Chapter III — The Gnosis
by Reynold A Nicholson
The qalb, though connected in some mysterious way with the physical heart, is not a thing of flesh and blood. Unlike the English 'heart', its nature is rather intellectual than emotional, but whereas the intellect cannot gain real knowledge of God, the qalb is capable of knowing the essences of all things, and when illumined by faith and knowledge reflects the whole content of the divine mind; hence the Prophet said, "My earth and My heaven contain Me not, but the heart of My faithful servant contains Me."
This revelation, however, is a comparatively rare experience. Normally, the heart is 'veiled', blackened by sin, tarnished by sensual impressions and images, pulled to and fro between reason and passion: a battlefield on which the armies of God and the Devil contend for victory. Through one gate, the heart receives immediate knowledge of God; through another, it lets in the illusions of sense. "Here a world and there a world", says Jalaluddin Rumi. "I am seated on the threshold." Therefore man is potentially lower than the brutes and higher than the angels.
Less than the brutes, because they lack the knowledge that would enable them to rise; more than the angels, because they are not subject to passion and so cannot fall.
How shall a man know God? Not by the senses, for He is immaterial; nor by the intellect, for He is unthinkable. Logic never gets beyond the finite; philosophy sees double; book-learning fosters self-conceit and obscures the idea of the Truth with clouds of empty words. Jalaluddin Rumi, addressing the scholastic theologian, asks scornfully:
This knowledge comes by illumination, revelation, inspiration.
"Look in your own heart", says the Sufi, "for the kingdom of God is within you". He who truly knows himself knows God, for the heart is a mirror in which every divine quality is reflected. But just as a steel mirror when coated with rust loses its power of reflection, so the inward spiritual sense, which the Sufis call the eye of the heart, is blind to the celestial glory until the dark obstruction of the phenomenal self, with all its sensual contaminations, has been wholly cleared away.
The clearance, if it is to be done effectively, must be the work of God, though it demands a certain inward co-operation on the part of man. "Whosoever shall strive for Our sake, We will guide him into Our ways" (Kor. 29:69). Action is false and vain if it is thought to proceed from one's self, but the enlightened mystic regards God as the real agent in every act, and therefore takes no credit for his good works nor desires to be recompensed for them.
The relation of gnosis to positive religion is discussed in a very remarkable treatise on speculative mysticism by Niffari, an unknown wandering dervish who died in Egypt in the latter half of the tenth century. His work, consisting of a series of revelations in which God addresses the writer and instructs him concerning the theory of gnosis, is couched in abstruse language and would scarcely be intelligible without the commentary which accompanies it; but its value as an original exposition of advanced Sufism will sufficiently appear from the excerpts given in this chapter. [I am now engaged in preparing an edition of the Arabic text, together with an English translation and commentary. — RAN]
Those who seek God, says Niffari, are of three kinds: firstly, the worshippers to whom God makes Himself known by means of bounty, i.e. they worship Him in the hope of winning Paradise or some spiritual recompense such as dreams and miracles; secondly, the philosophers and scholastic theologians, to whom God makes Himself known by means of glory, i.e. they can never find the glorious God whom they seek, wherefore they assert that His essence is unknowable, saying, "We know that we know Him not, and that is our knowledge"; thirdly, the gnostics, to whom God makes Himself known by means of ecstasy, i.e. they are possessed and controlled by a rapture that deprives them of the consciousness of individual existence.
Niffari bids the gnostic perform only such acts of worship as are in accordance with his vision of God, though in doing so he will necessarily disobey the religious law which was made for the vulgar. His inward feeling must decide how far the external forms of religion are good for him.
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-Nun 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 tingues, 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 fana al-fana, 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. [According to some mystics, the gnosis of unity constitutes a higher stage which is called 'the Truth' (haqiqat). See <Pilgrimage — RAN]
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 Sufis answer — a philosopher would say that they are evading the difficulty — by quoting the famous Tradition: "I was a hidden treasure and I desired to be known; therefore I created the creature 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. Jami says, for example:
Man is the crown and final cause of the Universe. Though last in order or 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 directly 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 Sufi 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 Sufi tradition ascribes to him the saying, "He that has seen me has 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 Sufi's aim, but to escape from the bondage of his unreal selfhood and thereby to be reunited with the One infinite Being.
According to Jami, 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.
It is an axiom of the Sufis that what is not in a man he cannot show. 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.
Niffari heard the divine voice saying to him:
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.
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-'Arabi, "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 you 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, 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 free-thinker, perhaps, than of the mystic:
"Where the turbaned anchorite
Chanteth Allah day and night,
Church bells ring the call to prayer
And the Cross of Christ is there."
Sufism may join hands with free-thought — it has often done so — but hardly ever with sectarianism. This explains why the vast majority of Sufis have been, at least nominally, attached to the catholic body of the Moslem community. 'Abdallah Ansari declared that of two thousand Sufi Sheykhs with whom he was acquainted, only two were Shi'ites. A certain man who was a descendant of the Caliph 'Ali, and a fanatical Shi'ite, tells the following story:
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.
The great Persian mystic, Abu Sa'id ibn Abi 'l-Khayr, speaking in the name of the calendars or wandering dervishes, expresses their iconoclastic principles with astonishing boldness:
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 'Arafat, did you stand one moment in contemplation of God?" "No". "The you have not stood at 'Arafat. 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 Ka'ba, did you behold the immaterial beauty of God in the abode of purification?" "No". "Then you have not circumambulated the Ka'ba. When you ran between Safa and Marwa, did you attain to purity (safa) and virtue (muruwwat)?" "No". "Then you have not run. When you came to Mina, did all your wishes (muna) cease?" "No". Then you have not yet visited Mina. 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 Hujwiri, "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 the 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".
This was a legitimate and most fruitful development of the Prophet's teaching. But the Prophet was a strict monotheist, while the Sufis, 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.
'Afifuddin al-Tilimsani, from whose commentary on Niffari 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 Sufis 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 Nuri, "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 Jalaluddin:
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 Bektashis 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 Sufis 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. Jalaluddin Rumi, in his collection of lyrical poems entitled The Divan of Shamsi Tabriz, gives free rein to a pantheistic enthusiasm which sees all things under the form of eternity.
But in his Masnavi — 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 Sufi doctrines and justifying the ways of God to man. Here, though he is a convinced optimist and agrees with Ghazali 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.
- a couplet which FitzGerald moulded into the magnificent stanza:
Jalaluddin, 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 reflection 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 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 agent other than He, no act but His. "You did not throw when you threw, 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:
This is the Truth; but for the benefit of such as cannot bear it, Jalaluddin 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.
Moreover, the divine omnipotence would not be completely realised if evil had remained uncreated.
In reply to the objection that a God who creates evil must Himself be evil, Jalaluddin, 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. Jalaluddin will not admit that anything is absolutely bad.
Surely this is a noteworthy doctrine. Jalaluddin 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.