The Mystics of Islam

by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

The Revelation of the Sea

“God bade me behold the Sea, and I saw the ships sinking and the planks floating; then the planks too were submerged.”

[The Sea denotes the spiritual experiences through which the mystic passes in his journey to God. The point at issue is this: whether he should prefer the religious law or disinterested love. Here he is warned not to rely on his good works, which are no better than sinking ships and will never bring him safely to port. No; if he would attain to God, he must rely on God alone. If he does not rely entirely on God, but lets himself trust ever so little in anything else, he is still clinging to a plank. Though his trust in God is greater than before, it is not yet complete.]

“And He said to me, ‘Those who voyage are not saved.’”

[The voyager uses the ship as a means of crossing the sea: therefore he relies, not on the First Cause, but on secondary causes.]

“And He said to me, ‘Those who instead of voyaging cast themselves into the Sea take a risk.’”

[To abandon all secondary causes is like plunging in the sea. The mystic who makes this venture is in jeopardy, for two reasons: he may regard himself, not God, as initiating and carrying out the action of abandonment,—and one who renounces a thing through ‘self’ is in worse case than if he had not renounced it,—or he may abandon secondary causes (good works, hope of Paradise, etc.), not for God’s sake, but from sheer indifference and lack of spiritual feeling.]

“And He said to me, ‘Those who voyage and take no risk shall perish.’”

[Notwithstanding the dangers referred to, he must make God his sole object or fail.]

“And He said to me, ‘In taking the risk there is a part of salvation.’”

[Only a part of salvation, because perfect selflessness has not yet been attained. The whole of salvation consists in the effacement of all secondary causes, all phenomena, through the rapture which results from vision of God. But this is gnosis, and the present revelation is addressed to mystics of a lower grade. The gnostic takes no risk, for he has nothing to lose.]

“And the wave came and lifted those beneath it and overran the shore.”

[Those beneath the wave are they who voyage in ships and consequently suffer shipwreck. Their reliance on secondary causes casts them ashore, i.e. brings them back to the world of phenomena whereby they are veiled from God.]

“And He said to me, ‘The surface of the Sea is a gleam that cannot be reached.’”

[Any one who depends on external rites of worship to lead him to God is following a will-o’-the-wisp.]

“And its bottom is a darkness impenetrable.”

[To discard positive religion, root and branch, is to wander in a pathless maze.]

“And between the two are fishes which are to be feared.”

[He refers to the middle way between pure exotericism and pure esotericism. The ‘fishes’ are its perils and obstacles.]

“Do not voyage on the Sea, lest I cause thee to be veiled by the vehicle.”

[The ‘vehicle’ signifies the ‘ship,’ i.e. reliance on something other than God.]

“And do not cast thyself into the Sea, lest I cause thee to be veiled by thy casting thyself.”

[Whoever regards any act as his own act and attributes it to himself is far from God.]

“And He said to me, ‘In the Sea are boundaries: which of them will bear thee on?’”

[The ‘boundaries’ are the various degrees of spiritual experience. The mystic ought not to rely on any of these, for they are all imperfect.]

“And He said to me, ‘If thou givest thyself to the Sea and sinkest therein, thou wilt fall a prey to one of its beasts.’”

[If the mystic either relies on secondary causes or abandons them by his own act, he will go astray.]

“And He said to me, ‘I deceive thee if I direct thee to aught save Myself.’”

[If the mystic’s inward voice bids him turn to anything except God, it deceives him.]

“And He said to me, ‘If thou perishest for the sake of other than Me, thou wilt belong to that for which thou hast perished.’

“And He said to me, ‘This world belongs to him whom I have turned away from it and from whom I have turned it away; and the next world [belongs to him towards whom I have brought it] and whom I have brought towards Myself.’”

[He means to say that everlasting joy is the portion of those whose hearts are turned away from this world and who have no worldly possessions. They really enjoy this world, because it cannot separate them from God. Similarly, the true owners of the next world are those who do not seek it, inasmuch as it is not the real object of their desire, but contemplate God alone.]

The gnostic descries the element of reality in positive religion, but his gnosis is not derived from religion or from any sort of human knowledge: it is properly concerned with the divine attributes, and God Himself reveals the knowledge of these to His saints who contemplate Him. Dhu ’l-Nūn of Egypt, whose mystical speculations mark him out as the father of Moslem theosophy, said that gnostics are not themselves, and do not subsist through themselves, but so far as they subsist, they subsist through God.

“They move as God causes them to move, and their words are the words of God which roll upon their tongues, and their sight is the sight of God which has entered their eyes.”

The gnostic contemplates the attributes of God, not His essence, for even in gnosis a small trace of duality remains: this disappears only in fanā al-fanā, the total passing-away in the undifferentiated Godhead. The cardinal attribute of God is unity, and the divine unity is the first and last principle of gnosis.[9]

[9] According to some mystics, the gnosis of unity constitutes a higher stage which is called ‘the Truth’ (haqīqat). See above, [p. 29].

Both Moslem and Sūfī declare that God is One, but the statement bears a different meaning in each instance. The Moslem means that God is unique in His essence, qualities, and acts; that He is absolutely unlike all other beings. The Sūfī means that God is the One Real Being which underlies all phenomena. This principle is carried to its extreme consequences, as we shall see. If nothing except God exists, then the whole universe, including man, is essentially one with God, whether it is regarded as an emanation which proceeds from Him, without impairing His unity, like sunbeams from the sun, or whether it is conceived as a mirror in which the divine attributes are reflected. But surely a God who is all in all can have no reason for thus revealing Himself: why should the One pass over into the Many? The Sūfīs answer—a philosopher would say that they evade the difficulty—by quoting the famous Tradition: “I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known; therefore I created the creation in order that I might be known.” In other words, God is the eternal Beauty, and it lies in the nature of beauty to desire love. The mystic poets have described the self-manifestation of the One with a profusion of splendid imagery. Jāmī says, for example:

“From all eternity the Beloved unveiled His beauty in the solitude of the unseen;

He held up the mirror to His own face, He displayed His loveliness to Himself.

He was both the spectator and the spectacle; no eye but His had surveyed the Universe.

All was One, there was no duality, no pretence of ‘mine’ or ‘thine.’

The vast orb of Heaven, with its myriad incomings and outgoings, was concealed in a single point.

The Creation lay cradled in the sleep of non-existence, like a child ere it has breathed.

The eye of the Beloved, seeing what was not, regarded nonentity as existent.

Although He beheld His attributes and qualities as a perfect whole in His own essence,

Yet He desired that they should be displayed to Him in another mirror,

And that each one of His eternal attributes should become manifest accordingly in a diverse form.

Therefore He created the verdant fields of Time and Space and the life-giving garden of the world,

That every branch and leaf and fruit might show forth His various perfections.

The cypress gave a hint of His comely stature, the rose gave tidings of His beauteous countenance.

Wherever Beauty peeped out, Love appeared beside it; wherever Beauty shone in a rosy cheek, Love lit his torch from that flame.

Wherever Beauty dwelt in dark tresses, Love came and found a heart entangled in their coils.

Beauty and Love are as body and soul; Beauty is the mine and Love the precious stone.

They have always been together from the very first; never have they travelled but in each other’s company.”

In another work Jāmī sets forth the relation of God to the world more philosophically, as follows:

“The unique Substance, viewed as Absolute and void of all phenomena, all limitations and all multiplicity, is the Real (al-Haqq). On the other hand, viewed in His aspect of multiplicity and plurality, under which He displays Himself when clothed with phenomena, He is the whole created universe. Therefore the universe is the outward visible expression of the Real, and the Real is the inner unseen reality of the universe. The universe before it was evolved to outward view was identical with the Real; and the Real after this evolution is identical with the universe.”

Phenomena, as such, are not-being and only derive a contingent existence from the qualities of Absolute Being by which they are irradiated. The sensible world resembles the fiery circle made by a single spark whirling round rapidly.

Man is the crown and final cause of the universe. Though last in the order of creation he is first in the process of divine thought, for the essential part of him is the primal Intelligence or universal Reason which emanates immediately from the Godhead. This corresponds to the Logos—the animating principle of all things—and is identified with the Prophet Mohammed. An interesting parallel might be drawn here between the Christian and Sūfī doctrines. The same expressions are applied to the founder of Islam which are used by St. John, St. Paul, and later mystical theologians concerning Christ. Thus, Mohammed is called the Light of God, he is said to have existed before the creation of the world, he is adored as the source of all life, actual and possible, he is the Perfect Man in whom all the divine attributes are manifested, and a Sūfī tradition ascribes to him the saying “He that hath seen me hath seen Allah.” In the Moslem scheme, however, the Logos doctrine occupies a subordinate place, as it obviously must when the whole duty of man is believed to consist in realising the unity of God. The most distinctive feature of Oriental as opposed to European mysticism is its profound consciousness of an omnipresent, all-pervading unity in which every vestige of individuality is swallowed up. Not to become like God or personally to participate in the divine nature is the Sūfī’s aim, but to escape from the bondage of his unreal selfhood and thereby to be reunited with the One infinite Being.

According to Jāmī, Unification consists in making the heart single—that is, in purifying and divesting it of attachment to aught except God, both in respect of desire and will and also as regards knowledge and gnosis. The mystic’s desire and will should be severed from all things which are desired and willed; all objects of knowledge and understanding should be removed from his intellectual vision. His thoughts should be directed solely towards God, he should not be conscious of anything besides.

So long as he is a captive in the snare of passion and lust, it is hard for him to maintain this relation to God, but when the subtle influence of that attraction becomes manifest in him, expelling preoccupation with objects of sense and cognition from his inward being, delight in that divine communion prevails over bodily pleasures and spiritual joys; the painful task of self-mortification is ended, and the sweetness of contemplation enravishes his soul.

When the sincere aspirant perceives in himself the beginning of this attraction, which is delight in the recollection of God, let him fix his whole mind on fostering and strengthening it, let him keep himself aloof from whatsoever is incompatible with it, and deem that even though he were to devote an eternity to cultivating that communion, he would have done nothing and would not have discharged his duty as he ought.

“Love thrilled the chord of love in my soul’s lute,

And changed me all to love from head to foot.

’Twas but a moment’s touch, yet shall Time ever

To me the debt of thanksgiving impute.”

It is an axiom of the Sūfīs that what is not in a man he cannot know. The gnostic—Man par excellence—could not know God and all the mysteries of the universe, unless he found them in himself. He is the microcosm, ‘a copy made in the image of God,’ ‘the eye of the world whereby God sees His own works.’ In knowing himself as he really is, he knows God, and he knows himself through God, who is nearer to everything than its knowledge of itself. Knowledge of God precedes, and is the cause of, self-knowledge.

Gnosis, then, is unification, realisation of the fact that the appearance of ‘otherness’ beside Oneness is a false and deluding dream. Gnosis lays this spectre, which haunts unenlightened men all their lives; which rises, like a wall of utter darkness, between them and God. Gnosis proclaims that ‘I’ is a figure of speech, and that one cannot truly refer any will, feeling, thought, or action to one’s self.

Niffarī heard the divine voice saying to him:

“When thou regardest thyself as existent and dost not regard Me as the Cause of thy existence, I veil My face and thine own face appears to thee. Therefore consider what is displayed to thee, and what is hidden from thee!”

[If a man regards himself as existing through God, that which is of God in him predominates over the phenomenal element and makes it pass away, so that he sees nothing but God. If, on the contrary, he regards himself as having an independent existence, his unreal egoism is displayed to him and the reality of God becomes hidden from him.]

“Regard neither My displaying nor that which is displayed, else thou wilt laugh and weep; and when thou laughest and weepest, thou art thine, not Mine.”

[He who regards the act of divine revelation is guilty of polytheism, since revelation involves both a revealing subject and a revealed object; and he who regards the revealed object which is part of the created universe, regards something other than God. Laughter signifies joy for what you have gained, and weeping denotes grief for what you have lost. Both are selfish actions. The gnostic neither laughs nor weeps.]

“If thou dost not put behind thee all that I have displayed and am displaying, thou wilt not prosper; and unless thou prosper, thou wilt not become concentrated upon Me.”

[Prosperity is true belief in God, which requires complete abstraction from created things.]

Logically, these doctrines annul every moral and religious law. In the gnostic’s vision there are no divine rewards and punishments, no human standards of right and wrong. For him, the written word of God has been abrogated by a direct and intimate revelation.

“I do not say,” exclaimed Abu ’l-Hasan Khurqānī, “that Paradise and Hell are non-existent, but I say that they are nothing to me, because God created them both, and there is no room for any created object in the place where I am.”

From this standpoint all types of religion are equal, and Islam is no better than idolatry. It does not matter what creed a man professes or what rites he performs.

“The true mosque in a pure and holy heart

Is builded: there let all men worship God;

For there He dwells, not in a mosque of stone.”

Amidst all the variety of creeds and worshippers the gnostic sees but one real object of worship.

“Those who adore God in the sun” (says Ibn al-ʿArabī) “behold the sun, and those who adore Him in living things see a living thing, and those who adore Him in lifeless things see a lifeless thing, and those who adore Him as a Being unique and unparalleled see that which has no like. Do not attach yourself” (he continues) “to any particular creed exclusively, so that you disbelieve in all the rest; otherwise, you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognise the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one creed, for He says (Kor. 2. 109), ‘Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah.’ Every one praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently he blames the beliefs of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance. If he knew Junayd’s saying, ‘The water takes its colour from the vessel containing it,’ he would not interfere with other men’s beliefs, but would perceive God in every form of belief.”

And Hafiz sings, more in the spirit of the freethinker, perhaps, than of the mystic:

“Love is where the glory falls

Of Thy face—on convent walls

Or on tavern floors, the same

Unextinguishable flame.

Where the turbaned anchorite

Chanteth Allah day and night,

Church bells ring the call to prayer

And the Cross of Christ is there.”

Sūfism may join hands with freethought—it has often done so—but hardly ever with sectarianism. This explains why the vast majority of Sūfīs have been, at least nominally, attached to the catholic body of the Moslem community. ʿAbdallah Ansārī declared that of two thousand Sūfī Sheykhs with whom he was acquainted only two were Shīʿites. A certain man who was a descendant of the Caliph ʿAlī, and a fanatical Shīʿite, tells the following story:

“For five years,” he said, “my father sent me daily to a spiritual director. I learned one useful lesson from him: he told me that I should never know anything at all about Sūfism until I got completely rid of the pride which I felt on account of my lineage.”

Superficial observers have described Bābism as an offshoot of Sūfism, but the dogmatism of the one is naturally opposed to the broad eclecticism of the other. In proportion as the Sūfī gains more knowledge of God, his religious prejudices are diminished. Sheykh ʿAbd al-Rahīm ibn al-Sabbāgh, who at first disliked living in Upper Egypt, with its large Jewish and Christian population, said in his old age that he would as readily embrace a Jew or Christian as one of his own faith.

While the innumerable forms of creed and ritual may be regarded as having a certain relative value in so far as the inward feeling which inspires them is ever one and the same, from another aspect they seem to be veils of the Truth, barriers which the zealous Unitarian must strive to abolish and destroy.

“This world and that world are the egg, and the bird within it

Is in darkness and broken-winged and scorned and despised.

Regard unbelief and faith as the white and the yolk in this egg,

Between them, joining and dividing, a barrier which they shall not pass.

When He hath graciously fostered the egg under His wing,

Infidelity and religion disappear: the bird of Unity spreads its pinions.”

The great Persian mystic, Abū Saʿīd ibn Abi ’l-Khayr, speaking in the name of the Calendars or wandering dervishes, expresses their iconoclastic principles with astonishing boldness:

“Not until every mosque beneath the sun

Lies ruined, will our holy work be done;

And never will true Musalmān appear

Till faith and infidelity are one.”

Such open declarations of war against the Mohammedan religion are exceptional. Notwithstanding the breadth and depth of the gulf between full-blown Sūfism and orthodox Islam, many, if not most, Sūfīs have paid homage to the Prophet and have observed the outward forms of devotion which are incumbent on all Moslems. They have invested these rites and ceremonies with a new meaning; they have allegorised them, but they have not abandoned them. Take the pilgrimage, for example. In the eyes of the genuine Sūfī it is null and void unless each of the successive religious acts which it involves is accompanied by corresponding ‘movements of the heart.’

A man who had just returned from the pilgrimage came to Junayd. Junayd said:

“From the hour when you first journeyed from your home have you also been journeying away from all sins?” He said “No.” “Then,” said Junayd, “you have made no journey. At every stage where you halted for the night did you traverse a station on the way to God?” “No,” he replied. “Then,” said Junayd, “you have not trodden the road, stage by stage. When you put on the pilgrim’s garb at the proper place, did you discard the qualities of human nature as you cast off your clothes?” “No.” “Then you have not put on the pilgrim’s garb. When you stood at ʿArafāt, did you stand one moment in contemplation of God?” “No.” “Then you have not stood at ʿArafāt. When you went to Muzdalifa and achieved your desire, did you renounce all sensual desires?” “No.” “Then you have not gone to Muzdalifa. When you circumambulated the Kaʿba, did you behold the immaterial beauty of God in the abode of purification?” “No.” “Then you have not circumambulated the Kaʿba. When you ran between Safā and Marwa, did you attain to purity (safā) and virtue (muruwwat)?” “No.” “Then you have not run. When you came to Minā, did all your wishes (munā) cease?” “No.” “Then you have not yet visited Minā. When you reached the slaughter-place and offered sacrifice, did you sacrifice the objects of worldly desire?” “No.” “Then you have not sacrificed. When you threw the pebbles, did you throw away whatever sensual thoughts were accompanying you?” “No.” “Then you have not yet thrown the pebbles, and you have not yet performed the pilgrimage.”

This anecdote contrasts the outer religious law of theology with the inner spiritual truth of mysticism, and shows that they should not be divorced from each other.

“The Law without the Truth,” says Hujwīrī, “is ostentation, and the Truth without the Law is hypocrisy. Their mutual relation may be compared to that of body and spirit: when the spirit departs from the body, the living body becomes a corpse, and the spirit vanishes like wind. The Moslem profession of faith includes both: the words, ‘There is no god but Allah,’ are the Truth, and the words, ‘Mohammed is the apostle of Allah,’ are the Law; any one who denies the Truth is an infidel, and any one who rejects the Law is a heretic.”

Middle ways, though proverbially safe, are difficult to walk in; and only by a tour de force can the Koran be brought into line with the esoteric doctrine which the Sūfīs derive from it. Undoubtedly they have done a great work for Islam. They have deepened and enriched the lives of millions by ruthlessly stripping off the husk of religion and insisting that its kernel must be sought, not in any formal act, but in cultivation of spiritual feelings and in purification of the inward man. This was a legitimate and most fruitful development of the Prophet’s teaching. But the Prophet was a strict monotheist, while the Sūfīs, whatever they may pretend or imagine, are theosophists, pantheists, or monists. When they speak and write as believers in the dogmas of positive religion, they use language which cannot be reconciled with such a theory of unity as we are now examining. ʿAfīfuddīn al-Tilimsānī, from whose commentary on Niffarī I have given some extracts in this chapter, said roundly that the whole Koran is polytheism—a perfectly just statement from the monistic point of view, though few Sūfīs have dared to be so explicit.

The mystic Unitarians admit the appearance of contradiction, but deny its reality. “The Law and the Truth” (they might say) “are the same thing in different aspects. The Law is for you, the Truth for us. In addressing you we speak according to the measure of your understanding, since what is meat for gnostics is poison to the uninitiated, and the highest mysteries ought to be jealously guarded from profane ears. It is only human reason that sees the single as double, and balances the Law against the Truth. Pass away from the world of opposites and become one with God, who has no opposite.”

The gnostic recognises that the Law is valid and necessary in the moral sphere. While good and evil remain, the Law stands over both, commanding and forbidding, rewarding and punishing. He knows, on the other hand, that only God really exists and acts: therefore, if evil really exists, it must be divine, and if evil things are really done, God must be the doer of them. The conclusion is false because the hypothesis is false. Evil has no real existence; it is not-being, which is the privation and absence of being, just as darkness is the absence of light. “Once,” said Nūrī, “I beheld the Light, and I fixed my gaze upon it until I became the Light.” No wonder that such illuminated souls, supremely indifferent to the shadow-shows of religion and morality in a phantom world, are ready to cry with Jalāluddīn:

“The man of God is made wise by the Truth,

The man of God is not learned from book.

The man of God is beyond infidelity and faith,

To the man of God right and wrong are alike.”

It must be borne in mind that this is a theory of perfection, and that those whom it exalts above the Law are saints, spiritual guides, and profound theosophists who enjoy the special favour of God and presumably do not need to be restrained, coerced, or punished. In practice, of course, it leads in many instances to antinomianism and libertinism, as among the Bektāshīs and other orders of the so-called ‘lawless’ dervishes. The same theories produced the same results in Europe during the Middle Ages, and the impartial historian cannot ignore the corruptions to which a purely subjective mysticism is liable; but on the present occasion we are concerned with the rose itself, not with its cankers.

Not all Sūfīs are gnostics; and, as I have mentioned before, those who are not yet ripe for the gnosis receive from their gnostic teachers the ethical instruction suitable to their needs. Jalāluddīn Rūmī, in his collection of lyrical poems entitled The Dīvān of Shamsi Tabrīz, gives free rein to a pantheistic enthusiasm which sees all things under the form of eternity.

“I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one;

One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call.

I am intoxicated with Love’s cup, the two worlds have passed out of my ken;

I have no business save carouse and revelry.”

But in his Masnavī—a work so famous and venerated that it has been styled ‘The Koran of Persia’—we find him in a more sober mood expounding the Sūfī doctrines and justifying the ways of God to man. Here, though he is a convinced optimist and agrees with Ghazālī that this is the best of all possible worlds, he does not airily dismiss the problem of evil as something outside reality, but endeavours to show that evil, or what seems evil to us, is part of the divine order and harmony. I will quote some passages of his argument and leave my readers to judge how far it is successful or, at any rate, suggestive.

The Sūfīs, it will be remembered, conceive the universe as a projected and reflected image of God. The divine light, streaming forth in a series of emanations, falls at last upon the darkness of not-being, every atom of which reflects some attribute of Deity. For instance, the beautiful attributes of love and mercy are reflected in the form of heaven and the angels, while the terrible attributes of wrath and vengeance are reflected in the form of hell and the devils. Man reflects all the attributes, the terrible as well as the beautiful: he is an epitome of heaven and hell. Omar Khayyām alludes to this theory when he says:

“Hell is a spark from our fruitless pain,

Heaven a breath from our time of joy”

—a couplet which [FitzGerald] moulded into the magnificent stanza:

“Heav’n but the Vision of fulfilled Desire,

And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,

Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves

So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.”

Jalāluddīn, therefore, does in a sense make God the author of evil, but at the same time he makes evil intrinsically good in relation to God—for it is the reflexion of certain divine attributes which in themselves are absolutely good. So far as evil is really evil, it springs from not-being. The poet assigns a different value to this term in its relation to God and in its relation to man. In respect of God not-being is nothing, for God is real Being, but in man it is the principle of evil which constitutes half of human nature. In the one case it is a pure negation, in the other it is positively and actively pernicious. We need not quarrel with the poet for coming to grief in his logic. There are some occasions when intense moral feeling is worth any amount of accurate thinking.

It is evident that the doctrine of divine unity implies predestination. Where God is and naught beside Him, there can be no other agent than He, no act but His. “Thou didst not throw, when thou threwest, but God threw” (Kor. 8. 17). Compulsion is felt only by those who do not love. To know God is to love Him; and the gnostic may answer, like the dervish who was asked how he fared:

“I fare as one by whose majestic will

The world revolves, floods rise and rivers flow,

Stars in their courses move; yea, death and life

Hang on his nod and fly to the ends of earth,

His ministers of mourning or of joy.”

This is the Truth; but for the benefit of such as cannot bear it, Jalāluddīn vindicates the justice of God by asserting that men have the power to choose how they will act, although their freedom is subordinate to the divine will. Approaching the question, “Why does God ordain and create evil?” he points out that things are known through their opposites, and that the existence of evil is necessary for the manifestation of good.

“Not-being and defect, wherever seen,

Are mirrors of the beauty of all that is.

The bone-setter, where should he try his skill

But on the patient lying with broken leg?

Were no base copper in the crucible,

How could the alchemist his craft display?”

Moreover, the divine omnipotence would not be completely realised if evil had remained uncreated.

“He is the source of evil, as thou sayest,

Yet evil hurts Him not. To make that evil

Denotes in Him perfection. Hear from me

A parable. The heavenly Artist paints

Beautiful shapes and ugly: in one picture

The loveliest women in the land of Egypt

Gazing on youthful Joseph amorously;

And lo, another scene by the same hand,

Hell-fire and Iblīs with his hideous crew:

Both master-works, created for good ends,

To show His perfect wisdom and confound

The sceptics who deny His mastery.

Could He not evil make, He would lack skill;

Therefore He fashions infidel alike

And Moslem true, that both may witness bear

To Him, and worship One Almighty Lord.”

In reply to the objection that a God who creates evil must Himself be evil, Jalāluddīn, pursuing the analogy drawn from Art, remarks that ugliness in the picture is no evidence of ugliness in the painter.

Again, without evil it would be impossible to win the proved virtue which is the reward of self-conquest. Bread must be broken before it can serve as food, and grapes will not yield wine till they are crushed. Many men are led through tribulation to happiness. As evil ebbs, good flows. Finally, much evil is only apparent. What seems a curse to one may be a blessing to another; nay, evil itself is turned to good for the righteous. Jalāluddīn will not admit that anything is absolutely bad.

“Fools buy false coins because they are like the true.

If in the world no genuine minted coin

Were current, how would forgers pass the false?

Falsehood were nothing unless truth were there,

To make it specious. ’Tis the love of right

Lures men to wrong. Let poison but be mixed

With sugar, they will cram it into their mouths.

Oh, cry not that all creeds are vain! Some scent

Of truth they have, else they would not beguile.

Say not, ‘How utterly fantastical!’

No fancy in the world is all untrue.

Amongst the crowd of dervishes hides one,

One true fakīr. Search well and thou wilt find!”

Surely this is a noteworthy doctrine. Jalāluddīn died only a few years after the birth of Dante, but the Christian poet falls far below the level of charity and tolerance reached by his Moslem contemporary.

How is it possible to discern the soul of goodness in things evil? By means of love, says Jalāluddīn, and the knowledge which love alone can give, according to the word of God in the holy Tradition:

“My servant draws nigh unto Me, and I love him; and when I love him, I am his ear, so that he hears by Me, and his eye, so that he sees by Me, and his tongue, so that he speaks by Me, and his hand, so that he takes by Me.”

Although it will be convenient to treat of mystical love in a separate chapter, the reader must not fancy that a new subject is opening before him. Gnosis and love are spiritually identical; they teach the same truths in different language.

[CHAPTER IV]
DIVINE LOVE

Any one acquainted, however slightly, with the mystical poetry of Islam must have remarked that the aspiration of the soul towards God is expressed, as a rule, in almost the same terms which might be used by an Oriental Anacreon or Herrick. The resemblance, indeed, is often so close that, unless we have some clue to the poet’s intention, we are left in doubt as to his meaning. In some cases, perhaps, the ambiguity serves an artistic purpose, as in the odes of Hafiz, but even when the poet is not deliberately keeping his readers suspended between earth and heaven, it is quite easy to mistake a mystical hymn for a drinking-song or a serenade. Ibn al-ʿArabī, the greatest theosophist whom the Arabs have produced, found himself obliged to write a commentary on some of his poems in order to refute the scandalous charge that they were designed to celebrate the charms of his mistress. Here are a few lines:

“Oh, her beauty—the tender maid! Its brilliance gives light like lamps to one travelling in the dark.

She is a pearl hidden in a shell of hair as black as jet,

A pearl for which Thought dives and remains unceasingly in the deeps of that ocean.

He who looks upon her deems her to be a gazelle of the sand-hills, because of her shapely neck and the loveliness of her gestures.”

It has been said that the Sūfīs invented this figurative style as a mask for mysteries which they desired to keep secret. That desire was natural in those who proudly claimed to possess an esoteric doctrine known only to themselves; moreover, a plain statement of what they believed might have endangered their liberties, if not their lives. But, apart from any such motives, the Sūfīs adopt the symbolic style because there is no other possible way of interpreting mystical experience. So little does knowledge of the infinite revealed in ecstatic vision need an artificial disguise that it cannot be communicated at all except through types and emblems drawn from the sensible world, which, imperfect as they are, may suggest and shadow forth a deeper meaning than appears on the surface. “Gnostics,” says Ibn al-ʿArabī, “cannot impart their feelings to other men; they can only indicate them symbolically to those who have begun to experience the like.” What kind of symbolism each mystic will prefer depends on his temperament and character. If he be a religious artist, a spiritual poet, his ideas of reality are likely to clothe themselves instinctively in forms of beauty and glowing images of human love. To him the rosy cheek of the beloved represents the divine essence manifested through its attributes; her dark curls signify the One veiled by the Many; when he says, “Drink wine that it may set you free from yourself,” he means, “Lose your phenomenal self in the rapture of divine contemplation.” I might fill pages with further examples.

This erotic and bacchanalian symbolism is not, of course, peculiar to the mystical poetry of Islam, but nowhere else is it displayed so opulently and in such perfection. It has often been misunderstood by European critics, one of whom even now can describe the ecstasies of the Sūfīs as “inspired partly by wine and strongly tinged with sensuality.” As regards the whole body of Sūfīs, the charge is altogether false. No intelligent and unprejudiced student of their writings could have made it, and we ought to have been informed on what sort of evidence it is based. There are black sheep in every flock, and amongst the Sūfīs we find many hypocrites, debauchees, and drunkards who bring discredit on the pure brethren. But it is just as unfair to judge Sūfism in general by the excesses of these impostors as it would be to condemn all Christian mysticism on the ground that certain sects and individuals are immoral.

“God is the Sāqī[10] and the Wine:

He knows what manner of love is mine,”

said Jalāluddīn. Ibn al-ʿArabī declares that no religion is more sublime than a religion of love and longing for God. Love is the essence of all creeds: the true mystic welcomes it whatever guise it may assume.

[10] Cupbearer.

“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 Kaʿba, and the tables of the Tora and the book of the Koran.

I follow the religion of Love, whichever way his camels take. My religion and my faith is the true religion.

We have a pattern in Bishr, the lover of Hind and her sister, and in Qays and Lubnā, and in Mayya and Ghaylān.”

Commenting on the last verse, the poet writes:

“Love, quâ love, is one and the same reality to those Arab lovers and to me; but the objects of our love are different, for they loved a phenomenon, whereas I love the Real. They are a pattern to us, because God only afflicted them with love for human beings in order that He might show, by means of them, the falseness of those who pretend to love Him, and yet feel no such transport and rapture in loving Him as deprived those enamoured men of their reason, and made them unconscious of themselves.”

Most of the great medieval Sūfīs lived saintly lives, dreaming of God, intoxicated with God. When they tried to tell their dreams, being men, they used the language of men. If they were also literary artists, they naturally wrote in the style of their own day and generation. In mystical poetry the Arabs yield the palm to the Persians. Any one who would read the secret of Sūfism, no longer encumbered with theological articles nor obscured by metaphysical subtleties—let him turn to ʿAttār, Jalāluddīn Rūmī, and Jāmī, whose works are partially accessible in English and other European languages. To translate these wonderful hymns is to break their melody and bring their soaring passion down to earth, but not even a prose translation can quite conceal the love of Truth and the vision of Beauty which inspired them. Listen again to Jalāluddīn:

“He comes, a moon whose like the sky ne’er saw, awake or dreaming,

Crowned with eternal flame no flood can lay.

Lo, from the flagon of Thy love, O Lord, my soul is swimming,

And ruined all my body’s house of clay.

When first the Giver of the grape my lonely heart befriended,

Wine fired my bosom and my veins filled up,

But when His image all mine eye possessed, a voice descended,

‘Well done, O sovereign Wine and peerless Cup!’”

The love thus symbolised is the emotional element in religion, the rapture of the seer, the courage of the martyr, the faith of the saint, the only basis of moral perfection and spiritual knowledge. Practically, it is self-renunciation and self-sacrifice, the giving up of all possessions—wealth, honour, will, life, and whatever else men value—for the Beloved’s sake without any thought of reward. I have already referred to love as the supreme principle in Sūfī ethics, and now let me give some illustrations.

“Love,” says Jalāluddīn, “is the remedy of our pride and self-conceit, the physician of all our infirmities. Only he whose garment is rent by love becomes entirely unselfish.”

Nūrī, Raqqām, and other Sūfīs were accused of heresy and sentenced to death.

“When the executioner approached Raqqām, Nūrī rose and offered himself in his friend’s place with the utmost cheerfulness and submission. All the spectators were astounded. The executioner said, ‘Young man, the sword is not a thing that people are so eager to meet; and your turn has not yet arrived.’ Nūrī answered, ‘My religion is founded on unselfishness. Life is the most precious thing in the world: I wish to sacrifice for my brethren’s sake the few moments which remain.’”

On another occasion Nūrī was overheard praying as follows:

“O Lord, in Thy eternal knowledge and power and will Thou dost punish the people of Hell whom Thou hast created; and if it be Thy inexorable will to make Hell full of mankind, Thou art able to fill it with me alone, and to send them to Paradise.”

In proportion as the Sūfī loves God, he sees God in all His creatures, and goes forth to them in acts of charity. Pious works are naught without love.

“Cheer one sad heart: thy loving deed will be

More than a thousand temples raised by thee.

One freeman whom thy kindness hath enslaved

Outweighs by far a thousand slaves set free.”

The Moslem Legend of the Saints abounds in tales of pity shown to animals (including the despised dog), birds, and even insects. It is related that Bāyazīd purchased some cardamom seed at Hamadhān, and before departing put into his gaberdine a small quantity which was left over. On reaching Bistām and recollecting what he had done, he took out the seed and found that it contained a number of ants. Saying, “I have carried the poor creatures away from their home,” he immediately set off and journeyed back to Hamadhān—a distance of several hundred miles.

This universal charity is one of the fruits of pantheism. The ascetic view of the world which prevailed amongst the early Sūfīs, and their vivid consciousness of God as a transcendent Personality rather than as an immanent Spirit, caused them to crush their human affections relentlessly. Here is a short story from the life of Fudayl ibn ʿIyād. It would be touching if it were not so edifying.

“One day he had in his lap a child four years old, and chanced to give it a kiss, as is the way of fathers. The child said, ‘Father, do you love me?’ ‘Yes,’ said Fudayl. ‘Do you love God?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How many hearts have you?’ ‘One.’ ‘Then,’ asked the child, ‘how can you love two with one heart?’ Fudayl perceived that the child’s words were a divine admonition. In his zeal for God he began to beat his head and repented of his love for the child, and gave his heart wholly to God.”

The higher Sūfī mysticism, as represented by Jalāluddīn Rūmī, teaches that the phenomenal is a bridge to the Real.

“Whether it be of this world or of that,

Thy love will lead thee yonder at the last.”

And Jāmī says, in a passage which has been translated by Professor Browne:

“Even from earthly love thy face avert not,

Since to the Real it may serve to raise thee.

Ere A, B, C are rightly apprehended,

How canst thou con the pages of thy Koran?

A sage (so heard I), unto whom a student

Came craving counsel on the course before him,

Said, ‘If thy steps be strangers to love’s pathways,

Depart, learn love, and then return before me!

For, shouldst thou fear to drink wine from Form’s flagon,

Thou canst not drain the draught of the Ideal.

But yet beware! Be not by Form belated:

Strive rather with all speed the bridge to traverse.

If to the bourne thou fain wouldst bear thy baggage,

Upon the bridge let not thy footsteps linger.’”

Emerson sums up the meaning of this where he says:

“Beholding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on this ladder of created souls.”

“Man’s love of God,” says Hujwīrī, “is a quality which manifests itself, in the heart of the pious believer, in the form of veneration and magnification, so that he seeks to satisfy his Beloved and becomes impatient and restless in his desire for vision of Him, and cannot rest with any one except Him, and grows familiar with the recollection of Him, and abjures the recollection of everything besides. Repose becomes unlawful to him, and rest flees from him. He is cut off from all habits and associations, and renounces sensual passion, and turns towards the court of love, and submits to the law of love, and knows God by His attributes of perfection.”

Inevitably such a man will love his fellow-men. Whatever cruelty they inflict upon him, he will perceive only the chastening hand of God, “whose bitters are very sweets to the soul.” Bāyazīd said that when God loves a man, He endows him with three qualities in token thereof: a bounty like that of the sea, a sympathy like that of the sun, and a humility like that of the earth. No suffering can be too great, no devotion too high, for the piercing insight and burning faith of a true lover.

Ibn al-ʿArabī claims that Islam is peculiarly the religion of love, inasmuch as the Prophet Mohammed is called God’s beloved (Habīb), but though some traces of this doctrine occur in the Koran, its main impulse was unquestionably derived from Christianity. While the oldest Sūfī literature, which is written in Arabic and unfortunately has come down to us in a fragmentary state, is still dominated by the Koranic insistence on fear of Allah, it also bears conspicuous marks of the opposing Christian tradition. As in Christianity, through Dionysius and other writers of the Neoplatonic school, so in Islam, and probably under the same influence, the devotional and mystical love of God soon developed into ecstasy and enthusiasm which finds in the sensuous imagery of human love the most suggestive medium for its expression. Dr. Inge observes that the Sūfīs “appear, like true Asiatics, to have attempted to give a sacramental and symbolic character to the indulgence of their passions.” I need not again point out that such a view of genuine Sūfism is both superficial and incorrect.

Love, like gnosis, is in its essence a divine gift, not anything that can be acquired. “If the whole world wished to attract love, they could not; and if they made the utmost efforts to repel it, they could not.” Those who love God are those whom God loves. “I fancied that I loved Him,” said Bāyazīd, “but on consideration I saw that His love preceded mine.” Junayd defined love as the substitution of the qualities of the Beloved for the qualities of the lover. In other words, love signifies the passing-away of the individual self; it is an uncontrollable rapture, a God-sent grace which must be sought by ardent prayer and aspiration.

“O Thou in whose bat well-curved my heart like a ball is laid,

Nor ever a hairbreadth swerved from Thy bidding nor disobeyed,

I have washed mine outward clean, the water I drew and poured;

Mine inward is Thy demesne—do Thou keep it stainless, Lord!”

Jalāluddīn teaches that man’s love is really the effect of God’s love by means of an apologue. One night a certain devotee was praying aloud, when Satan appeared to him and said:

“How long wilt thou cry, ‘O Allah’? Be quiet, for thou wilt get no answer.” The devotee hung his head in silence. After a little while he had a vision of the prophet Khadir, who said to him, “Ah, why hast thou ceased to call on God?” “Because the answer ‘Here am I’ came not,” he replied. Khadir said, “God hath ordered me to go to thee and say this:

“‘Was it not I that summoned thee to service?

Did not I make thee busy with My name?

Thy calling “Allah!” was My “Here am I,”

Thy yearning pain My messenger to thee.

Of all those tears and cries and supplications

I was the magnet, and I gave them wings.’”

Divine love is beyond description, yet its signs are manifest. Sarī al-Saqatī questioned Junayd concerning the nature of love.

“Some say,” he answered, “that it is a state of concord, and some say that it is altruism, and some say that it is so-and-so.” Sarī took hold of the skin on his forearm and pulled it, but it would not stretch; then he said, “I swear by the glory of God, were I to say that this skin hath shrivelled on this bone for love of Him, I should be telling the truth.” Thereupon he fainted away, and his face became like a shining moon.

Love, ‘the astrolabe of heavenly mysteries,’ inspires all religion worthy of the name, and brings with it, not reasoned belief, but the intense conviction arising from immediate intuition. This inner light is its own evidence; he who sees it has real knowledge, and nothing can increase or diminish his certainty. Hence the Sūfīs never weary of exposing the futility of a faith which supports itself on intellectual proofs, external authority, self-interest, or self-regard of any kind. The barren dialectic of the theologian; the canting righteousness of the Pharisee rooted in forms and ceremonies; the less crude but equally undisinterested worship of which the motive is desire to gain everlasting happiness in the life hereafter; the relatively pure devotion of the mystic who, although he loves God, yet thinks of himself as loving, and whose heart is not wholly emptied of ‘otherness’—all these are ‘veils’ to be removed.

A few sayings by those who know will be more instructive than further explanation.

“O God! whatever share of this world Thou hast allotted to me, bestow it on Thine enemies; and whatever share of the next world Thou hast allotted to me, bestow it on Thy friends. Thou art enough for me.” (Rābiʿa.)

“O God! if I worship Thee in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine everlasting beauty!” (Rābiʿa.)

“Notwithstanding that the lovers of God are separated from Him by their love, they have the essential thing, for whether they sleep or wake, they seek and are sought, and are not occupied with their own seeking and loving, but are enraptured in contemplation of the Beloved. It is a crime in the lover to regard his love, and an outrage in love to look at one’s own seeking while one is face to face with the Sought.” (Bāyazīd.)

“His love entered and removed all besides Him and left no trace of anything else, so that it remained single even as He is single.” (Bāyazīd.)

“To feel at one with God for a moment is better than all men’s acts of worship from the beginning to the end of the world.” (Shiblī.)

“Fear of the Fire, in comparison with fear of being parted from the Beloved, is like a drop of water cast into the mightiest ocean.” (Dhu ’l-Nūn.)

“Unless I have the face of my heart towards Thee,

I deem prayer unworthy to be reckoned as prayer.

If I turn my face to the Kaʿba, ’tis for love of Thine;

Otherwise I am quit both of prayer and Kaʿba.”

(Jalāluddīn Rūmī.)

Love, again, is the divine instinct of the soul impelling it to realise its nature and destiny. The soul is the first-born of God: before the creation of the universe it lived and moved and had its being in Him, and during its earthly manifestation it is a stranger in exile, ever pining to return to its home.

“This is Love: to fly heavenward,

To rend, every instant, a hundred veils;

The first moment, to renounce life;

The last step, to fare without feet;

To regard this world as invisible,

Not to see what appears to one’s self.”

All the love-romances and allegories of Sūfī poetry—the tales of Laylā and Majnūn, Yūsuf (Joseph) and Zulaykhā, Salāmān and Absāl, the Moth and the Candle, the Nightingale and the Rose—are shadow-pictures of the soul’s passionate longing to be reunited with God. It is impossible, in the brief space at my command, to give the reader more than a passing glimpse of the treasures which the exuberant fancy of the East has heaped together in every room of this enchanted palace. The soul is likened to a moaning dove that has lost her mate; to a reed torn from its bed and made into a flute whose plaintive music fills the eye with tears; to a falcon summoned by the fowler’s whistle to perch again upon his wrist; to snow melting in the sun and mounting as vapour to the sky; to a frenzied camel swiftly plunging through the desert by night; to a caged parrot, a fish on dry land, a pawn that seeks to become a king.

These figures imply that God is conceived as transcendent, and that the soul cannot reach Him without taking what Plotinus in a splendid phrase calls “the flight of the Alone to the Alone.” Jalāluddīn says:

“The motion of every atom is towards its origin;

A man comes to be the thing on which he is bent.

By the attraction of fondness and yearning, the soul and the heart

Assume the qualities of the Beloved, who is the Soul of souls.”

‘A man comes to be the thing on which he is bent’: what, then, does the Sūfī become? Eckhart in one of his sermons quotes the saying of St. Augustine that Man is what he loves, and adds this comment:

“If he loves a stone, he is a stone; if he loves a man, he is a man; if he loves God—I dare not say more, for if I said that he would then be God, ye might stone me.”

The Moslem mystics enjoyed greater freedom of speech than their Christian brethren who owed allegiance to the medieval Catholic Church, and if they went too far the plea of ecstasy was generally accepted as a sufficient excuse. Whether they emphasise the outward or the inward aspect of unification, the transcendence or the immanence of God, their expressions are bold and uncompromising. Thus Abū Saʿīd:

“In my heart Thou dwellest—else with blood I’ll drench it;

In mine eye Thou glowest—else with tears I’ll quench it.

Only to be one with Thee my soul desireth—

Else from out my body, by hook or crook, I’ll wrench it!”

Jalāluddīn Rūmī proclaims that the soul’s love of God is God’s love of the soul, and that in loving the soul God loves Himself, for He draws home to Himself that which in its essence is divine.

“Our copper,” says the poet, “has been transmuted by this rare alchemy,” meaning that the base alloy of self has been purified and spiritualised. In another ode he says:

“O my soul, I searched from end to end: I saw in thee naught save the Beloved;

Call me not infidel, O my soul, if I say that thou thyself art He.”

And yet more plainly:

“Ye who in search of God, of God, pursue,

Ye need not search for God is you, is you!

Why seek ye something that was missing ne’er?

Save you none is, but you are—where, oh, where?”

Where is the lover when the Beloved has displayed Himself? Nowhere and everywhere: his individuality has passed away from him. In the bridal chamber of Unity God celebrates the mystical marriage of the soul.

[CHAPTER V]
SAINTS AND MIRACLES

Let us suppose that the average Moslem could read English, and that we placed in his hands one of those admirable volumes published by the Society for Psychical Research. In order to sympathise with his feelings on such an occasion, we have only to imagine what our own would be if a scientific friend invited us to study a treatise setting forth the evidence in favour of telegraphy and recording well-attested instances of telegraphic communication. The Moslem would probably see in the telegraph some kind of spirit—an afreet or jinnī. Telepathy and similar occult phenomena he takes for granted as self-evident facts. It would never occur to him to investigate them. There is something in the constitution of his mind that makes it impervious to the idea that the supernatural may be subject to law. He believes, because he cannot help believing, in the reality of an unseen world which ‘lies about us,’ not in our infancy alone, but always and everywhere; a world from which we are in no wise excluded, accessible and in some measure revealed to all, though free and open intercourse with it is a privilege enjoyed by few. Many are called but few chosen.

“Spirits every night from the body’s snare

Thou freest, and makest the tablets clean.[11]

Spirits are set free every night from this cage,

Independent, neither ruled nor ruling.

At night prisoners forget their prison,

At night kings forget their power:

No sorrow, no brooding over gain and loss,

No thought of this person or that person.

This is the state of the gnostic, even when he is awake;

God hath said, ‘Thou wouldst deem them awake while they slept.’[12]

He is asleep, day and night, to the affairs of the world,

Like a pen in the controlling hand of the Lord.”

[11] By erasing all the sensuous impressions which form a veil between the soul and the world of reality.

[12] Kor. 18. 17.

The Sūfīs have always declared and believed themselves to be God’s chosen people. The Koran refers in several places to His elect. According to the author of the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ, this title belongs, firstly, to the prophets, elect in virtue of their sinlessness, their inspiration, and their apostolic mission; and secondly, to certain Moslems, elect in virtue of their sincere devotion and self-mortification and firm attachment to the eternal realities: in a word, the saints. While the Sūfīs are the elect of the Moslem community, the saints are the elect of the Sūfīs.

The Mohammedan saint is commonly known as a walī (plural, awliyā). This word is used in various senses derived from its root-meaning of ‘nearness’; e.g. next of kin, patron, protector, friend. It is applied in the Koran to God as the protector of the Faithful, to angels or idols who are supposed to protect their worshippers, and to men who are regarded as being specially under divine protection. Mohammed twits the Jews with professing to be protégés of God (awliyā lillāh). Notwithstanding its somewhat equivocal associations, the term was taken over by the Sūfīs and became the ordinary designation of persons whose holiness brings them near to God, and who receive from Him, as tokens of His peculiar favour, miraculous gifts (karāmāt, χαρίσματα); they are His friends, on whom “no fear shall come and they shall not grieve”;[13] any injury done to them is an act of hostility against Him.

[13] Kor. 10. 63.

The inspiration of the Islamic saints, though verbally distinguished from that of the prophets and inferior in degree, is of the same kind. In consequence of their intimate relation to God, the veil shrouding the supernatural, or, as a Moslem would say, the unseen world, from their perceptions is withdrawn at intervals, and in their fits of ecstasy they rise to the prophetic level. Neither deep learning in divinity, nor devotion to good works, nor asceticism, nor moral purity makes the Mohammedan a saint; he may have all or none of these things, but the only indispensable qualification is that ecstasy and rapture which is the outward sign of ‘passing-away’ from the phenomenal self. Any one thus enraptured (majdhūb) is a walī,[14] and when such persons are recognised through their power of working miracles, they are venerated as saints not only after death but also during their lives. Often, however, they live and die in obscurity. Hujwīrī tells us that amongst the saints “there are four thousand who are concealed and do not know one another and are not aware of the excellence of their state, being in all circumstances hidden from themselves and from mankind.”

[14] Waliyyat, if the saint is a woman.

The saints form an invisible hierarchy, on which the order of the world is thought to depend. Its supreme head is entitled the Qutb (Axis). He is the most eminent Sūfī of his age, and presides over the meetings regularly held by this august parliament, whose members are not hampered in their attendance by the inconvenient fictions of time and space, but come together from all parts of the earth in the twinkling of an eye, traversing seas and mountains and deserts as easily as common mortals step across a road. Below the Qutb stand various classes and grades of sanctity. Hujwīrī enumerates them, in ascending series, as follows: three hundred Akhyār (Good), forty Abdāl (Substitutes), seven Abrār (Pious), four Awtād (Supports), and three Nuqabā (Overseers).

“All these know one another and cannot act save by mutual consent. It is the task of the Awtād to go round the whole world every night, and if there should be any place on which their eyes have not fallen, next day some flaw will appear in that place, and they must then inform the Qutb in order that he may direct his attention to the weak spot and that by his blessing the imperfection may be remedied.”

We are studying in this book the mystical life of the individual Moslem, and it is necessary to keep the subject within the narrowest bounds. Otherwise, I should have liked to dwell on the external and historical organisation of Sūfism as a school for saints, and to describe the process of evolution through which the walī privately conversing with a small circle of friends became, first, a teacher and spiritual guide gathering disciples around him during his lifetime, and finally the head of a perpetual religious order which bore his name. The earliest of these great fraternities date from the twelfth century. In addition to their own members—the so-called ‘dervishes’—each order has a large number of lay brethren attached to it, so that their influence pervades all ranks of Moslem society. They are “independent and self-developing. There is rivalry between them; but no one rules over the other. In faith and practice each goes its own way, limited only by the universal conscience of Islam. Thus strange doctrines and grave moral defects easily develop unheeded, but freedom is saved.”[15] Of course, the typical walī is incapable of founding an order, but Islam has produced no less frequently than Christendom men who combine intense spiritual illumination with creative energy and aptitude for affairs on a grand scale. The Mohammedan notion of the saint as a person possessed by God allows a very wide application of the term: in popular usage it extends from the greatest Sūfī theosophists, like Jalāluddīn Rūmī and Ibn al-ʿArabī, down to those who have gained sanctity only by losing sanity—victims of epilepsy and hysteria, half-witted idiots and harmless lunatics.

[15] D. B. Macdonald, The Religious Life and Attitude in Islam, p. 164.

Both Qushayrī[16] and Hujwīrī discuss the question whether a saint can be conscious of his saintship, and answer it in the affirmative. Their opponents argue that consciousness of saintship involves assurance of salvation, which is impossible, since no one can know with certainty that he shall be among the saved on the Day of Judgment. In reply it was urged that God may miraculously assure the saint of his predestined salvation, while maintaining him in a state of spiritual soundness and preserving him from disobedience. The saint is not immaculate, as the prophets are, but the divine protection which he enjoys is a guarantee that he will not persevere in evil courses, though he may temporarily be led astray. According to the view generally held, saintship depends on faith, not on conduct, so that no sin except infidelity can cause it to be forfeited. This perilous theory, which opens the door to antinomianism, was mitigated by the emphasis laid on fulfilment of the religious law. The following anecdote of Bāyazīd al-Bistāmī shows the official attitude of all the leading Sūfīs who are cited as authorities in the Moslem text-books.

[16] Author of a famous work designed to close the breach between Sūfism and Islam. He died in 1074 A.D.

“I was told (he said) that a saint of God was living in such-and-such a town, and I set out to visit him. When I entered the mosque, he came forth from his chamber and spat on the floor. I turned back without saluting him, saying to myself, ‘A saint must keep the religious law in order that God may keep him in his spiritual state. Had this man been a saint, his respect for the law would have prevented him from spitting on the floor, or God would have saved him from marring the grace [vouchsafed to him.]’”

Many walīs, however, regard the law as a curb that is indeed necessary so long as one remains in the disciplinary stage, but may be discarded by the saint. Such a person, they declare, stands on a higher plane than ordinary men, and is not to be condemned for actions which outwardly seem irreligious. While the older Sūfīs insist that a walī who breaks the law is thereby shown to be an impostor, the popular belief in the saints and the rapid growth of saint-worship tended to aggrandise the walī at the expense of the law, and to foster the conviction that a divinely gifted man can do no wrong, or at least that his actions must not be judged by appearances. The classical instance of this jus divinum vested in the friends of God is the story of Moses and Khadir, which is related in the Koran (18. 64-80). Khadir or Khizr—the Koran does not mention him by name—is a mysterious sage endowed with immortality, who is said to enter into conversation with wandering Sūfīs and impart to them his God-given knowledge. Moses desired to accompany him on a journey that he might profit by his teaching, and Khadir consented, only stipulating that Moses should ask no questions of him.

“So they both went on, till they embarked in a boat and he (Khadir) staved it in. ‘What!’ cried Moses, ‘hast thou staved it in that thou mayst drown its crew? Verily, a strange thing hast thou done.’

“He said, ‘Did not I tell thee that thou couldst no way have patience with me?’

“Then they went on until they met a youth, and he slew him. Said Moses, ‘Hast thou slain him who is free from guilt of blood? Surely now thou hast wrought an unheard-of thing!’”

After Moses had broken his promise of silence for the third time, Khadir resolved to leave him.

“But first,” he said, “I will tell thee the meaning of that with which thou couldst not have patience. As to the boat, it belonged to poor men, toilers on the sea, and I was minded to damage it, for in their rear was a king who seized on every boat by force. And as to the youth, his parents were believers, and I feared lest he should trouble them by error and unbelief.”

The Sūfīs are fond of quoting this unimpeachable testimony that the walī is above human criticism, and that his hand, as Jalāluddīn asserts, is even as the hand of God. Most Moslems admit the claim to be valid in so far as they shrink from applying conventional standards of morality to holy men. I have explained its metaphysical justification in [an earlier chapter.]

A miracle performed by a saint is termed [karāmāt], i.e. a ‘favour’ which God bestows upon him, whereas a miracle performed by a prophet is called muʿjizat, i.e. an act which cannot be imitated by any one. The distinction originated in controversy, and was used to answer those who held the miraculous powers of the saints to be a grave encroachment on the prerogative of the Prophet. Sūfī apologists, while confessing that both kinds of miracle are substantially the same, take pains to differentiate the characteristics of each; they declare, moreover, that the saints are the Prophet’s witnesses, and that all their miracles (like ‘a drop trickling from a full skin of honey’) are in reality derived from him. This is the orthodox view and is supported by those Mohammedan mystics who acknowledge the Law as well as the Truth, though in some cases it may have amounted to little more than a pious opinion. We have often noticed the difficulty in which the Sūfīs find themselves when they try to make a logical compromise with Islam. But the word ‘logic’ is very misleading in this connexion. The beginning of wisdom, for European students of Oriental religion, lies in the discovery that incongruous beliefs—I mean, of course, beliefs which our minds cannot harmonise—dwell peacefully together in the Oriental brain; that their owner is quite unconscious of their incongruity; and that, as a rule, he is absolutely sincere. Contradictions which seem glaring to us do not trouble him at all.

The thaumaturgic element in ancient Sūfism was not so important as it afterwards became in the fully developed saint-worship associated with the Dervish Orders. “A saint would be none the less a saint,” says Qushayrī, “if no miracles were wrought by him in this world.” In early Mohammedan Vitæ Sanctorum it is not uncommon to meet with sayings to the effect that miraculous powers are comparatively of small account. It was finely said by Sahl ibn ʿAbdallah that the greatest miracle is the substitution of a good quality for a bad one; and the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ gives many examples of holy men who disliked miracles and regarded them as a temptation. “During my novitiate,” said Bāyazīd, “God used to bring before me wonders and miracles, but I paid no heed to them; and when He saw that I did so, He gave me the means of attaining to knowledge of Himself.” Junayd observed that reliance on miracles is one of the ‘veils’ which hinder the elect from penetrating to the inmost shrine of the Truth. This was too high doctrine for the great mass of Moslems, and in the end the vulgar idea of saintship triumphed over the mystical and theosophical conception. All such warnings and scruples were swept aside by the same irresistible instinct which rendered vain the solemn asseverations of Mohammed that there was nothing supernatural about him, and which transformed the human Prophet of history into an omnipotent hierophant and magician. The popular demand for miracles far exceeded the supply, but where the walīs failed, a vivid and credulous imagination came to their rescue and represented them, not as they were, but as they ought to be. Year by year the Legend of the Saints grew more glorious and wonderful as it continued to draw fresh tribute from the unfathomable ocean of Oriental romance. The pretensions made by the walīs, or on their behalf, steadily increased, and the stories told of them were ever becoming more fantastic and extravagant. I will devote the remainder of this chapter to a sketch of the walī as he appears in the vast medieval literature on the subject.

The Moslem saint does not say that he has wrought a miracle; he says, “a miracle was granted or manifested to me.” According to one view, he may be fully conscious at the time, but many Sūfīs hold that such ‘manifestation’ cannot take place except in ecstasy, when the saint is entirely under divine control. His own personality is then in abeyance, and those who interfere with him oppose the Almighty Power which speaks with his lips and smites with his hand. Jalāluddīn (who uses incidentally the rather double-edged analogy of a man possessed by a peri[17]) relates the following anecdote concerning Bāyazīd of Bistām, a celebrated Persian saint who several times declared in ecstatic frenzy that he was no other than God.

[17] One of the spirits called collectively Jinn.

After coming to himself on one of these occasions and learning what blasphemous language he had uttered, Bāyazīd ordered his disciples to stab him with their knives if he should offend again. Let me quote the sequel, from Mr. Whinfield’s abridged translation of the Masnavī (p. 196):

“The torrent of madness bore away his reason

And he spoke more impiously than before:

‘Within my vesture is naught but God,

Whether you seek Him on earth or in heaven.’

His disciples all became mad with horror,

And struck with their knives at his holy body.

Each one who aimed at the body of the Sheykh—

His stroke was reversed and wounded the striker.

No stroke took effect on that man of spiritual gifts,

But the disciples were wounded and drowned in blood.”

Here is the poet’s conclusion:

“Ah! you who smite with your sword him beside himself,

You smite yourself therewith. Beware!

For he that is beside himself is annihilated and safe;

Yea, he dwells in security for ever.

His form is vanished, he is a mere mirror;

Nothing is seen in him but the reflexion of another.

If you spit at it, you spit at your own face,

And if you hit that mirror, you hit yourself.

If you see an ugly face in it, ’tis your own,

And if you see a Jesus there, you are its mother Mary.

He is neither this nor that—he is void of form;

’Tis your own form which is reflected back to you.”

The life of Abu ’l-Hasan Khurqānī, another Persian Sūfī who died in 1033 A.D., gives us a complete picture of the Oriental pantheist, and exhibits the mingled arrogance and sublimity of the character as clearly as could be desired. Since the original text covers fifty pages, I can translate only a small portion of it here.

“Once the Sheykh said, ‘This night a great many persons (he mentioned the exact number) have been wounded by brigands in such-and-such a desert.’ On making inquiry, they found that his statement was perfectly true. Strange to relate, on the same night his son’s head was cut off and laid upon the threshold of his house, yet he knew nothing of it. His wife, who disbelieved in him, cried, ‘What think you of a man who can tell things which happen many leagues away, but does not know that his own son’s head has been cut off and is lying at his very door?’ ‘Yes,’ the Sheykh answered, ‘when I saw that, the veil had been lifted, but when my son was killed, it had been let down again.’”

“One day Abu ’l-Hasan Khurqānī clenched his fist and extended the little finger and said, ‘Here is the qibla,[18] if any one desires to become a Sūfī.’ These words were reported to the Grand Sheykh, who, deeming the co-existence of two qiblas an insult to the divine Unity, exclaimed, ‘Since a second qibla has appeared, I will cancel the former one.’ After that, no pilgrims were able to reach Mecca. Some perished on the way, others fell into the hands of robbers, or were prevented by various causes from accomplishing their journey. Next year a certain dervish said to the Grand Sheykh, ‘What sense is there in keeping the folk away from the House of God?’ Thereupon the Grand Sheykh made a sign, and the road became open once more. The dervish asked, ‘Whose fault is it that all these people have perished?’ The Grand Sheykh replied, ‘When elephants jostle each other, who cares if a few wretched birds are crushed to death?’”

[18] The qibla is the point to which Moslems turn their faces when praying, i.e. the Kaʿba.

“Some persons who were setting forth on a journey begged Khurqānī to teach them a prayer that would keep them safe from the perils of the road. He said, ‘If any misfortune should befall you, mention my name.’ This answer was not agreeable to them; they set off, however, and while travelling were attacked by brigands. One of the party mentioned the saint’s name and immediately became invisible, to the great astonishment of the brigands, who could not find either his camel or his bales of merchandise; the others lost all their clothes and goods. On returning home, they asked the Sheykh to explain the mystery. ‘We all invoked God,’ they said, ‘and without success; but the one man who invoked you vanished from before the eyes of the robbers.’ ‘You invoke God formally,’ said the Sheykh, ‘whereas I invoke Him really. Hence, if you invoke me and I then invoke God on your behalf, your prayers are granted; but it is useless for you to invoke God formally and by rote.’”

“One night, while he was praying, he heard a voice cry, ‘Ha! Abu ’l-Hasan! Dost thou wish Me to tell the people what I know of thee, that they may stone thee to death?’ ‘O Lord God,’ he replied, ‘dost Thou wish me to tell the people what I know of Thy mercy and what I perceive of Thy grace, that none of them may ever again bow to Thee in prayer?’ The voice answered, ‘Keep thy secret, and I will keep Mine.’”

“He said, ‘O God, do not send to me the Angel of Death, for I will not give up my soul to him. How should I restore it to him, from whom I did not receive it? I received my soul from Thee, and I will not give it up to any one but Thee.’”

“He said, ‘After I shall have passed away, the Angel of Death will come to one of my descendants and set about taking his soul, and will deal hardly with him. Then will I raise my hands from the tomb and shed the grace of God upon his lips.’”

“He said, ‘If I bade the empyrean move, it would obey, and if I told the sun to stop, it would cease from rolling on its course.’”

“He said, ‘I am not a devotee nor an ascetic nor a theologian nor a Sūfī. O God, Thou art One, and through Thy Oneness I am One.’”

“He said, ‘The skull of my head is the empyrean, and my feet are under the earth, and my two hands are East and West.’”

“He said, ‘If any one does not believe that I shall stand up at the Resurrection and that he shall not enter Paradise until I lead him forward, let him not come here to salute me.’”

“He said, ‘Since God brought me forth from myself, Paradise is in quest of me and Hell is in fear of me; and if Paradise and Hell were to pass by this place where I am, both would become annihilated in me, together with all the people whom they contain.’”

“He said, ‘I was lying on my back, asleep. From a corner of the Throne of God something trickled into my mouth, and I felt a sweetness in my inward being.’”

“He said, ‘If a few drops of that which is under the skin of a saint should come forth between his lips, all the creatures of heaven and earth would fall into panic.’”

“He said, ‘Through prayer the saints are able to stop the fish from swimming in the sea and to make the earth tremble, so that people think it is an earthquake.’”

“He said, ‘If the love of God in the hearts of His friends were made manifest, it would fill the world with flood and fire.’”

“He said, ‘He that lives with God hath seen all things visible, and heard all things audible, and done all that is to be done, and known all that is to be known.’”

“He said, ‘All things are contained in me, but there is no room for myself in me.’”

“He said, ‘Miracles are only the first of the thousand stages of the Way to God.’”

“He said, ‘Do not seek until thou art sought, for when thou findest that which thou seekest, it will resemble thee.’”

“He said, ‘Thou must daily die a thousand deaths and come to life again, that thou mayst win the life immortal.’”

“He said, ‘When thou givest to God thy nothingness, He gives to thee His All.’”

It would be an almost endless task to enumerate and exemplify the different classes of miracles which are related in the lives of the Mohammedan saints—for instance, walking on water, flying in the air (with or without a passenger), rain-making, appearing in various places at the same time, healing by the breath, bringing the dead to life, knowledge and prediction of future events, thought-reading, telekinesis, paralysing or beheading an obnoxious person by a word or gesture, conversing with animals or plants, turning earth into gold or precious stones, producing food and drink, etc. To the Moslem, who has no sense of natural law, all these ‘violations of custom,’ as he calls them, seem equally credible. We, on the other hand, feel ourselves obliged to distinguish phenomena which we regard as irrational and impossible from those for which we can find some sort of ‘natural’ explanation. Modern theories of psychical influence, faith-healing, telepathy, veridical hallucination, hypnotic suggestion and the like, have thrown open to us a wide avenue of approach to this dark continent in the Eastern mind. I will not, however, pursue the subject far at present, full of interest as it is. In the higher Sūfī teaching the miraculous powers of the saints play a more or less insignificant part, and the excessive importance which they assume in the organised mysticism of the Dervish Orders is one of the clearest marks of its degeneracy.

The following passage, which I have slightly modified, gives a fair summary of the hypnotic process through which a dervish attains to union with God:

“The disciple must, mystically, always bear his Murshid (spiritual director) in mind, and become mentally absorbed in him through a constant meditation and contemplation of him. The teacher must be his shield against all evil thoughts. The spirit of the teacher follows him in all his efforts, and accompanies him wherever he may be, quite as a guardian spirit. To such a degree is this carried that he sees the master in all men and in all things, just as a willing subject is under the influence of the magnetiser. This condition is called ‘self-annihilation’ in the Murshid or Sheykh. The latter finds, in his own visionary dreams, the degree which the disciple has reached, and whether or not his spirit has become bound to his own.

“At this stage the Sheykh passes him over to the spiritual influence of the long-deceased Pīr or original founder of the Order, and he sees the latter only by the spiritual aid of the Sheykh. This is called ‘self-annihilation’ in the Pīr. He now becomes so much a part of the Pīr as to possess all his spiritual powers.

“The third grade leads him, also through the spiritual aid of the Sheykh, up to the Prophet himself, whom he now sees in all things. This state is called ‘self-annihilation’ in the Prophet.

“The fourth degree leads him even to God. He becomes united with the Deity and sees Him in all things.”[19]

[19] J. P. Brown, The Dervishes, or Oriental Spiritualism (1868), p. 298.

An excellent concrete illustration of the process here described will be found in the well-known case of Tawakkul Beg, who passed through all these experiences under the control of Mollā-Shāh. His account is too long to quote in full; moreover, it has recently been translated by Professor D. B. Macdonald in his Religious Life and Attitude in Islam (pp. 197 ff.). I copy from this version one paragraph describing the first of the four stages mentioned above.

“Thereupon he made me sit before him, my senses being as though intoxicated, and ordered me to reproduce my own image within myself; and, after having bandaged my eyes, he asked me to concentrate all my mental faculties on my heart. I obeyed, and in an instant, by the divine favour and by the spiritual assistance of the Sheykh, my heart opened. I saw, then, that there was something like an overturned cup within me. This having been set upright, a sensation of unbounded happiness filled my being. I said to the master, ‘This cell where I am seated before you—I see a faithful reproduction of it within me, and it appears to me as though another Tawakkul Beg were seated before another Mollā-Shāh.’ He replied, ‘Very good! the first apparition which appears to thee is the image of the master.’ He then ordered me to uncover my eyes; and I saw him, with the physical organ of vision, seated before me. He then made me bind my eyes again, and I perceived him with my spiritual sight, seated similarly before me. Full of astonishment, I cried out, ‘O Master! whether I look with my physical organs or with my spiritual sight, always it is you that I see!’”

Here is a case of autohypnotism, witnessed and recorded by the poet Jāmī:

“Mawlānā Saʿduddīn of Kāshghar, after a little concentration of thought (tawajjuh), used to exhibit signs of unconsciousness. Any one ignorant of this circumstance would have fancied that he was falling asleep. When I first entered into companionship with him, I happened one day to be seated before him in the congregational mosque. According to his custom, he fell into a trance. I supposed that he was going to sleep, and I said to him, ‘If you desire to rest for a short time, you will not seem to me to be far off.’ He smiled and said, ‘Apparently you do not believe that this is something different from sleep.’”

The following anecdote presents greater difficulties:

“Mawlānā Nizāmuddīn Khāmūsh relates that one day his master, ʿAlāʾuddīn ʿAttār, started to visit the tomb of the celebrated saint Mohammed ibn ʿAlī Hakīm, at Tirmidh. ‘I did not accompany him,’ said Nizāmuddīn, ‘but stayed at home, and by concentrating my mind (tawajjuh) I succeeded in bringing the spirituality of the saint before me, so that when the master arrived at the tomb he found it empty. He must have known the cause, for on his return he set to work in order to bring me under his control. I, too, concentrated my mind, but I found myself like a dove and the master like a hawk flying in chase of me. Wherever I turned, he was always close behind. At last, despairing of escape, I took refuge with the spirituality of the Prophet (on whom be peace) and became effaced in its infinite radiance. The master could not exercise any further control. He fell ill in consequence of his chagrin, and no one except myself knew the reason.’”

ʿAlāʾuddīn’s son, Khwāja Hasan ʿAttār, possessed such powers of ‘control’ that he could at will throw any one into the state of trance and cause them to experience the ‘passing-away’ (fanā) to which some mystics attain only on rare occasions and after prolonged self-mortification. It is related that the disciples and visitors who were admitted to the honour of kissing his hand always fell unconscious to the ground.

Certain saints are believed to have the power of assuming whatever shape they please. One of the most famous was Abū ʿAbdallah of Mosul, better known by the name of Qadīb al-Bān. One day the Cadi of Mosul, who regarded him as a detestable heretic, saw him in a street of the town, approaching from the opposite direction. He resolved to seize him and lay a charge against him before the governor, in order that he might be punished. All at once he perceived that Qadīb al-Bān had taken the form of a Kurd; and as the saint advanced towards him, his appearance changed again, this time into an Arab of the desert. Finally, on coming still nearer, he assumed the guise and dress of a doctor of theology, and cried, “O Cadi! which Qadīb al-Bān will you hale before the governor and punish?” The Cadi repented of his hostility and became one of the saint’s disciples.

In conclusion, let me give two alleged instances of ‘the obedience of inanimate objects,’ i.e. telekinesis:

“Whilst Dhu ’l-Nūn was conversing on this topic with some friends, he said, ‘Here is a sofa. It will move round the room, if I tell it to do so.’ No sooner had he uttered the word ‘move’ than the sofa made a circuit of the room and returned to its place. One of the spectators, a young man, burst into tears and gave up the ghost. They laid him on that sofa and washed him for burial.”

“Avicenna paid a visit to Abu ’l-Hasan Khurqānī and immediately plunged into a long and abstruse discussion. After a time the saint, who was an illiterate person, felt tired, so he got up and said, ‘Excuse me; I must go and mend the garden wall’; and off he went, taking a hatchet with him. As soon as he had climbed on to the top of the wall, the hatchet dropped from his hand. Avicenna ran to pick it up, but before he reached it the hatchet rose of itself and came back into the saint’s hand. Avicenna lost all his self-command, and the enthusiastic belief in Sūfism which then took possession of him continued until, at a later period of his life, he abandoned mysticism for philosophy.”

I am well aware that in this chapter scanty justice has been done to a great subject. The historian of Sūfism must acknowledge, however deeply he may deplore, the fundamental position occupied by the doctrine of saintship and the tremendous influence which it has exerted in its practical results—grovelling submission to the authority of an ecstatic class of men, dependence on their favour, pilgrimage to their shrines, adoration of their relics, devotion of every mental and spiritual faculty to their service. It may be dangerous to worship God by one’s own inner light, but it is far more deadly to seek Him by the inner light of another. Vicarious holiness has no compensations. This truth is expressed by the mystical writers in many an eloquent passage, but I will content myself with quoting a few lines from the life of ʿAlāʾuddīn ʿAttār, the same saint who, as we have seen, vainly tried to hypnotise his pupil in revenge for a disrespectful trick which the latter had played on him. His biographer relates that he said, “It is more right and worthy to dwell beside God than to dwell beside God’s creatures,” and that the following verse was often on his blessed tongue:

“How long will you worship at the tombs of holy men?

Busy yourself with the works of holy men, and you are saved!”

(“tu tā kay gūr-i mardān-rā parastī

bi-gird-i kār-i mardān gard u rastī.”)

[CHAPTER VI]
THE UNITIVE STATE

“The story admits of being told up to this point,

But what follows is hidden, and inexpressible in words.

If you should speak and try a hundred ways to express it,

’Tis useless; the mystery becomes no clearer.

You can ride on saddle and horse to the sea-coast,

But then you must use a horse of wood (i.e. a boat).

A horse of wood is useless on dry land,

It is the special vehicle of voyagers by sea.

Silence is this horse of wood,

Silence is the guide and support of men at sea.”[20]

[20] The Masnavī of Jalāluddīn Rūmī. Abridged translation by E. H. Whinfield, p. 326.

No one can approach the subject of this chapter—the state of the mystic who has reached his journey’s end—without feeling that all symbolical descriptions of union with God and theories concerning its nature are little better than leaps in the dark. How shall we form any conception of that which is declared to be ineffable by those who have actually experienced it? I can only reply that the same difficulty confronts us in dealing with all mystical phenomena, though it appears less formidable at lower levels, and that the poet’s counsel of silence has not prevented him from interpreting the deepest mysteries of Sūfism with unrivalled insight and power.

Whatever terms may be used to describe it, the unitive state is the culmination of the simplifying process by which the soul is gradually isolated from all that is foreign to itself, from all that is not God. Unlike Nirvāṇa, which is merely the cessation of individuality, fanā, the passing-away of the Sūfī from his phenomenal existence, involves baqā, the continuance of his real existence. He who dies to self lives in God, and fanā, the consummation of this death, marks the attainment of baqā, or union with the divine life. Deification, in short, is the Moslem mystic’s ultima Thule.

In the early part of the tenth century Husayn ibn Mansūr, known to fame as al-Hallāj (the wool-carder), was barbarously done to death at Baghdād. His execution seems to have been dictated by political motives, but with these we are not concerned. Amongst the crowd assembled round the scaffold, a few, perhaps, believed him to be what he said he was; the rest witnessed with exultation or stern approval the punishment of a blasphemous heretic. He had uttered in two words a sentence which Islam has, on the whole, forgiven but has never forgotten: “Ana ’l-Haqq”—“I am God.”

The recently published researches of M. Louis Massignon[21] make it possible, for the first time, to indicate the meaning which Hallāj himself attached to this celebrated formula, and to assert definitely that it does not agree with the more orthodox interpretations offered at a later epoch by Sūfīs belonging to various schools. According to Hallāj, man is essentially divine. God created Adam in His own image. He projected from Himself that image of His eternal love, that He might behold Himself as in a mirror. Hence He bade the angels worship Adam (Kor. 2. 32), in whom, as in Jesus, He became incarnate.

[21] Kitāb al-Tawāsīn (Paris, 1913). See especially pp. 129-141.

“Glory to Him who revealed in His humanity (i.e. in Adam) the secret of His radiant divinity,

And then appeared to His creatures visibly in the shape of one who ate and drank (Jesus).”

Since the ‘humanity’ (nāsūt) of God comprises the whole bodily and spiritual nature of man, the ‘divinity’ (lāhūt) of God cannot unite with that nature except by means of an incarnation or, to adopt the term employed by Massignon, an infusion (hulūl) of the divine Spirit, such as takes place when the human spirit enters the body.[22] Thus Hallāj says in one of his poems:

“Thy Spirit is mingled in my spirit even as wine is mingled with pure water.

When anything touches Thee, it touches me. Lo, in every case Thou art I!”

And again:

“I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I:

We are two spirits dwelling in one body.

If thou seest me, thou seest Him,

And if thou seest Him, thou seest us both.”

[22] Massignon appears to be right in identifying the Divine Spirit with the Active Reason (intellectus agens), which, according to Alexander of Aphrodisias, is not a part or faculty of our soul, but comes to us from without. See Inge, Christian Mysticism, pp. 360, 361. The doctrine of Hallāj may be compared with that of Tauler, Ruysbroeck, and others concerning the birth of God in the soul.

This doctrine of personal deification, in the peculiar form which was impressed upon it by Hallāj, is obviously akin to the central doctrine of Christianity, and therefore, from the Moslem standpoint, a heresy of the worst kind. It survived unadulterated only amongst his immediate followers. The Hulūlīs, i.e. those who believe in incarnation, are repudiated by Sūfīs in general quite as vehemently as by orthodox Moslems. But while the former have unhesitatingly condemned the doctrine of hulūl, they have also done their best to clear Hallāj from the suspicion of having taught it. Three main lines of defence are followed: (1) Hallāj did not sin against the Truth, but he was justly punished in so far as he committed a grave offence against the Law. He “betrayed the secret of his Lord” by proclaiming to all and sundry the supreme mystery which ought to be reserved for the elect. (2) Hallāj spoke under the intoxicating influence of ecstasy. He imagined himself to be united with the divine essence, when in fact he was only united with one of the divine attributes. (3) Hallāj meant to declare that there is no essential difference or separation between God and His creatures, inasmuch as the divine unity includes all being. A man who has entirely passed away from his phenomenal self exists quâ his real self, which is God.

“In that glory is no ‘I’ or ‘We’ or ‘Thou.’

‘I,’ ‘We,’ ‘Thou,’ and ‘He’ are all one thing.”

It was not Hallāj who cried “Ana ’l-Haqq,” but God Himself, speaking, as it were, by the mouth of the selfless Hallāj, just as He spoke to Moses through the medium of the burning bush (Kor. 20. 8-14).

The last explanation, which converts Ana ’l-Haqq into an impersonal monistic axiom, is accepted by most Sūfīs as representing the true Hallājian teaching. In a magnificent ode Jalāluddīn Rūmī describes how the One Light shines in myriad forms through the whole universe, and how the One Essence, remaining ever the same, clothes itself from age to age in the prophets and saints who are its witnesses to mankind.

“Every moment the robber Beauty rises in a different shape, ravishes the soul, and disappears.

Every instant that Loved One assumes a new garment, now of eld, now of youth.

Now He plunged into the heart of the substance of the potter’s clay—the Spirit plunged, like a diver.

Anon He rose from the depths of mud that is moulded and baked, then He appeared in the world.

He became Noah, and at His prayer the world was flooded while He went into the Ark.

He became Abraham and appeared in the midst of the fire, which turned to roses for His sake.

For a while He was roaming on the earth to pleasure Himself,

Then He became Jesus and ascended to the dome of Heaven and began to glorify God.

In brief, it was He that was coming and going in every generation thou hast seen,

Until at last He appeared in the form of an Arab and gained the empire of the world.

What is it that is transferred? What is transmigration in reality? The lovely winner of hearts

Became a sword and appeared in the hand of ʿAlī and became the Slayer of the time.

No! no! for ’twas even He that was crying in human shape, ‘Ana ’l-Haqq.’

That one who mounted the scaffold was not Mansūr,[23] though the foolish imagined it.

Rūmī hath not spoken and will not speak words of infidelity: do not disbelieve him!

Whosoever shows disbelief is an infidel and one of those who have been doomed to Hell.”

[23] Hallāj is often called Mansūr, which is properly the name of his father.

Although in Western and Central Asia—where the Persian kings were regarded by their subjects as gods, and where the doctrines of incarnation, anthropomorphism, and metempsychosis are indigenous—the idea of the God-man was neither so unfamiliar nor unnatural as to shock the public conscience very profoundly, Hallāj had formulated that idea in such a way that no mysticism calling itself Mohammedan could tolerate, much less adopt it. To assert that the divine and human natures may be interfused and commingled,[24] would have been to deny the principle of unity on which Islam is based. The subsequent history of Sūfism shows how deification was identified with unification. The antithesis—God, Man—melted away in the pantheistic theory which has been explained above.[25] There is no real existence apart from God. Man is an emanation or a reflexion or a mode of Absolute Being. What he thinks of as individuality is in truth not-being; it cannot be separated or united, for it does not exist. Man is God, yet with a difference. According to Ibn al-ʿArabī,[26] the eternal and the phenomenal are two complementary aspects of the One, each of which is necessary to the other. The creatures are the external manifestation of the Creator, and Man is God’s consciousness (sirr) as revealed in creation. But since Man, owing to the limitations of his mind, cannot think all objects of thought simultaneously, and therefore expresses only a part of the divine consciousness, he is not entitled to say Ana ’l-Haqq, “I am God.” He is a reality, but not the Reality. We shall see that other Sūfīs—Jalāluddīn Rūmī, for example—in their ecstatic moments, at any rate, ignore this rather subtle distinction.

[24] Hulūl was not understood in this sense by Hallāj (Massignon, op. cit., p. 199), though the verses quoted on [p. 151] readily suggest such an interpretation. Hallāj, I think, would have agreed with Eckhart (who said, “The word I am none can truly speak but God alone”) that the personality in which the Eternal is immanent has itself a part in eternity (Inge, Christian Mysticism, p. 149, note).

[25] See [pp. 79 ff.]

[26] Massignon, op. cit., p. 183.

The statement that in realising the nonentity of his individual self the Sūfī realises his essential oneness with God, sums up the Mohammedan theory of deification in terms with which my readers are now familiar. I will endeavour to show what more precise meaning may be assigned to it, partly in my own words and partly by means of illustrative extracts from various authors.

Several aspects of fanā have already been distinguished.[27] The highest of these—the passing-away in the divine essence—is fully described by Niffarī, who employs instead of fanā and fānī (self-naughted) the terms waqfat, signifying cessation from search, and wāqif, i.e. one who desists from seeking and passes away in the Object Sought. Here are some of the chief points that occur in the text and commentary.

[27] See [pp. 60, 61].

Waqfat is luminous: it expels the dark thoughts of ‘otherness,’ just as light banishes darkness; it changes the phenomenal values of all existent things into their real and eternal values.

Hence the wāqif transcends time and place. “He enters every house and it contains him not; he drinks from every well but is not satisfied; then he reaches Me, and I am his home, and his abode is with Me”—that is to say, he comprehends all the divine attributes and embraces all mystical experiences. He is not satisfied with the names (attributes), but seeks the Named. He contemplates the essence of God and finds it identical with his own. He does not pray. Prayer is from man to God, but in waqfat there is nothing but God.

The wāqif leaves not a rack behind him, nor any heir except God. When even the phenomenon of waqfat has disappeared from his consciousness, he becomes the very Light. Then his praise of God proceeds from God, and his knowledge is God’s knowledge, who beholds Himself alone as He was in the beginning.

We need not expect to discover how this essentialisation, substitution, or transmutation is effected. It is the grand paradox of Sūfism—the Magnum Opus wrought somehow in created man by a Being whose nature is eternally devoid of the least taint of creatureliness. As I have remarked above, the change, however it may be conceived, does not involve infusion of the divine essence (hulūl) or identification of the divine and human natures (ittihād). Both these doctrines are generally condemned. Abū Nasr al-Sarrāj criticises them in two passages of his Kitāb al-Lumaʿ, as follows:

“Some mystics of Baghdād have erred in their doctrine that when they pass away from their qualities they enter into the qualities of God. This leads to incarnation (hulūl) or to the Christian belief concerning Jesus. The doctrine in question has been attributed to some of the ancients, but its true meaning is this, that when a man goes forth from his own qualities and enters into the qualities of God, he goes forth from his own will and enters into the will of God, knowing that his will is given to him by God and that by virtue of this gift he is severed from regarding himself, so that he becomes entirely devoted to God; and this is one of the stages of Unitarians. Those who have erred in this doctrine have failed to observe that the qualities of God are not God. To make God identical with His qualities is to be guilty of infidelity, because God does not descend into the heart, but that which descends into the heart is faith in God and belief in His unity and reverence for the thought of Him.”

In the second passage he makes use of a similar argument in order to refute the doctrine of ittihād.

“Some have abstained from food and drink, fancying that when a man’s body is weakened it is possible that he may lose his humanity and be invested with the attributes of divinity. The ignorant persons who hold this erroneous doctrine cannot distinguish between humanity and the inborn qualities of humanity. Humanity does not depart from man any more than blackness departs from that which is black or whiteness from that which is white, but the inborn qualities of humanity are changed and transmuted by the all-powerful radiance that is shed upon them from the divine Realities. The attributes of humanity are not the essence of humanity. Those who inculcate the doctrine of fanā mean the passing-away of regarding one’s own actions and works of devotion through the continuance of regarding God as the doer of these actions on behalf of His servant.”

Hujwīrī characterises as absurd the belief that passing-away (fanā) signifies loss of essence and destruction of corporeal substance, and that ‘abiding’ (baqā) indicates the indwelling of God in man. Real passing-away from anything, he says, implies consciousness of its imperfection and absence of desire for it. Whoever passes away from his own perishable will abides in the everlasting will of God, but human attributes cannot become divine attributes or vice versa.

“The power of fire transforms to its own quality anything that falls into it, and surely the power of God’s will is greater than that of fire; yet fire affects only the quality of iron without changing its substance, for iron can never become fire.”

In another part of his work Hujwīrī defines ‘union’ (jamʿ) as concentration of thought upon the desired object. Thus Majnūn, the Orlando Furioso of Islam, concentrated his thoughts on Laylā, so that he saw only her in the whole world, and all created things assumed the form of Laylā in his eyes. Some one came to the cell of Bāyazīd and asked, “Is Bāyazīd here?” He answered, “Is any one here but God?” The principle in all such cases, Hujwīrī adds, is the same, namely:

“That God divides the one substance of His love and bestows a particle thereof, as a peculiar gift, upon every one of His friends in proportion to their enravishment with Him; then he lets down upon that particle the shrouds of fleshliness and human nature and temperament and spirit, in order that by its powerful working it may transmute to its own quality all the particles that are attached to it, until the lover’s clay is wholly converted into love and all his acts and looks become so many properties of love. This state is named ‘union’ alike by those who regard the inward sense and the outward expression.”

[Then he quotes] these verses of Hallāj:

“Thy will be done, O my Lord and Master!

Thy will be done, O my purpose and meaning!

O essence of my being, O goal of my desire,

O my speech and my hints and my gestures!

O all of my all, O my hearing and my sight,

O my whole and my element and my particles!”

The enraptured Sūfī who has passed beyond the illusion of subject and object and broken through to the Oneness can either deny that he is anything or affirm that he is all things. As an example of ‘the negative way,’ take the opening lines of an ode by Jalāluddīn which I have rendered into verse, imitating the metrical form of the Persian as closely as the genius of our language will permit:

“Lo, for I to myself am unknown, now in God’s name what must I do?

I adore not the Cross nor the Crescent, I am not a Giaour nor a Jew.

East nor West, land nor sea is my home, I have kin nor with angel nor gnome,

I am wrought not of fire nor of foam, I am shaped not of dust nor of dew.

I was born not in China afar, not in Saqsīn and not in Bulghār;

Not in India, where five rivers are, nor ʿIrāq nor Khorāsān I grew.

Not in this world nor that world I dwell, not in Paradise, neither in Hell;

Not from Eden and Rizwān I fell, not from Adam my lineage I drew.

In a place beyond uttermost Place, in a tract without shadow of trace,

Soul and body transcending I live in the soul of my Loved One anew!”

The following poem, also by Jalāluddīn, expresses the positive aspect of the cosmic consciousness:

“If there be any lover in the world, O Moslems, ’tis I.

If there be any believer, infidel, or Christian hermit, ’tis I.

The wine-dregs, the cupbearer, the minstrel, the harp, and the music,

The beloved, the candle, the drink and the joy of the drunken—’tis I.

The two-and-seventy creeds and sects in the world

Do not really exist: I swear by God that every creed and sect—’tis I.

Earth and air and water and fire—knowest thou what they are?

Earth and air and water and fire, nay, body and soul too—’tis I.

Truth and falsehood, good and evil, ease and difficulty from first to last,

Knowledge and learning and asceticism and piety and faith—’tis I.

The fire of Hell, be assured, with its flaming limbos,

Yes, and Paradise and Eden and the Houris—’tis I.

This earth and heaven with all that they hold,

Angels, Peris, Genies, and Mankind—’tis I.”

What Jalāluddīn utters in a moment of ecstatic vision Henry More describes as a past experience:

“How lovely” (he says), “how magnificent a state is the soul of man in, when the life of God inactuating her shoots her along with Himself through heaven and earth; makes her unite with, and after a sort feel herself animate, the whole world. He that is here looks upon all things as One, and on himself, if he can then mind himself, as a part of the Whole.”

For some Sūfīs, absorption in the ecstasy of fanā is the end of their pilgrimage. Thenceforth no relation exists between them and the world. Nothing of themselves is left in them; as individuals, they are dead. Immersed in Unity, they know neither law nor religion nor any form of phenomenal being. But those God-intoxicated devotees who never return to sobriety have fallen short of the highest perfection. The full circle of deification must comprehend both the inward and outward aspects of Deity—the One and the Many, the Truth and the Law. It is not enough to escape from all that is creaturely, without entering into the eternal life of God the Creator as manifested in His works. To abide in God (baqā) after having passed-away from selfhood (fanā) is the mark of the Perfect Man, who not only journeys to God, i.e. passes from plurality to unity, but in and with God, i.e. continuing in the unitive state, he returns with God to the phenomenal world from which he set out, and manifests unity in plurality. In this descent

“He makes the Law his upper garment

And the mystic Path his inner garment,”

for he brings down and displays the Truth to mankind while fulfilling the duties of the religious law. Of him it may be said, in the words of a great Christian mystic:

“He goes towards God by inward love, in eternal work, and he goes in God by his fruitive inclination, in eternal rest. And he dwells in God; and yet he goes out towards created things in a spirit of love towards all things, in the virtues and in works of righteousness. And this is the most exalted summit of the inner life.”[28]

[28] Ruysbroeck, quoted in E. Underhill’s Introduction to Mysticism, p. 522.

ʿAfīfuddīn Tilimsānī, in his commentary on Niffarī, describes four mystical journeys:

The first begins with gnosis and ends with complete passing-away (fanā).

The second begins at the moment when passing-away is succeeded by ‘abiding’ (baqā).

He who has attained to this station journeys in the Real, by the Real, to the Real, and he then is a reality (haqq).[29] Thus travelling onward, he arrives at the station of the Qutb,[30] which is the station of Perfect Manhood. He becomes the centre of the spiritual universe, so that every point and limit reached by individual human beings is equally distant from his station, whether they be near or far; since all stations revolve round his, and in relation to the Qutb there is no difference between nearness and farness. To one who has gained this supreme position, knowledge and gnosis and passing-away are as rivers of his ocean, whereby he replenishes whomsoever he will. He has the right to guide others to God, and seeks permission to do so from none but himself. Before the gate of Apostleship was closed,[31] he would have deserved the title of Apostle, but in our day his due title is Director of Souls, and he is a blessing to those who invoke his aid, because he comprehends the innate capacities of all mankind and, like a camel-driver, speeds every one to his home.

[29] See [p. 155 above].

[30] See [p. 123].

[31] I.e. before the time of Mohammed, who is the Seal of the Prophets.

In the third journey this Perfect Man turns his attention to God’s creatures, either as an Apostle or as a Spiritual Director (Sheykh), and reveals himself to those who would fain be released from their faculties, to each according to his degree: to the adherent of positive religion as a theologian; to the contemplative, who has not yet enjoyed full contemplation, as a gnostic; to the gnostic as one who has entirely passed-away from individuality (wāqif); to the wāqif as a Qutb. He is the horizon of every mystical station and transcends the furthest range of experience known to each grade of seekers.

The fourth journey is usually associated with physical death. The Prophet was referring to it when he cried on his deathbed, “I choose the highest companions.” In this journey, to judge from the obscure verses in which ʿAfīfuddīn describes it, the Perfect Man, having been invested with all the divine attributes, becomes, so to speak, the mirror which displays God to Himself.

“When my Beloved appears,

With what eye do I see Him?

With His eye, not with mine,

For none sees Him except Himself.”

(Ibn al-ʿArabī.)

The light in the soul, the eye by which it sees, and the object of its vision, all are One.

We have followed the Sūfī in his quest of Reality to a point where language fails. His progress will seldom be so smooth and unbroken as it appears in these pages. The proverbial headache after intoxication supplies a parallel to the periods of intense aridity and acute suffering that sometimes fill the interval between lower and higher states of ecstasy. Descriptions of this experience—the Dark Night of the Soul, as it is called by Christian authors—may be found in almost any biography of Mohammedan saints. Thus Jāmī relates in his Nafahāt al-Uns that a certain dervish, a disciple of the famous Shihābuddīn Suhrawardī,

“Was endowed with a great ecstasy in the contemplation of Unity and in the station of passing-away (fanā). One day he began to weep and lament. On being asked by the Sheykh Shihābuddīn what ailed him, he answered, ‘Lo, I am debarred by plurality from the vision of Unity. I am rejected, and my former state—I cannot find it!’ The Sheykh remarked that this was the prelude to the station of ‘abiding’ (baqā), and that his present state was higher and more sublime than the one which he was in before.”

Does personality survive in the ultimate union with God? If personality means a conscious existence distinct, though not separate, from God, the majority of advanced Moslem mystics say “No!” As the rain-drop absorbed in the ocean is not annihilated but ceases to exist individually, so the disembodied soul becomes indistinguishable from the universal Deity. It is true that when Sūfī writers translate mystical union into terms of love and marriage, they do not, indeed they cannot, expunge the notion of personality, but such metaphorical phrases are not necessarily inconsistent with a pantheism which excludes all difference. To be united, here and now, with the World-Soul is the utmost imaginable bliss for souls that love each other on earth.

“Happy the moment when we are seated in the Palace, thou and I,

With two forms and with two figures but with one soul, thou and I.

The colours of the grove and the voice of the birds will bestow immortality

At the time when we come into the garden, thou and I.

The stars of heaven will come to gaze upon us;

We shall show them the Moon itself, thou and I.

Thou and I, individuals no more, shall be mingled in ecstasy,

Joyful and secure from foolish babble, thou and I.

All the bright-plumed birds of heaven will devour their hearts with envy

In the place where we shall laugh in such a fashion, thou and I.

This is the greatest wonder, that thou and I, sitting here in the same nook,

Are at this moment both in ʿIrāq and Khorāsān, thou and I.”

(Jalāluddīn Rūmī.)

Strange as it may seem to our Western egoism, the prospect of sharing in the general, impersonal immortality of the human soul kindles in the Sūfī an enthusiasm as deep and triumphant as that of the most ardent believer in a personal life continuing beyond the grave. Jalāluddīn, after describing the evolution of man in the material world and anticipating his further growth in the spiritual universe, utters a heartfelt prayer—for what?—for self-annihilation in the ocean of the Godhead.

“I died as mineral and became a plant,

I died as plant and rose to animal,

I died as animal and I was man.

Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar

With angels blest; but even from angelhood

I must pass on: all except God doth perish.

When I have sacrificed my angel soul,

I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.

Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence

Proclaims in organ tones, ‘To Him we shall return.’”