessary to keep in view this double aspect of esoteric orientation because it may happen that an exotericist-and particularly a religious mystic-will also affirm that in the sight of G.o.d he is nothing. If, however, this affirmation carried with it for him all its metaphysical implications, he would logically be forced to admit at the same time the positive aspect of the same truth, which is that the essence of his own reality, in virtue of which he is not ”nothing”, is mysteriously identical with G.o.d. As Meister Eckhart wrote: ”There is somewhat in the soul which is uncreate and uncreatable; if all the soul were such it would be uncreate and uncreatable; and this somewhat is Intellect.” This is a truth which all esotericism admits a priori, whatever the manner in which it is expressed.
A purely religious teaching on the other hand either does not take it into account or even explicitly denies it, because of the danger that the great majority of believers would confuse the Divine Intellect with its human, ”created” reflection and would not be able to conceive of their transcendent unity except in the likeness of a substance the quasi-material coherence of which would be contrary to the essential uniqueness of every being. It is true that the Intellect has a ”created” aspect both in the human and in the cosmic order, but the whole scope of the meaning that can be given to the word ”Intellect”6 is not what concerns us here since, independently of this question, esotericism is characterized by its affirmation of the essentially divine nature of knowledge.
Exotericism stands on the level of formal intelligence which is conditioned by its objects, which are partial and mutually exclusive truths. As for esotericism, it realizes that intelligence which is be yond forms and it alone moves freely in its limitless s.p.a.ce and sees how relative truths are delimited.7 This brings us to a further point which must be made clear, a point, moreover, indirectly connected with the distinction drawn above between true mysticism and individualistic ”mysticism”. Those who stand ”outside” often attribute to Sufis the pretension of being able to attain to G.o.d by the sole means of their own will. In truth it is precisely the man whose orientation is towards action and merit-that is, exoteric-who most often tends to look on everything from the point of an effort of will, and from this arises his lack of under standing of the purely contemplative point of view which envisages the way first of all in relation to knowledge.
In the principial order will does in fact depend on knowledge and not vice versa, knowledge being by its nature ”impersonal”. Although its development, starting from the symbolism transmitted by the traditional teaching, does include a certain logical process, know ledge is none the less a divine gift which man could not take to himself by his own initiative. If this is taken into account it is easier to understand what was said above about the nature of those spiritual means which are strictly ”initiatic” and are as it were a prefiguring of the nonhuman goal of the Way. While every human effort, every effort of the will to get beyond the limitations of individuality is doomed to fall back on itself, those means which are, so to say, of the same nature as the supra-individual Truth (al-aqiqah) which they evoke and prefigure can, and alone can, loosen the knot of microcosmic individuation-the egocentric illusion, as the Vedantists would say-since only the Truth in its universal and supra-mental reality can consume its opposite without leaving of it any residue.
By comparison with this radical negation of the ”I” (nafs) any means which spring from the will alone, such as asceticism (az-zuhd) can play only a preparatory and ancillary part.8 It may be added that it is for this reason that such means never acquired in Sufism the almost absolute importance they had, for instance, for certain Christian monks; and this is true even in cases where they were in fact strictly practiced in one or another ariqah.
A Sufi symbolism which has the advantage of lying outside the realm of any psychological a.n.a.lysis will serve to sum up what has just been said. The picture it gives is this: The Spirit (ar-Ru) and the soul (an-nafs) engage in battle for the possession of their common son the heart (al-qalb). By ar-Ru is here to be understood the in tellectual principle which transcends the individual nature9 and by an-nafs the psyche, the centrifugal tendencies of which determine the diffuse and inconstant domain of the ”I”. As for al-qalb, the heart, this represents the central organ of the soul, corresponding to the vital center of the physical organism. Al-qalb is in a sense the point of intersection of the ”vertical” ray, which is ar-Ru, with the ”hori zontal” plane, which is an-nafs.
Now it is said that the heart takes on the nature of that one of the two elements generating it which gains the victory in this battle. Inasmuch as the nafs has the upper hand the heart is ”veiled” by her, for the soul, which takes herself to be an autonomous whole, in a way envelops it in her ”veil” (ijab). At the same time the nafs is an accomplice of the ”world” in its multiple and changing aspect be cause she pa.s.sively espouses the cosmic condition of form. Now form divides and binds whereas the Spirit, which is above form, unites and at the same time distinguishes reality from appearance. If, on the contrary, the Spirit gains the victory over the soul, then the heart will be transformed into Spirit and will at the same time trans.m.u.te the soul suffusing her with spiritual light. Then too the heart reveals itself as what it really is, that is as the tabernacle (mishkat) of the Divine Mystery (sirr) in man.
In this picture the Spirit appears with a masculine function in relation to the soul, which is feminine. But the Spirit is receptive and so feminine in its turn in relation to the Supreme Being, from which it is, however, distinguished only by its cosmic character inasmuch as it is polarized with respect to created beings. In essence ar-Ru is identified with the Divine Act or Order (al-Amr) which is sym bolized in the Qur'an by the creating Word ”Be” (kun) and is the immediate and eternal ”enunciation” of the Supreme Being: ”. . . and they will question you about the Spirit: say: The Spirit is of the Order of my Lord, but you have received but little knowledge” (Qur'an, 17:84).
In the process of his spiritual liberation the contemplative is reintegrated into the Spirit and by It into the primordial enunciation of G.o.d by which ”all things were made . . . and nothing that was made was made without it” (St. John's Gospel).10 Moreover, the name ”Sufi” means, strictly speaking, one who is essentially identified with the Divine Act; hence the saying that the ”Sufi is not created” (a-ufi lam yukhlaq), which can also be understood as meaning that the being who is thus reintegrated into the Divine Reality recognizes himself in it ”such as he was” from all eternity according to his ”principial possibility, immutable in its state of non-manifestation”-to quote Muyi-d-Din ibn 'Arabi. Then all his created modalities are revealed, whether they are temporal or non temporal, as mere inconsistent reflections of this principial possibility.11 Translated by D. M. Matheson.
My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, And a temple for idols, and the pilgrim's Ka'ba and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Koran.
I follow the religion of Love (adinu bi-d-dini al-hubb): whatever way Love's camel take, that is my religion and my faith.”
Muhyiddin Ibn al-'Arabi.
Footnotes.
1 There is in this fact nothing implying any superiority of one tradition over another; it shows only tendencies which are conditioned by the genius and temperament of the peoples concerned. Because of this bhaktic character of Christian mysticism some orientalists have found it possible to a.s.sert that Ibn 'Arabi was ”not a real mystic”.
2 The structure of Islam does not admit of stages in some sense inter mediate between exotericism and esotericism such as the Christian monastic state, the original role of which was to const.i.tute a direct framework for the Christian way of contemplation.
3 It will be recalled that for Plotinus virtue is intermediate between the soul and intelligence.
4 A quant.i.tative conception of virtue results from the religious con sideration of merit or even from a purely social point of view. The qualitative conception on the other hand has in view the a.n.a.logical relation between a cosmic or Divine quality and a human virtue. Of necessity the religious conception of virtue remains individualistic since it values virtue only from the point of view of individual salvation.
5 Some orientalists would like artificially to separate doctrine from ”spiritual experience”. They see doctrine as a ”conceptualizing” antic.i.p.ating a purely subjective ”experience”. They forget two things: first, that the doctrine ensues from a state of knowledge which is the goal of the way and secondly, that G.o.d does not lie.
6 The doctrine of the Christian contemplatives of the Orthodox Church, though clearly esoteric, maintains an apparently irreducible distinction between the ”Uncreated Light” and the nous or intellect, which is a human, and so created faculty, created to know that Light. Here the ”ident.i.ty of essence” is expressed by the immanence of the ”Uncreated Light” and its presence in the heart. From the point of view of method the distinction between the intellect and Light is a safeguard against a ”luciferian” con fusion of the intellectual organ with the Divine Intellect. The Divine Intellect immanent in the world may even be conceived as the ”void”, for the Intellect which ”grasps” all cannot itself be ”grasped”. The intrinsic orthodoxy of this point of view-which is also the Buddhist point of view-is seen in the identification of the essential reality of everything with this ”void” (unya).
7 The Qur'an says: ”G.o.d created the Heavens and the earth by the Truth (al-aqq)” (64:3).
8 Sufis see in the body not only the soil which nourishes the pa.s.sions but also its spiritually positive aspect which is that of a picture or resume of the cosmos. In Sufi writings the expression the ”temple” (haykal) will be found to designate the body. Muyi-d-Din ibn 'Arabi in the chapter on Moses in his Fuu al-ikam compares it to ”the ark where dwells the Peace (Sakinah) of the Lord”.
9 The word ru can also have a more particular meaning, that of ”vital spirit”. This is the sense in which it is most frequently used in cosmology.
10 For the Alexandrines too liberation is brought about in three stages which respectively correspond to the Holy Spirit, the Word, and G.o.d the Father.
11 If it is legitimate to speak of the principial, or divine, possibility of every being, this possibility being the very reason for his ”personal unique ness”, it does not follow from this that there is any multiplicity whatever in the divine order, for there cannot be any uniqueness outside the Divine Unity. This truth is a paradox only on the level of discursive reason. It is hard to conceive only because we almost inevitably forge for ourselves a ”substantial” picture of the Divine Unity.
The Universality of Sufism.
Martin Lings.
Those who insist that Sufism is ”free from the shackles of religion”1 do so partly because they imagine that its universality is at stake. But however sympathetic we may feel towards their preoccupation with this undoubted aspect of Sufism, it must not be forgotten that particularity is perfectly compatible with universality, and in order to perceive this truth in an instant we have only to consider sacred art, which is both unsurpa.s.sably particular and unsurpa.s.sably universal.2 To take the example nearest our theme, Islamic art is immediately recognizable as such in virtue of its distinctness from any other sacred art: ”n.o.body will deny the unity of Islamic art, either in time or in s.p.a.ce; it is far too evident: whether one contemplates the mosque of Cordova or the great madrasah of Samarkand, whether it be the tomb of a saint in the Maghreb or one in Chinese Turkestan, it is as if one and the same light shone forth from all these works of art.”3 At the same time, such is the universality of the great monuments of Islam that in the presence of any one of them we have the impression of being at the center of the world.4 Far from being a digression, the question of sacred art brings us back to our central theme, for in response to the question ”What is Sufism?”,5 a possible answer-on condition that other answers were also forthcoming-would be simply to point to the Taj Mahal or to some other masterpiece of Islamic architecture. Nor would a potential Sufi fail to understand this answer, for the aim and end of Sufism is sainthood, and all sacred art in the true and full sense of the term is as a crystallization of sanct.i.ty, just as a Saint is as an incarnation of some holy monument, both being manifestations of the Divine Perfection.
According to Islamic doctrine, Perfection is a synthesis of the Qualities of Majesty and Beauty; and Sufism, as many Sufis have expressed it, is a putting on of these Divine Qualities, which means divesting the soul of the limitations of fallen man, the habits and prejudices which have become ”second nature”, and investing it with the characteristics of man's primordial nature, made in the image of G.o.d. Thus it is that the rite of initiation into some Sufi orders actually takes the form of an invest.i.ture: a mantle (khirqah) is placed by the Shaykh over the shoulders of the initiate.
The novice takes on the way of life of the adept, for part of the method of all mysticisms-and of none more than Islamic mysticism-is to antic.i.p.ate the end; the adept continues the way of life he took on as novice. The difference between the two is that in the case of the adept the way, that is, Sufism, has become altogether spontaneous, for sainthood has triumphed over ”second nature”. In the case of the novice the way is, to begin with, mainly a discipline. But sacred art is as a Divine Grace which can make easy what is difficult. Its function-and this is the supreme function of art-is to precipitate in the soul a victory for sainthood, of which the masterpiece in question is an image. As a complement to discipline-we might even say as a respite-it presents the path as one's natural vocation in the literal sense, summoning together all the souls' elements for an act of unanimous a.s.sent to the Perfection which it manifests.
If it be asked: Could we not equally well point to the Temple of Hampi or to the Cathedral of Chartres as to the Taj Mahal as a crystallization of Sufism? the answer will be a ”yes” outweighed by a ”no”. Both the Hindu temple and the Christian cathedral are supreme manifestations of Majesty and Beauty, and a would-be Sufi who failed to recognize them and rejoice in them as such would be falling short of his qualification inasmuch as he would be failing to give the signs of G.o.d their due. But it must be remembered that sacred art is for every member of the community in which it flowers, and that it represents not only the end but also the means and the perspective or, in other words, the way opening onto the end; and neither the temple nor the cathedral was destined to display the ideals of Islam and to reveal it as a means to the end as were the great mosques and, on another plane, the great Sufis. It would certainly not be impossible to point out the affinity between the particular modes of Majesty and Beauty which are manifested in both these Islamic exemplars, that is, in the static stone perfections and in their dynamic living counterparts. But such an a.n.a.lysis of what might be called the perfume of Islamic spirituality could be beyond the scope of a book of this nature. Suffice it to say that the Oneness of the Truth is reflected in all its Revelations not only by the quality of uniqueness but also by that of h.o.m.ogeneity. Thus each of the great theocratic civilizations is a unique and h.o.m.ogeneous whole, differing from all the others as one fruit differs from another and ”tasting” the same all through, in all its different aspects. The Muslim mystic can thus give himself totally, without any reserve,6 to a great work of Islamic art; and if it be a shrine he can, by entering it, put it on as the raiment of sanct.i.ty and wear it as an almost organic prolongation of the Sufism which it has helped to triumph in his soul. The same triumph could be furthered by the temple or the cathedral; but he could not ”wear” either of these-at least, not until he had actually transcended all forms by spiritual realization which is very different from a merely theoretic understanding.
Sacred art was mentioned in that it provides an immediately obvious example of the compatibility between the universal and the particular. The same compatibility is shown by the symbolism of the circle with its center, its radii, and its circ.u.mference. The word ”symbolism” is used here to show that the circle is being considered not as an arbitrary image but as a form which is rooted in the reality it ill.u.s.trates, in the sense that it owes its existence to that reality, of which it is in fact an existential prolongation. If the Truth were not Radiant there could be no such thing as a radius, not even a geometric one, let alone a spiritual path which is the highest example. All radii would vanish from existence; and with this vanis.h.i.+ng the universe itself would vanish, for the radius is one of the greatest of all symbols inasmuch as it symbolizes that on which everything depends, namely the connection between the Divine Principle and its manifestations or creations.
Everyone is conscious of ”being at a point” or of ”having reached a point”, even if this be no more than consciousness of having reached a certain age. Mysticism begins with the consciousness that this point is on a radius. It then proceeds by what might be described as an exploitation of this fact, the radius being a Ray of Divine Mercy which emanates from the Supreme Center and leads back to it. The point must now become a point of Mercy. In other words, there must be a deliberate realization or actualization of the Mercy inherent in the point which is the only part of the radius which one can as yet command. This means taking advantage of those possibilities of Mercy which are immediately available, namely the outer formal aspects of religion which, though always within reach, may have been lying entirely neglected or else only made use of exoterically, that is, considering the point in isolation without reference to the radius as a whole.
The radius itself is the religion's dimension of mysticism; thus, in the case of Islam, it is Sufism, which is seen in the light of this symbol to be both particular and universal-particular in that it is distinct from each of the other radii which represent other mysticisms and universal because, like them, it leads to the One Center. Our image as a whole reveals clearly the truth that as each mystical path approaches its End it is nearer to the other mysticisms than it was at the beginning.7 But there is a complementary and almost paradoxical truth which it cannot reveal,8 but which it implies by the idea of concentration which it evokes: increase of nearness does not mean decrease of distinctness, for the nearer the center, the greater the concentration, and the greater the concentration, the stronger the ”dose”. The concentrated essence of Islam is only to be found in the Sufi Saint who, by reaching the End of the Path, has carried the particular ideals of his religion to their highest and fullest development, just as the concentrated essence of Christianity is only to be found in a St. Francis or a St. Bernard or a St. Dominic. In other words, not only the universality but also the originality of each particular mysticism increases in intensity as the End is approached. Nor could it be otherwise inasmuch as originality is inseparable from uniqueness, and this, as well as universality, is necessarily increased by nearness to the Oneness which confers it.
<script>