Some of his other sayings reported at this time show that he had already a presentiment of his approaching death. Kabil Khan, one of his friends, said to him one day, "Formerly our sovereign Aurangzeb loved to listen to discourses on the subject of mysticism, and I have often had the honour of reading before him passages from the Masnavi of Jalaluddin Rumi.[64] The Emperor was often so touched by them that he shed tears; certainly when he comes to Lahore he will wish to see you." "No," replied Mullah Shah; "we shall never see him:
'The night is great with child, see what it will bring forth.'"
In 1661 he had an attack of fever which lasted about fifteen days. That year fever became epidemic at Lahore, and on the 11th of the month of Safar Mullah Shah had another attack, which carried him off on the night of the 15th of the same month. He was buried in a plot of ground which he had already acquired for the purpose. The Princess Fatimah bought the surrounding land, and erected a shrine of red stone over his tomb. The foregoing sketch of Mullah Shah gives a general view of oriental spiritualism as it prevailed two and a half centuries ago over a great part of Asia. The first point worthy of notice in it is the immense popularity of mystical ideas at that time, and the wide influence which they exercised over all minds. Round Mullah Shah gathered persons of every condition; poor peasants as well as princes were seized with the same enthusiasm for his doctrines; the same ascetic training produced the same results in the most varying temperaments. The Master seems to have exercised a kind of magnetic influence over his neophytes. He fixes his gaze upon them for a longer or shorter time, till their inward senses open and render them capable of seeing the wonders of the spiritual world. All the accounts are unanimous in this respect, and they carry such a stamp of sincerity that their veracity is indisputable. We are then obliged to admit that at this period many minds shared a predisposition to religious ecstacy and enthusiasm.
Under the apparent stagnation of the East, there is continually going on a collision between two opposing forces—the official hierarchy of the Ulema, conservative to the core, and mysticism in its early phases, pietistic and enthusiastic, but gradually tending to scepticism, and finally to pantheism and the negation of all positive religion. The Mussalman hierarchy, which in its own interests desired to maintain the prestige of dogma and of the revealed law, combatted this tendency to mysticism, but, as we have seen, without success. The orthodox mullahs made fruitless efforts to obtain the condemnation of Mullah Shah, who had on his side the members of the imperial family of Delhi and the Emperor himself, all more or less imbued with mystical ideas.
The biography of Mullah Shah also throws a great deal of light on the fundamental ideas of oriental mysticism. They spring from a pantheistic philosophy in many respects, startlingly resembling those of modern times. Mullah Shah often insists that individual existence counts for nothing, and that nothing in reality exists outside of God, the Absolute Being; every particular life dissolves in this universal unity, life and death are mere changes in the form of existence. The individual is only in some way a part of the Infinite Being who fills the universe; a particle which has been momentarily detached therefrom, only to return thither. To know oneself is therefore the equivalent of knowing God. But in order to acquire this knowledge the pupil must submit to long and painful self-discipline; he must pass through all the tests of the severest asceticism; only after he has thus prepared himself will the spiritual master open his heart and render him capable of perceiving the mysteries of the spiritual world.
But this great secret must not be divulged; it is only permissable to speak of it to the initiate, as Mullah Shah says, in the following verses:—
We must say that only One exists, Though such a saying excite astonishment; The universe is He, though we must not say so openly, Such doctrines must be kept secret.
This Eastern Pantheism does not lack a certain grandeur, but it has also a dangerous side, and tends to atheism and materialism. Of this some instances occur in the life of Mullah Shah. The passage from pantheism to epicureanism is not a long one. If the human soul only possesses a transient individuality, and after death is merged like a drop in the ocean of divinity, why, many will argue, not have done with asceticism for good, and enjoy the pleasures of existence as long as possible during the little while our individuality endures? Thus Omar Khayyam says:—
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the dust descend, Dust into dust, and under dust to lie, Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and—sans end.
It is precisely this dangerous side of oriental philosophy which has unhappily attained a much greater development and an incomparably more complete success than the elevated moral systems of the chief theosophists of Persia. A mocking cynicism has been, up to modern times, a common characteristic of the great majority of Sufis and dervishes. The dangerous consequences of theosophical ideas and of oriental spiritualism in general became at an early date so apparent that Ghazzali, although a fervent partisan of Sufism, did not hesitate to avow that if these doctrines were generally accepted society would necessarily fall into a state of anarchy.