Mystics of Islam

Introduction

Followers of the Real

In attempting to set forth their central doctrines from this point of view, I shall draw to some extent on materials which I have collected during the last twenty years for a general history of Islamic mysticism, a subject so vast and many-sided that several large volumes would be required to do it anything like justice. Here I can only sketch in broad outline certain principles, methods, and characteristic features of the inner life as it has been lived by Moslems of every class and condition from the eighth century to the present day. Difficult are the paths which they threaded, dark and bewildering the pathless heights beyond; but even if we may not hope to accompany the travellers to their journey's end, any information that we have gathered concerning their religious environment and spiritual history will help us to understand the strange experiences of which they write.

In the first place, therefore, I propose to offer a few remarks on the origin and historical development of Sufism, its relation to Islam, and its general character. Not only are these matters interesting to the student of comparative religion; some knowledge of them is indispensable to any serious student of Sufism itself.

Convergence of Diverse Approaches

The word 'mystic', which has passed from Greek religion into European literature, is represented in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, the three languages of Islam, by 'Sufi'. The terms, however, are not precisely synonymous, for 'Sufi' has a specific religious connotation, and is restricted by usage to those mystics who profess the Mohammedan faith. And the Arabic word, although in course of time it appropriated the high significance of the Greek — lips sealed by holy mysteries, eyes closed in visionary rapture — bore a humbler meaning when it first gained currency (about 800 CE). Until recently its derivation was in dispute. Most Sufis, flying in the face of etymology, have derived it from an Arabic root which conveys the notion of 'purity'; this would make Sufi mean 'one who is pure in heart' or 'one of the elect'. Some European writers identified it with a Greek work conveying the sense of 'theosophist'. But Nφldeke [Theodor Nφldeke, 1836-1930, German Orientalist — Ed.], in an article written twenty years ago, showed conclusively that the name was derived from suf (wool), and was originally applied to those Moslem ascetics who, in imitation of Christian hermits, clad themselves in coarse woollen garb as a sign of penitence and renunciation of worldly vanities.

Early Development

So far, there was no great difference between the Sufi and the orthodox Mohammedan zealot, except that the Sufis attached extraordinary importance to certain Koranic doctrines and developed them at the expense of others which many Moslems might consider equally essential. It must be allowed that the ascetic movement was inspired by Christian ideals, and contrasted sharply with the active and pleasure-loving spirit of Islam. In a famous sentence the Prophet denounced monkish austerities and bade his people devote themselves to the holy war against unbelievers; and he gave, as is well known, the most convincing testimony in favour of marriage. Although his condemnation of celibacy did not remain without effect, the conquest of Persia, Syria, and Egypt by his successors brought the Moslems into contact with ideas which profoundly modified their outlook on life and religion. European readers of the Koran cannot fail to be struck by its author's vacillation and inconsistency in dealing with the greatest problems. He himself was not aware of these contradictions, nor were they a stumbling-block to his devout followers, whose simple faith accepted the Koran as the Word of God. But the rift was there, and soon produced far-reaching results.

Hence rose the Murjites, who set faith above works and emphasised the divine love and goodness; the Qadarites who affirmed, and the Jabarites who denied, that men are responsible for their actions; the Mu'tazilites, who built a theology on the basis of reason, rejecting the qualities of Allah as incompatible with His unity and predestinarianism as contrary to His justice; and finally the Ash'arites, the scholastic theologians of Islam, who formulated the rigid metaphysical creed of orthodox Mohammedans at the present time.

All these speculations, influenced as they were by Greek theology and philosophy, reacted powerfully upon Sufism. Early in the third century of the Hegira [The flight of Muhammad from Mecca in 622 CE — Ed.] — the ninth after Christ — we find manifest signs of the new leaven stirring within it. Not that Sufis ceased to mortify the flesh and take pride in their poverty, but they now began to regard asceticism as only the first stage of a long journey, the preliminary training for a larger spiritual life than the mere ascetic is able to conceive. The nature of the change may be illustrated by quoting a few sentences which have come down to us from the mystics of this period.

• Love is not to be learned from men: it is one of God's gifts and comes of His grace.

• None refrains from the lusts of this world save him in whose heart there is a light that keeps him always busied with the next world.

• When the gnostic's spiritual eye is opened, his bodily eye is shut: he sees nothing but God.

• If gnosis were to take visible shape all who looked thereon would die at the sight of its beauty and loveliness and goodness and grace, and every brightness would become dark beside the splendour thereof. [Compare Plato, Phaedrus (Jowett's translation): "For sight is the keenest of our bodily senses, though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her." — RAN.]

• Gnosis is nearer to silence than to speech.

• When the heart weeps because it has lost, the spirit laughs because it has found.

• Nothing sees God and dies, even as nothing sees God and lives, because His life is everlasting: whoever sees it is thereby made everlasting.

• O God, I never listen to the cry of animals or to the quivering of trees or to the murmuring of water or to the warbling of birds or to the rustling wind or to the crashing thunder without feeling them to be evidence of Thy unity and a proof that there is nothing like unto Thee.

• O my God, I invoke Thee in public as lords are invoked, but in private as loved ones are invoked. Publicly I say, 'O my God!' but privately I say, 'O my Beloved!'

Light, Knowledge, and Love

External Influences

Now, the theories which I have mentioned do not satisfy these conditions. If Sufism was nothing but a revolt of the Aryan spirit, how are we to explain the undoubted fact that some of the leading pioneers of Mohammedan mysticism were natives of Syria and Egypt, and Arabs by race? Similarly, the advocates of a Buddhistic or Vedantic origin forget that the main current of Indian influence upon Islamic civilisation belongs to a later epoch, whereas Moslem theology, philosophy, and science put forth their first luxuriant roots on a soil that was saturated with Hellenistic culture. The truth is that Sufism is a complex thing, and therefore no simple answer can be given to the question how it originated. We shall have gone far, however, towards answering that question when we have distinguished the various movements and forces which moulded Sufism, and determined what direction it should take in the early stages of its growth.

Let us first consider the most important external, i.e. non-Islamic, influences.

Christianity

• "Jesus passed by three men. Their bodies were lean and their faces pale. He asked them, saying, 'What has brought you to this plight?' They answered, 'Fear of the Fire'. Jesus said, 'You fear a thing created, and it behoves God that He should save those who fear'. Then he left them and passed by three others, whose faces were paler and their bodies leaner, and asked them, saying, 'What has brought you to this plight?' They answered, 'Longing for Paradise'. He said, 'You desire a thing created, and it behoves God that He should give you that which you hope for'. Then he went on and passed by three others of exceeding paleness and leanness, so that their faces were as mirrors of light, and he said, 'What has brought you to this?' They answered, 'Our love of God'. Jesus said, 'You are the nearest to Him, you are the nearest to Him'".

• The Syrian mystic, Ahmad ibn al-Hawari, once asked a Christian hermit: "What is the strongest command that you find in your Scriptures?" The hermit replied, "We find none stronger than this: Love your Creator with all your power and might."

• Another hermit was asked by some Moslem ascetics: "When is a man most persevering in devotion?" "When love takes possession of his heart", was the reply; "for then he has no joy or pleasure but in continual devotion."

The influence of Christianity through its hermits, monks, and heretical sects (e,g, the Messalians or Euchitae) was two fold: ascetic and mystical. Oriental Christian mysticism, however, contained a Pagan element: it had long ago absorbed the ideas and adopted the language of Plotinus and the Neoplatonic school.

Neoplatonism

Another work of this school deserves particular notice: I mean the writings falsely attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, the convert of St Paul. The pseudo-Dionysius — he may have been a Syrian monk — names as his teacher a certain Hierotheus, whom Frothingham has identified with Stephen bar Sudaili, a prominent Syrian gnostic and a contemporary of Jacob of Saruj (451-521CE). Dionysius quotes some fragments of erotic hymns by this Stephen, and a complete work, the Book of Hierotheus on the Hidden Mysteries of the Divinity, has come down to us in a unique manuscript which is now in the British Museum. The Dionysian writings, turned into Latin by John Scotus Erigena, founded medieval Christian mysticism in Western Europe. Their influence in the East was hardly less vital. They were translated from Greek into Syriac almost immediately on their appearance, and their doctrine was vigorously propagated by commentaries in the same tongue. "About 850CE Dionysius was known from the Tigris to the Atlantic".

Besides literary tradition, there were other channels by which the doctrines of emanation, illumination, gnosis, and ecstasy were transmitted, but enough has been said to convince the reader that Greek mystical ideas were in the air and easily accessible to the Moslem inhabitants of Western Asia and Egypt, where the Sufi theosophy first took shape. One of those who bore the chief part in its development, Dhu 'l-Nun [Dhu 'l-Nun al-Mesri, c.796-861 — Ed.] the Egyptian, is described as a philosopher and alchemist — in other words, a student of Hellenistic science. When it is added that much of his speculation agrees with what we find, for example, in the writings of Dionysius, we are drawn irresistibly to the conclusion (which, as I have pointed out, is highly probable on general grounds) that Neoplatonism poured into Islam a large tincture of the same mystical element in which Christianity was already steeped.

Gnosticism

"The ideal of human action is freedom from the taint of darkness; and the freedom of light from darkness means the self-consciousness of light as light". [Shaikh Muhammad Iqbal, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, (1908), p. 150. — RAN.]

The following version of the doctrine of the seventy thousand veils as explained by a modern Rifai dervish shows clear traces of Gnosticism and is so interesting that I cannot refrain from quoting it here:

"Seventy Thousand Veils separate Allah, the One Reality, from the world of matter and of sense. And every soul passes before his birth through these seventy thousand. The inner half of these are veils of light: the outer half, veils of darkness. For every one of the veils of light passed through in this journey towards birth, the soul puts off a divine quality: and for every one of the dark veils, it puts on an earthly quality. Thus the child is born weeping, for the soul knows its separation from Allah, the One Reality. And when the child cries in its sleep, it is because the soul remembers something of what it has lost. Otherwise, the passage through the veils has brought with it forgetfulness (nisyan): and for this reason man is called insan. He is now, as it were, in prison in his body, separated by these thick curtains from Allah.

"But the whole purpose of Sufism, the Way of the dervish, is to give him an escape from this prison, an apocalypse of the Seventy Thousand Veils, a recovery of the original unity with The One, while still in this body. The body is not to be put off; it is to be refined and made spiritual — a help and not a hindrance to the spirit. It is like a metal that has to be refined by fire and transmuted. And the sheikh tells the aspirant that he has the secret of this transmutation. 'We shall throw you into the fire of Spiritual Passion', he says. 'and you will emerge refined'". [The Way of a Mohammedan Mystic, by W H T Gairdner (Leipzig, 1912), pp. 91 f. — RAN.]

Buddhism

The Sufi conception of the passing-away (fana) of individual self in Universal being is certainly, I think, of Indian origin. Its first great exponent was the Persian mystic, Bayazid of Bistam, who may have received it from his teacher, Abu 'Ali of Sind (Scinde). Here are some of his sayings:

• Creatures are subject to changing 'states', but the gnostic has no 'state', because his vestiges are effaced and his essence annihilated by the essence of another, and his traces are lost in another's traces.

• Thirty years the high God was my mirror, now I am my own mirror, i.e. according to the explanation given by his biographer, that which I was I am no more, for 'I' and 'God' is a denial of the unity of God. Since I am no more, the high God is His own mirror.

• I went from God to God, until they cried from me in me, "O Thou I!"

This, it will be observed, is not Buddhism, but the pantheism of the Vedanta. We cannot identify fana with Nirvana unconditionally. Both terms imply the passing away of individuality, but while Nirvana is purely negative, fana is accompanied by baqa, everlasting life in God. The rapture of the Sufi who has lost himself in ecstatic contemplation of the divine beauty is entirely opposed to the passionless intellectual serenity of the Arahat [in Pali Buddhism, one who is fully enlightened. — Ed.]. I emphasise this contrast because, in my opinion, the influence of Buddhism on Mohammedan thought has been exaggerated. Much is attributed to Buddhism that is Indian rather than specifically Buddhistic: the fana theory of the Sufis is a case in point. Ordinary Moslems held the followers of Buddha in abhorrence, regarding them as idolaters, and were not likely to seek personal intercourse with them. On the other hand, for nearly a thousand years before the Mohammedan conquest, Buddhism had been powerful in Bactria and Eastern Persia generally: it must, therefore, have affected the development of Sufism in these regions.

While fana in its pantheistic form is radically different from Nirvana, the terms coincide so closely in other ways that we cannot regard them as being altogether unconnected. Fana has an ethical aspect: it involves the extinction of all passions and desires. The passing-away of evil qualities and of the evil actions which they produce is said to be brought about by the continuance of the corresponding good qualities and actions. Compare this with the definition of Nirvana given by Professor Rhys Davids:
"The extinction of that sinful, grasping condition of mind and heart which would otherwise, according to the great mystery of Karma, be the cause of renewed individual existence. That extinction is to be brought about by, and runs parallel with, the growth of the opposite condition of mind and heart; and it is complete when that opposite condition is reached."

Apart from the doctrine of Karma, which is alien to Sufism, these definitions of fana (viewed as a moral state) and Nirvana agree almost word for word. It would be out of place to pursue the comparison further, but I think we may conclude that the Sufi theory of fana was influenced to some extent by Buddhism as well as by Perso-Indian pantheism.

Internal Influences

Of course, we cannot isolate the internal forces working in this direction, since they were subject to the law of spiritual gravitation. The powerful currents of thought discharged through the Mohammedan world by the great non-Islamic systems above mentioned gave a stimulus to various tendencies within Islam which affected Sufism either positively or negatively. As we have seen, its oldest type is an ascetic revolt against luxury and worldliness; later on, the prevailing rationalism and scepticism provoked counter-movements towards intuitive knowledge and emotional faith, and also an orthodox reaction which in its turn drove many earnest Moslems into the ranks of the mystics.

How, it may be asked, could a religion founded on the simple and austere monotheism of Mohammed tolerate these new doctrines, much less make terms with them? It would seem impossible to reconcile the transcendent personality of Allah with an immanent Reality which is the very life and soul of the Universe. Yet Islam has accepted Sufism. The Sufis, instead of being excommunicated, are securely established in the Mohammedan church, and the Legend of the Moslem Saints records the wildest excesses of Oriental pantheism.

The Koran

This is one side, and certainly the most prominent side, of Mohammed's teaching; but while he set an impossible gulf between the world and Allah, his deeper instinct craved a direct revelation from God to the soul. There are no contradictions in the logic of feeling. Mohammed, who had in him something of the mystic, felt God both as far and near, both as transcendent and immanent. In the latter aspect, Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth, a Being who works in the world and in the soul of man.

"If My servants ask you about about Me, lo, I am near" (Kor. 2:182); "We (God) are nearer to him than his own neck-vein" (50:15); "And in the earth are signs to those of real faith, and in yourselves. What! Do you not see?" (51:20-21).

It was a long time ere they saw. The Moslem consciousness, haunted by terrible visions of the wrath to come, slowly and painfully awoke to the significance of those liberating ideas.

The verses which I have quoted do not stand alone, and however unfavourable to mysticism the Koran as a whole may be, I cannot assent to the view that it supplies no basis for a mystical interpretation of Islam. This was worked out in detail by the Sufis, who dealt with the Koran in very much the same way as Philo treated the Pentateuch. But they would not have succeeded so thoroughly in bringing over the mass of religious Moslems to their side unless the champions of orthodoxy had set about constructing a system of scholastic philosophy that reduced the divine nature to a purely formal, changeless, and absolute unity, a bare will devoid of all affections and emotions, a tremendous and incalculable power with which no human creature could have any communion or personal intercourse whatsoever. That is the God of Mohammedan theology. That was the alternative to Sufism. Therefore, "all thinking, religious Moslems are mystics", as Professor D B Macdonald, one of our best authorities on the subject, has remarked. And he adds: "All, too, are pantheists, but some do not know it."

The relation of individual Sufis to Islam varies from more or less entire conformity to a merely nominal profession of belief in Allah and His Prophet. While the Koran and the Traditions are generally acknowledged to be the unalterable standard of religious truth, this acknowledgement does not include the recognition of any external authority which shall decide what is orthodox and what is heretical. Creeds and catechisms count for nothing in the Sufi's estimation. Why should he concern himself with these when he possesses a doctrine derived immediately from God? As he reads the Koran with studious meditation and rapt attention, lo, hidden meanings — infinite, inexhaustible — of the Holy Word flash upon his inward eye. This is what the Sufis call istinbat, a sort of intuitive deduction; the mysterious inflow of divinely revealed knowledge into hearts made pure by repentance and filled with the thought of God, and the outflow of that knowledge upon the interpreting tongue.

Naturally, the doctrines elicited by means of istinbat do not agree very well either with Mohammedan theology or with each other, but the discord is easily explained. Theologians, who interpret the letter, cannot be expected to reach the same conclusions as mystics, who interpret the spirit; and if both classes differ amongst themselves, that is a merciful dispensation of divine wisdom, since theological controversy serves to extinguish religious error, while the variety of mystical truth corresponds to the manifold degrees and modes of mystical experience.

What is Sufism?

Although the numerous definitions of Sufism which occur in Arabic and Persian books on the subject are historically interesting, their chief importance lies in showing that Sufism is undefinable. Jalaluddin Rumi in his Masnavi tells a story about an elephant which some Hindus were exhibiting in a dark room. Many people gathered to see it but, as the place was too dark to permit them to see the elephant, they all felt it with their hands to gain an idea of what it was like. One felt its trunk, and said that the animal resembled a water-pipe; another felt its ear, and said it must be a large fan; another its leg, and thought it must be a pillar; another felt its back, and declared that the beast must be like an immense throne. So it is with those who define Sufism: they can only attempt to express what they themselves have felt, and there is no conceivable formula that will comprise every shade of personal and intimate religious feeling. Since, however, these definitions illustrate with convenient brevity certain aspects and characteristics of Sufism, a few specimens may be given.

• Sufism is this: that actions should be passing over the Sufi (i.e. being done upon him) which are known to God only, and that he should always be with God in a way that is known to God only.

• Sufism is wholly self-discipline.

• Sufism is to possess nothing and to be possessed by nothing.

• Sufism is not a system composed of rules or sciences but a moral disposition; i.e. if it were a rule, it could be made one's own by strenuous exertion, and if it were a science, it could be acquired by instruction; but on the contrary it is a disposition, according to the saying, "Form yourselves on the moral nature of God"; and the moral nature of God cannot be attained either by means of rules or by means of sciences.

• Sufism is freedom and generosity and absence of self-constraint.

• It is this: that God should make you die to yourself and should make you live in Him.

• To behold the imperfection of the phenomenal world, nay, to close the eye to everything imperfect in contemplation of Him who is remote from all imperfection — that is Sufism.

• Sufism is control of the faculties and observance of the breaths.

• It is Sufism to put away what you have in your head, to give what you have in your hand, and not to recoil from whatever befalls you.

The reader will perceive that Sufism is a word uniting many divergent meanings, and that in sketching its main features one is obliged to make a sort of composite portrait which does not represent any particular type exclusively. The Sufis are not a sect, they have no dogmatic system, the tariqas or paths by which they seek God "are in number as the souls of men" and vary infinitely, though a family likeness may be traced in them all. Descriptions of such a Protean phenomenon must differ widely from one another, and the impression produced in each case will depend on the choice of materials and the prominence given to this or that aspect of the many-sided whole.

Now the essence of Sufism is best displayed in its extreme type, which is pantheistic and speculative rather than ascetic or devotional. This type, therefore, I have purposely placed in the foreground. The advantage of limiting the field is obvious enough, but entails some loss of proportion. In order to form a fair judgment of Mohammedan mysticism, the following chapters should be supplemented by a companion picture drawn especially from those moderate types which, for want of space, I have unduly neglected.