[CHAPTER II]
ILLUMINATION AND ECSTASY
God, who is described in the Koran as “the Light of the heavens and the earth,” cannot be seen by the bodily eye. He is visible only to the inward sight of the ‘heart.’ In [the next chapter] we shall return to this spiritual organ, but I am not going to enter into the intricacies of Sūfī psychology any further than is necessary. The ‘vision of the heart’ (ruʾyat al-qalb) is defined as “the heart’s beholding by the light of certainty that which is hidden in the unseen world.” This is what ʿAlī meant when he was asked, “Do you see God?” and replied: “How should we worship One whom we do not see?” The light of intuitive certainty (yaqīn) by which the heart sees God is a beam of God’s own light cast therein by Himself; else no vision of Him were possible.
“’Tis the sun’s self that lets the sun be seen.”
According to a mystical interpretation of the famous passage in the Koran where the light of Allah is compared to a candle burning in a lantern of transparent glass, which is placed in a niche in the wall, the niche is the true believer’s heart; therefore his speech is light and his works are light and he moves in light. “He who discourses of eternity,” said Bāyazīd, “must have within him the lamp of eternity.”
The light which gleams in the heart of the illuminated mystic endows him with a supernatural power of discernment (firāsat). Although the Sūfīs, like all other Moslems, acknowledge Mohammed to be the last of the prophets (as, from a different point of view, he is the Logos or first of created beings), they really claim to possess a minor form of inspiration. When Nūrī was questioned concerning the origin of mystical firāsat, he answered by quoting the Koranic verse in which God says that He breathed His spirit into Adam; but the more orthodox Sūfīs, who [strenuously] combat the doctrine that the human spirit is uncreated and eternal, affirm that firāsat is the result of knowledge and insight, metaphorically called ‘light’ or ‘inspiration,’ which God creates and bestows upon His favourites. The Tradition, “Beware of the discernment of the true believer, for he sees by the light of Allah,” is exemplified in such anecdotes as these:
Abū ʿAbdallah al-Rāzī said:
“Ibn al-Anbārī presented me with a woollen frock, and seeing on the head of Shiblī a bonnet that would just match it, I conceived the wish that they were both mine. When Shiblī rose to depart, he looked at me, as he was in the habit of doing when he desired me to follow him. So I followed him to his house, and when we had gone in, he bade me put off the frock and took it from me and folded it and threw his bonnet on the top. Then he called for a fire and burnt both frock and bonnet.”
Sarī al-Saqatī frequently urged Junayd to speak in public, but Junayd was unwilling to consent, for he doubted whether he was worthy of such an honour. One Friday night he dreamed that the Prophet appeared and commanded him to speak to the people. He awoke and went to Sarī’s house before daybreak, and knocked at the door. Sarī opened the door and said: “You would not believe me until the Prophet came and told you.”
Sahl ibn ʿAbdallah was sitting in the congregational mosque when a pigeon, overcome by the intense heat, dropped on the floor. Sahl exclaimed: “Please God, Shāh al-Kirmānī has just died.” They wrote it down, and it was found to be true.
When the heart is purged of sin and evil thoughts, the light of certainty strikes upon it and makes it a shining mirror, so that the Devil cannot approach it without being observed. Hence the saying of some gnostic: “If I disobey my heart, I disobey God.” It was a man thus illuminated to whom the Prophet said: “Consult thy heart, and thou wilt hear the secret ordinance of God proclaimed by the heart’s inward knowledge, which is real faith and divinity”—something much better than the learning of divines. I need not anticipate here the question, which will be discussed in [the following chapter], how far the claims of an infallible conscience are reconcilable with external religion and morality. The Prophet, too, prayed that God would put a light into his ear and into his eye; and after mentioning the different members of his body, he concluded, “and make the whole of me one light.”[6] From illumination of gradually increasing splendour, the mystic rises to contemplation of the divine attributes, and ultimately, when his consciousness is wholly melted away, he becomes transubstantiated (tajawhara) in the radiance of the divine essence. This is the ‘station’ of well-doing (ihsān)—for “God is with the well-doers” (Kor. 29. 69), and we have Prophetic authority for the statement that “well-doing consists in worshipping God as though thou wert seeing Him.”