Chapter IV — Divine Love
by Reynold A Nicholson
Ibn al-'Arabi [1165-1240 CE — Ed.], 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:
It has been said that the Sufis 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 Sufis 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-'Arabi, "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 in forms of beauty and glowing images of human love. To him the rosy cheeks 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. [Readers who wish to further explore this territory might find it helpful to read Wine of the Mystic, a commentary by Paramahansa Yogananda on Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. — Ed.]
There are black sheep in every flock, and amongst the Sufis we find many hypocrites, debauchees, and drunkards who bring discredit on the pure brethren. But it is just as unfair to judge Sufism 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.
So said Jalaluddin. Ibn al-'Arabi 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.
Commenting on the last verse, the poet writes: "Love, qua 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".
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 of all possessions — wealth, honour, will, life, and whatever else men value — for the Beloved's sake without any thought of reward.
Nuri, Raqqam, and other Sufis were accused of heresy and sentenced to death. When the executioner approached Raqqam, Nuri 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". Nuri 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, Nuri was overheard praying: "O Lord, in Thine eternal knowledge and power and will Thou dost punish the people of Hell whom Thou hast created; and if it be Thine 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 Sufi loves God, he sees God in all His creatures, and goes forth to them in acts of charity. Pious works are naught without love.
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 Bayazid purchased some cardamom seed at Hamadhan, and before departing put into his gaberdine a small quantity which was left over. On reaching Bistam 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 Hamadhan — 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 Sufis, 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 Fufayl ibn 'Iyad. 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?' Fuday 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 Sufi mysticism, as represented by Jalaluddin Rumi, teaches that the phenomenal is a bridge to the Real.
And Jami says, in a passage which has been translated by Professor Browne:
Emerson [Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, American essayist — Ed.] 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 Hujwiri, "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". Bayazid 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-'Arabi claims that Islam is peculiarly the religion of love, inasmuch as the Prophet Mohammed is called God's beloved (Habib), but though some traces of this doctrine occur in the Koran, its main impulse was unquestionably derived from Christianity. While the oldest Sufi 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 soon finds in the sensuous imagery of human love the most suggestive medium for its expression. Dr Inge observes that the Sufis "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 Sufism is both superficial and incorrect.
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.
Jalaluddin 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 will you cry 'O Allah'? Be quiet, for you will 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 have you ceased to call on God?" "Because the answer 'Here am I' did not come", he replied. Khadir said, "God has ordered me to go to you and say this:
Divine love is beyond description, yet its signs are manifest. Sari al-Saqati 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". Sari 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 has 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 Sufis 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 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.
All the love-romances and allegories of Sufi poetry — the tales of Layla and Majnun, Yusuf (Joseph) and Zulaykha, Salaman and Absal, the Moth and the Candle, the Nightingale and the Rose — are shadow-pictures of the soul's passionate longing to be united 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". Jalaluddin says:
'A man comes to be the thing on which he is bent': what, then, does the Sufi become? Eckhart [Meister Johannes Eckhart, c. 1260-1327, German mystic — Ed.] in one of his sermons quotes the saying of St Augustine [St Sugustine of Hippo, 354-430, Numidian Christian — Ed.] 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, you might stone me."
Jalaluddin Rumi 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:
And yet more plainly:
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.