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The Monistic Theory
by Nhân Tử Nguyễn Văn Thọ
TOC |
Preface | Chapters:
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9
10 11 12
13 14
15 16
17 18
19
Chapter 7
Sufism and the Monistic Theory
Let us
now approach Sufism, the Islamic mysticism, under its two main aspects,
the monistic theory, or the doctrine of the Unity of Being, and
mysticism. It serves to demonstrate that Truth is one, and is shared by
saints and sages from all creeds, all nations and all ages.
Definitions of Sufism
Religiously, Sufism means, mainly, an interiorization of Islam. It is
the inner quest for God, or the inner apprehension of the Divine. Thus
Sufism is defined as Islamic mysticism. As we know, mysticism, in its
widest sense, may be defined as the consciousness of the One Reality, be
it called Allah, Wisdom, Light, Life, Love or Being or even Nothing. It
can be termed as "the great spiritual current which goes through all
religions". Thus, the final aim of Sufism is to transcend the human
condition, to attain the divine status and to be united with God even in
this world. In the words of Bayazid Bastami; "A Sufi belongs to the sect
of God."
Because
the Sufis abandoned external forms and rituals and sang the praise of
universal truth which is within the reach of everybody, regardless of
creed, color, or nationality, Sufism became a religion which was both
international and universal. According to Rumi and, naturally, to all
Sufis, the outward rituals in churches, mosques, temples and pagodas are
void of any reality, and are the cause of all prejudices, hatred and
strife. Sufis tried to attack the hypocritical pretension of the bigoted
religionists and to introduce people into the realms of "inner thoughts
and values".
They
repeatedly asked: "Is God the object of formal worship, or of love? Is
the purpose of religion to unite, to comfort, to improve and to bring
all races and peoples of the world together in love and brotherhood, or
to divide, to tyrannize, to shed the blood of the innocent in futile
wars, to inflict tortures to people, to send people to the stake, to
mesmerize, to commit all kinds of crimes in the name of God and to
exploit our fellowmen?"
To the
Sufis, all talk, turmoil, rite, ritual, convention, custom, noise, and
desire is outside the unity with God; remove the veil of dualism and one
finds joy, silence, beauty, calm and the rest. When self, as well as
material world had been cast aside, the perfect man would unite with
God.
Sufism is
a mystical path: The end is God; the beginning is man in his terrestrial
state; the path is inward; the means which link man to God are the
spiritual virtues, which alone can make possible the realization of God
and which alone can prepare man to become worthy of the exalted station
of becoming the total theophany of God's Names and Qualities.
Philosophically, Sufism propounded the Unity of Being. We will develop
this theory later on. Now, we can say, roughly, that according to the
Sufis, the world is not created by God, but it rather proceeds from God
by a process of successive emanation. The world is then the theophany of
God. But in time, it will be re-absorbed in God by a process of
successive reintegration...
God is
everywhere, under the veils of terrestrial and celestial things. While
the Islamic orthodoxy represented Allah as having created the world once
for all, and then having removed himself to heaven, leaving his
creatures to work out their own salvation or condemnation, according to
the light given them by the prophets, and taught that God and man were
separated by an infinite chasm, the Sufis represented Him as the Sublime
Being, immanent and ever working in His creatures, the sum of all
existence, the fullness of life, whereby all things move and exist, not
only predestining but originating all actions, dwelling in and
terminating with each individual soul.
The Sufi
believed that he would see his God face to face in everything, and in
seeing Him, would become one with Him. In other words, God is immanent
in everything.
Therefore, God is not far from man. On the contrary, He is nearer to man
than his jugular vein. This view is based on the following Quranic
verse: "We indeed created man; and We know what his soul whispers within
him, and We are nearer to him than the jugular vein." (Quran 50:16)
Dhul Nun,
a Sufi poet, wrote:
"I turn to Thee in
my request,
And seek in Thee
my final rest;
To Thee alone my
loud lament is brought,
Thou dwellest in
my secret thought".
This view
entails, naturally, the doctrine of the incarnation of God in man
(hulul), as sustained by many great Islamic mystics such as Ibni Arabi
(born in Spain in A.D. 1165) and Al-Hallaj (d. in 992).
According
to the Sufis, good and evil are inevitably and intimately linked: One
must have knowledge of evil in order to perceive the existence of
goodness. They looked therefore to a higher good, the Absolute,
uncontaminated by association with evil. To be one with ultimate good is
to divest oneself of all evil, of all malicious earthly and
materialistic influence, and above all, of one's selfish tendencies. It
is in self that utter evil resides. We will see that the aim of all
Sufis is Fana, or self- negation and re-absorption in God. The mystic
path as it exists in Sufism is then one in which man dies to his carnal
nature in order to be reborn in divinis and hence to become united with
the Truth. The full grown Sufis is thus conscious of being, like other
men, a prisoner in the world of forms, but unlike them he, is also
conscious of being free, with a freedom which incomparably outweighs his
imprisonment. He may therefore be said to have two centers of
consciousness, one human and one Divine, and he may speak now from one,
and now from the other, which accounts for certain apparent
contradictions.
Culturally, Sufism is a message of brotherhood, harmony and hope for
mankind. The Sufis, in the words of Hakim Sanai, are looking for the
ocean of love and they do not bother with the rivers and canals of
conflict and prejudice. Sanai, also said: "Humanity is asleep, concerned
only with what is useless, living in a wrong world... Man is wrapping
his net around himself. A Sufi bursts his cage asunder."
Morally,
Sufism is freedom, generosity, and absence of self-constraint. When Abu
Said, one of the leaders of the Sufis, was asked to define the Sufi
doctrine, he replied: "It is to lay aside what you have in your head
such as pride, prejudice, desire, hostility, greed, arrogance, and
hatred; to give away what you have in your hand; and to flinch not from
whatever befalls you. The veil between God and thee is neither earth nor
heaven, nor the throne nor the footstools; thy selfhood and hate are thy
veil, and when thou removest these and replace them by love, thou hast
attained unto God."
Thus, to
some, the Sufis are dreamers, rebels, and meddlers who interfere with
the rituals of the church and the business of the state. To others, it
connotes humanitarism, tolerance, harmony, contempt of the superficial
rituals, love of mankind, and the attempt to achieve spiritual
fellowship. According to Professor Nasrollah S. Eatemi, Sufi "movement
was expressed in outward form as a protest against the formalism of
orthodoxy in Islam,and gradually developed into a rebellion of a sick,
materialist society. Sufism was an antithesis of arrogance, intolerance,
demagogism, hypocrisy and inhumanity. The Sufis' purpose was to create a
renaissance of man's spirit, through which he might see how egoism,
greed, pride, and strife are folly and that the universe is spiritual,
and that men are the sons of God." Indries Shah wrote:
The Sufi
law of life requires:
Kindness to the
young
Generosity to the
poor
Good counsel to
friends
Forbearance with
enemies
Indifference to
fools
Respect to the learned.
In sum,
"Sufism is one such path, placed by God within the bosom of Islam in
order to provide the possibility of spiritual realization for the
millions of men who over the ages have followed and continue to follow
the religion of the Quran. In its essence it joins the paths of
spiritual realization found in other traditions while in its formal
aspect it shares the genius and the particular features of Islam. It is
the path within Islam that leads from the particular to the Universal,
from multiplicity to Unity, from form to the supra-formal Essence. Its
function is to enable man to realize Divine Unity (al-tawhid), the truth
which has always been and will always be."
"The
keynote of Sufism," according to Reynod Nicholson, "is disinterested,
selfless devotion, in a word, love. The whole of Sufism is a protest
against the unnatural divorce between God and man."
The Sufi
teaches this simple truth that the basis of all faith or imam is unity,
for as Shaykh Mahmud Shabistari writes in his Gulshan-i-raz:
See but One, say
but One, know but One,
In this are summed up the roots and
branches of faith.
The Unity of Being
Sufism
professes the Unity of Being. This monistic theory is linked with the
statement of belief, 'There is no God but God', and the Quranic verse,
'Say, God is One'(112:1). Strictly speaking, the world is not a creation
ex nihilo by God, but rather a theophany, an emanation from God.
"In
Sufism, there is the fundamental concept of God as not only All Mighty
and All Good, but as the sole source of Being and Beauty and, indeed,
the one Beauty and the one Being, in whom is submerged whatever becomes
apparent, and, by whose light, whatever is apparent is made manifest."
Seyyed
Hosseinnasn, in his Sufi Essays, asserts: "The metaphysical aspect of
the (Sufi) doctrine delineates firstly the nature of Reality, the
Oneness of the Divine Essence which alone 'is' in the absolute sense and
prior to which there is nothing; then the theophany of the Essence
through the Divine Names and Qualities and through the determination of
the different states of being; and finally the nature of man as the
total theophany (tajalli) of the Names and Qualities. The doctrine of
unity or tawhid forms the axis of all Sufi metaphysics and it is in fact
the misunderstanding of this cardinal doctrine that has caused so many
orientalists to accuse Sufism of pantheism. Sufi doctrine does not
assert that God is the world but that the world to the degree that it is
real cannot be completely other than God.
The early
Sufis were ascetics and quietists rather than mystics. However, in the
ninth century they developed an ecumenical doctrine linked with the
ideas of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Neoplatonism
and Islam, an ecumenical doctrine which showed striking similarities
even with Taoism and Confucianism, as we will demonstrate it later on.
Sufism
thus showed that it regarded all religions as more or less "perfect
shadowing forth of the great central truth which it seeks fully to
comprehend and consequently it recognizes all of them as good in
proportion to the measure of truth which they contain." The practical
aim was to escape from the subjective self, the empirical self and,
until this lesson was learned, no advances toward Truth could be made.
Even today, Sufis regard God as identical with pure Being. For them,
everything is the theophany of God, the manifestation, the expression of
God; everything represents God, though for laymen, everything is rather
a veil of God. A Sufi may be described as one who conceives of religion
as an experience of eternity - one who holds that the soul, even in this
life, can unite itself with the Divine. He calls himself Ahl al-Haq, the
man of the Truth.
In Ibni
Arabi (born in Spain in A.D. 1165), we find an elaboration of the
doctrine of Monism. The fundamental principle of his system is the Unity
of Being: "There is no real difference between the Essence and its
attributes or, in other words, between God and the Universe."
This view
was shared by other Sufi mystics. Let us quote Dhul Nun (d. 861),
another Sufi mystic:
O God, I
never hearken to the voices of the beasts or the rustle of the trees,
the splashing of waters or of the songs of the birds, the whistling of
the wind or the rumble of thunder, but I sense in them a testimony to
thy unity [Wahdanyya], and a proof of thy Incomparableness; that thou
art the all-prevailing, the all-knowing, the all-wise, the all just, the
all true, and in Thee neither overthought nor ignorance nor folly nor
injustice nor lying.
O God I
acknowledge Thee in the proof of Thy handiwork and in evidence of Thy
acts...
Sufis
often refer to the saying 'God spreads the scrolls upon the heavens
until man learns to read them. Once he can read them, he can roll up the
scrolls and put them away.' The cosmos, known to the mystics as veil, as
allusion, and as separation, is referred to in the Quranic verse, 'We
shall show them our symbols in the horizons and in themselves, until it
be made known to them that it is the Truth' (41:53)
The
cosmos has two aspects. Known through the Tradition 'God created seventy
thousand veils of Light and Darkness', the first is expressed in the
statement that the universe is not God. The universe is relative,
transient, changing; therefore it is otherness, separateness, a veil
which separates us from God. In its other aspect, the universe is none
other than God, because it is the universe which reveals the Divinity.
Therefore, the cosmos both hides and reveals, veils and makes manifest.
To the Sufi, the world is transparent, because he sees the transcendent
significance of physical things. For the Sufi, the journey to God begins
with an awakening to the concept that the phenomenal world is a veil
which conceals the Divine. We begin the quest by removing the veil, only
to become aware that the veil and the Divine are one and the same thing.
The veil is the theophany itself: the manifestation of the Divine
through Its Names and Qualities. When we see the veil, we are seeing
nothing but the Divine.
The act
of creation is rather an act of emanation, of Self-expression. But why
should an Absolute and Infinite Reality express Itself? Sufism answers:
'For Knowledge of Self.' Each form re-expressed, recalled, remembered,
is so that It may come to know Self.
Since the
Divine is Infinite, Knowledge of Self is part of Its Infiniteness. Being
Infinite and Absolute, containing the totality of possibilities, It must
include the possibility of negating Self and bringing the relative into
being. Therefore the world exists because God is Infinite.
In this
connection it is not irrelevant to mention that one of the sayings of
the Prophet that is most often quoted by the Sufis is the following
'Holy Tradition' (hadith qudusi), so called because in it God speaks
directly: 'I was a Hidden Treasure and I wished to be known, and so I
created the world.'
The
Godhead in its unmanifest quality is above every quality we could
ascribe to It. This is the Divine Essence about which one can say
nothing, for any description would only serve to limit or bind It.
Divine Essence manifests Itself, however, in the direction of Creation
through stages, the first of which is the Archetypes, the possibilities
contained within the Absolute.
Divine
emanation is a twofold process: intelligible and sensible. The first
emanation brings the Archetypes into intelligible existence. Known as
the Divine Names and Qualities, these Archetypes are the possibilities
contained within the Absolute. This stage of emanation is conceived of
as the One (Ahadiyyah) moving towards Oneness (Wahidiyyah); the
Archetypes are noumena, forms which are outwardly and actually
intelligible, but inwardly and potentially sensible.
The
second stage of emanation occurs when the shadows of the Archetypes
reach the world of symbols, and the shadows of the world of symbols
reach the phenomenal world. The phenomenal world is a manifestation of
these higher worlds and reflects the splendor of multiplicity.
The
phenomenon is a form which is outwardly and actually sensible: It can be
grasped by the five outer senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and
touch. Outward forms act as sensible containers for the Archetypes,
which are in turn intelligible containers for aspects of the Absolute.
The
Absolute manifests Itself in the phenomenal world as if from the Center
to the periphery. The whole universe then can be schematized by a set of
concentric circles. The Center represents the Godhead; and the
successive circles respectively stand the World of Archetypes, the World
of Symbols, and finally the world of phenomena. This schema can also be
used to figure Man or the microcosm. Thus the Center, represents the
Divine Essence, and the concentric circles represent successively the
Spirit, the Soul and the Body .
This
schema is very useful, because it speaks to our visual sense. Thus when
we say that we should move inward to find God, we see it immediately. We
realize also that moving outwardly is moving toward materiality. The
material state is outside; the spiritual state is inside. The
theomorphic kernel of man is at the center of man's being. Thus the
profound and real nature of man lies beneath the layers of dross that
the passage of the ages and the gradual removal of man from his original
perfection have imposed upon that Divine Center.
This
schema help us understand why Abu Yazid Bastami has said: "When God
recognized my sincerity, the first grace that He accorded me was that he
removed the chaff of the self from before me."
This
schema shows us that we should destroy the outer crust of our being, to
reveal to us our own divine center. Also with the help of this schema,
we can make the cosmos and all that it contains transparent so that the
infinite content becomes revealed through the finite form.
In this
manner we can achieve the goal of the mystical quest, a goal which is
perennially sought since, as already explained, it lies within the depth
of human existence itself.
To him, whose soul
attains the beatific vision,
The universe is
the book of 'The Truth Most High'.
Accidents are its
vowels, and substance its consonants,
And grades of
creatures its verses and pauses.
(Shaykh Mahmud
Shabistari)
In sum,
the mystical path is the journey of the soul from the outward to the
inward, from the periphery to the Center, from the form to the meaning.
And because of the intimate relation the soul possesses with the cosmos,
this journey is at once a penetration to the center of the soul and a
migration to the abode beyond the cosmos. In both places, which are in
reality but a single locus, resides the Divine Presence, the Presence
which is at once completely our-Self and totally other than our self.
THE SUFI'S CONCEPTION OF MAN
The
Sufi's conception of man is based on these two Quranic verses:
"Surely We created
man of the best stature (ahsan taqwim)
Then we reduced
him to the lowest of the low (asfal safilin)
(Quran XCV,4-5)
Thus the
innermost or the true nature of man is divine, while the outer layer of
man is the terrestrial crust or the human appearance. The theomorphic
innermost nature of man is his permanent reality, his divine origin,
unchanged through ages. The terrestrial crust, or the outer human
appearance, contains transient and passing elements and is characterized
by wretchedness and misery due to the state of separatedness from his
spiritual origin.
The outer
human layer encompasses the mutable sphere of the psyche, such as
thoughts, emotions and ego-consciousness. It is the bounded ego, the
personality, i.e. the mask of the true Self. It is enmeshed in the
time-space cosmic pattern and under the pressure of material existence,
under the bondage and the limitations of matter.
The inner
divine layer is beyond, behind and above all the apparent changes,
endowed with all powers and faculties, freedom of choice, and
potentialities to help man achieve his own final goal of Bliss,
Perfection and Immortality.
Thus man
carries both the image of perfection and the experiential certainty of
separation within himself, and these elements remain as permanent
aspects and conditions of the human state above and beyond all
historical changes and transformations.
In other
words, there are two poles in man. On one pole, there is his theomorphic
nature, his essential world; on the other pole there is his terrestrial
crust, his phenomenal world, which covers and hides his spiritual core.
We can say that in man, the Human serves as a veil which conceals the
Divine. We will see that for Sufis, the journey to God begins with the
removal of this human veil.
This view
can explain the human paradox: Living in the bondage of the finite and
of the limited, man is always seeking to transcend this world of
finitude and transiency, and to find the Infinite Reality which can
deliver him from the realm of mortality and of servitude. Man cannot
remain man without seeking the Infinite and without wanting to transcend
himself. To be human means to want to transcend the merely human.
Man seeks
his psychic and spiritual needs outwardly precisely because he does not
know who he is. Sufism reminds man to seek all that he needs inwardly
within himself, to tear his roots from the outer world, and plunge them
into the Divine Nature, which resides at the center of his heart. Sufism
removes man from his lowly state of asfal saphilin in order to reinstate
him in his primordial perfection of ahsan taqwim wherein he finds within
himself all that he had sought outwardly, for being united with God he
is separate from nothing.
Ordinary
man is forever moving away from the center of his being towards the
periphery, dispersing himself in the multiplicity of this world like
waves that break up into a thousand drops against the rocks of the
sea-shore. This outward-going tendency must be checked and reversed so
that man may live inwardly, with his reactions and tendencies moving
towards the center rather than towards the rim; for at the Center
resides the One, the Pure and Ineffable Being which is the source of all
beatitude and goodness, whereas at the periphery is non-existence, which
only appears to be real because of man's illusory perception and lack of
discrimination.
The
mystic path as it exists in Sufism is one in which man dies to his
carnal nature in order to be reborn in divinis and hence to become
united with the Truth.
THE UNIVERSAL PROTOTYPE
To attain
the divine status is to realize the Universal Prototype. The Universal
Prototype is the prototypical human form. It is God's own image. The
Universal Prototype should unite the inward, eternal aspect of reality
with the onward, phenomenal aspect. The Universal Prototype comprehends
all individualities and unites all opposites in the infinite nature of
Self. All Divine Qualities are united and displayed. At this moment the
multiplicity of the soul (the sensory and the psychic forces) disappears
and the vision of Unity fills the emptied soul. This is when one sees
God in Oneness. The ultimate meaning of the Unity of Being is 'to see
things as they really are': to realize that all is reflected in the
mirror of one's own being. It is the dissolution of the profane
consciousness of man who sees all things as independent of God: to
realize that one was never separate from God; that God in His Oneness is
both immanent and transcendent. This universal prototype is realized by
Muhammad, the Prophet, according to Sufis. But we can say that the
founder of every religion is the Universal Prototype, the Universal
Logos. This Universal Prototype is also realized by all mystical saints
of all religions in the world.
The
Prophet is an individual who, in form, manifests all the possibilities
of humanity. By marrying and having children, he expresses his human
nature. Through his receiving the revelation, he is the receptacle of
Divine Nature. The Prophet, referring to this aspect of himself, has
said, 'I am Ahmad without the m [Ahad means Unity]; I am an 'arab
without the r [rabb means Lord]; who had seen me hath seen the Truth'.
The
possibility of becoming the Universal Prototype exists potentially for
all Muslims. The difference between one who is awakened and one who
remains asleep, and the difference in the levels attained by the
awakened, depends upon what Sufis call preparedness.
SUFI'S MYSTIC QUEST
Each Sufi
seeks to become the Universal Prototype. In other words, each Sufi seeks
to become united with God, even in this life. He does not live by
himself, but God lives in Him. This final station can be described by
the Sacred Tradition in which God says, 'My servant never ceases drawing
nigh unto Me, and when my servant does so, I become the Hearing by which
he hears, the Seeing by which he sees, the Hand by which he seizes and
the Foot by which he walks.' The Sufi 'witnesses' when in full
consciousness of the Divine Presence.
One can
live a divine life, when one ceases to think that a separate life from
God is possible, that one can find any reality outside God; when one can
gather all multiplicity into unity; when one realizes that God is the
coincidence of opposites: transcendence and immanence, inward and
outward, essence and phenomena, Divine and veils, divine and humane, all
coalesce in an infinite harmonious Wholeness. All these ideas stem from
Quranic verses:
'Allah is
the Light of the heavens and the earth' (XXIV,35)
'There is
no God but He; everything is perishing except His Face'(XXVIII,88). 'He
is the first, the last and the outward and the inward'(LVII,3)
'I have
breathed unto him (man) of my spirit' (XV,30)
'Verily,
We have created man, and We know what his soul suggests to him, for We
are higher unto him than the neck artery (or jugular vein) (L,15)
'Wherever
ye turn, there is the Face of Allah' (II, 109)
'He to
whom Allah giveth no light hath no light at all' (XXIV, 40)
It is
natural to see why the early Sufis considered the Quran not only as the
Word of God, but also as the primary means of drawing man near to Him.
According
to Hallaj, God, who, in essence, is love, created Man after His image to
the end that His creature, loving Him alone, may suffer a spiritual
transformation, find the divine image in himself, and thus attain to
union with the divine will and nature. His doctrine of hulul, or of
incarnation really infers that all human being is potentially a God
incarnate, and can become a God incarnate, if he can realize his divine
and real Self. And if 'all manifestation should return whence it has
come', according to the Monistic theory, all man, as manifestation of
God, as aspect of God, should return to God; being non-existent, for
actually only God exists, man can exist only through God's existence.
Sufism, if well understood, preaches the greatness of man: Sufi saints
see that God incarnates himself in man, but does not share the Christian
point of view that only Jesus Christ is God incarnate. The Quran also
considered Jesus Christ only as a messenger of God, and not as the only
begotten Son of God.
Say, 'He
is God alone! God the Eternal! He begets not and is not begotten! Nor is
there like unto Him any one!' (CXII)
They
misbelieve who say, 'Verily, God is the Messiah, the son of Mary;' but
the Messiah said, 'O children of Israel! worship God, my Lord and your
Lord' (V,72 or V,77)
CONCLUSION
In the
Legacy of Islam, we read: '...The typical saint is no longer one who has
sought God with prayer and aspiration and found Him, after sore travail,
in the transfiguration of dying to self through and inexplicable act of
grace depending on nothing but the personal will of the Creator; he is
rather the complete theosophist and hierophant from whom no mystery is
hidden, the perfect man who identifies himself with God or the Logos.
I was on that day
when the Names were not,
Nor any sign of
existence endowed with name.
By me Names and
Named were brought to view
On the day when
there were not 'I' and 'we'.
...It may
be well to state briefly the philosophical theory which underlies it.
'The
Essence of God is all that really exists; His attributes are
distinguished from Him in thought, but in reality are not other than He.
The aggregate of divine attributes, which we call the universe, is the
ever-changing kaleidoscope wherein He displays Himself, and is real in
so far as He is reflected in it. Phenomena per se are not-being; they
acquire a contingent existence from the efflux of Absolute Being by
which they are irradiated. The position and function of man in the
scheme of things' become clear. 'In him the spiritual and physical
worlds meet, and he stands at the center of the universe of which he is
the soul. But on his phenomenal side he is 'black with the darkness of
not-being'; his bodily affections hold him in bondage, so that he thinks
he is separate from God. That illusion, though supported by sense and
reason, contradicts the first principle of the Sufi philosophy, which
teaches that all existence and all action is the manifestation of divine
energy...'
Sufism is
one such path, placed by God within the bosom of Islam, to help Islamic
people transcend the finite and reach the Infinite. In its essence, it
joins the path of spiritual realization found in other traditions, while
in its formal aspect it shares the genius and the particular features of
Islam. It is the path within Islam that leads from the particular to the
Universal, from multiplicity to Unity, from form to the Supra-formal
Essence. Its function is to enables man to realize Divine Unity. The
mystic path as it exists in Sufism is one in which man dies to his
carnal and psychic nature to be reborn in divinis and hence to become
united with the Truth, videlicet with God. To use the technical words,
in Abu Yazid of Bistam 's parlance, the passing away of the self is
called fana, and the unitive life in God is called baqa. The Sufi
mystical quest begins with man, in his terrestrial state and ends in the
bosom of God.
Khwajah
Abdullah Ansari wrote:
The heart enquired
of the soul
What is the
beginning of this business?
What its end, and
what its fruit?
The soul answered:
The beginning of
it is
The annihilation
of self
Its end,
faithfulness,
And
its fruit, Immortality.
To
understand Sufism, one should be familiar with the Theory of Emanation,
sustained by Al-Ghazzali, with the 'Transcendent Unity of Being and its
Theophany through the contingent existence of all things in the
Universe, with the doctrine of the Universal or Perfect Man who is
centrally and axially located, so that he reflects the Divine Names and
Qualities in a total and conscious manner, and, finally, with the
Mystical Quest and Mystical Life practiced and professed by all Sufi
Saints which recalls us that man was made for immortality and that his
intelligence was created to grasp the Absolute.
The
keynote of Sufism, according to Reynold Nicholson, "is disinterested
selfless devotion, in a word, love. The whole of Sufism is a protest
against the unnatural divorce between God and man."
TOC |
Preface | Chapters:
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9
10 11 12
13 14
15 16
17 18
19
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