them. My chief purpose was to show, by means of examples chosen from the literature, that Sufism is not necessarily pantheistic but often bears the marks of a genuine personal religion inspired by a personal God, even if we must beware of attributing to Moslems all that ti e term “personality” suggests to us.
Reynold A. Nicholson.
Cambridge,
December t 1922.
LECTURE I
T HE title which I have chosen for these Lectures— “The Idea of Personality in Sufism”—seems to call for a few words of explanation at the outset, so that the scope and limits of the subject, as I propose to treat it, may be indicated. What Sufism is you all know: I am using the word in its ordinary sense as synonymous with Islamic mysticism and as denoting that type of religious experience with which the writings of the Sufis or Mohammedan mystics have made us familiar. It may be of some interest to consider how far this experience involves the personality either of the devotee or of the object of his devotion, that is, God; and obviously, before entering on such an investigation, we must define, at least in general terms, what we mean when we ascribe personality to God—a question of prime importance for Christians, but one which Moslem theologians have never asked themselves, much less attempted to answer. I would remark, in the first place, that the expression “Divine personality ” cannot be translated adequately into any Mohammedan language. The dictionaries render “personality” by shakhsiyyat ; but the word shakhs, meaning “a person,” is really not applicable to Allah, though it occurs with reference to Him in the Tradition, La shakhsa aghyaru min Alldhi, “ There is no person more jealous than Allah.” Huwiyyat (an abstract noun formed from huwa, “he”) denotes individuality or “ipseity” rather than personality : it is used by some Sufis of the Absolute Divine Idea in which all ideas are contained as the tree in the seed.
N.
/Another word, dhat, which in Moslem theology sign the essence of Allah as distinguished from His attributes, will not serve to translate a term that implies no such distinction; moreover, dhat may denote the essence of a thin g as well as that of a person. In short, while Allah is described in Mohammedan creeds as fard, single, and as
having no like, i.c. as a unique individual, He is nowhere described by any term that implies for Moslems what the word person implies for us. The reason for that lies in the history of the word, and I need only remind you that
what we may call the philosophical use of person in the modem European languages has been determined by the use in the formulation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity of wrooracrts and persona as equivalent expressions 1 .
Of course it does not follow, because Moslems possess no equivalent for a term associated with a doctrine which they reject,, that they are therefore to be regarded as not believing in a personal God; on the contrary, I think it would be nearer the truth to say that for the most part they have always conceive^ God as personal in the sense in which that word is commonly understood, though their conception of His nature may sometimes assume a form that seems irreconcilable with Western notions of personality. What, then, do we mean when we speak of God as personal? For 'the present purpose I will ask you to accept the view of a recent authority, Professor C. C. J. Webb, that
only" so far as personal relations are allowed to exist between the worshipper and his God, can that God be properly described as personal; and that such personal relations are excluded alike by extreme stress on the “immanence and by extreme stress on the “transcendence” of the object of ivorship 1 .
1 c. C. J. Webb, God and Personality, p. 46.
a Ibid. p. n.
WWSTffy
IN SOFISM 3
[efinition wall provide a convenient starting-point iur discussion. I do not suppose that it would satisfy Moslem theologians. For in a well-known article of their creed it is laid down that Allah is entirely different from
all created beings, and we know personal relations to be impossible without some element of likeness, without some degree of moral affinity. And further, although the criterion suggested by Professor Webb, whereby w r e should decide whether the relation is personal or not, would present no difficulty to Moslems—they have terms equivalent to transcendence and immanence in their own theology—few of them, I think, would be prepared to deny personality to a God either so immanent or so transcendent that personal relations with Hun are, to us, barely conceivable. W hile in Isl am as elsewhere personal reli gious experience is not peculiar to the mystics , it can hardly ri se to its full he ig ht without becoming mystical, and this is the case in Islam to a g r eater extent thanjn Christia nity. The point of view from which the subject TOiere regarded has, I hope, been made clear, but only a very imperfect sketch can be attempted on the present occasion. It will be my aim to bring before you, in historical order so far as possible, some of the ways in which earnestly religious Moslems have expressed and satisfied their craving for personal intercourse between themselves
and God.
Apart from the fact that S ufism, like every othe r religious movement in jislam, has i ts roots in the Korgn and the Sunna and cannot be understo od unless we study Tt from the source upwards, the particulai aspect of it which w*e are now considering takes us back at once to the man with whom the Islamic idea of Divine personality
begins and who himself during the Middle Ages becaim the object of a mystical devotion comparable to that which has often attached itself to the person of Christ. We must therefore spend a few moments on the problem of Mohammed’s relation to God, leaving for a subsequent lecture the question why and how the view of the person of the Prophet which prevailed amongst his Moslem contemporaries was so fundamentally altered in after days, when Islam had spread beyond the borders of Arabia and grown into one of the great religions of the world.
I am going to take for granted what has often been doubted or denied— the sincerity of Mohamme d and the reality of his prophetic inspiration —partly because it is a point on which all Moslems are agreed and also because it seems to me that on no other hypothesis can the origin and early history of Islam be accounted for. It is easy to emphasise the contradictions into which he was drawn by his postulate of a fixed and immutable revelation, written in a heavenly book and communicated to him by a process in which he was merely the passive medium, while the course of events constantly required that the revelation should be plastic and responsive to his needs. If he was an impostor, we can only wonder at his lack of foresight; but if he was sincere, it must be admitted that his prophetic endowment was not of the highest order. Had he stood in the same intimate and free relation to
God as the Hebrew propuels, would it ' * r have occurred to him that the Koran is the literal Word of God, and would his own part in it have been confined to healing it dictated by Gabriel? The stimulating thinker whose definition of personality I have quoted remarks that “ the tendency of Islam is to reduce the personal relations which can exist between man and God to the lowest terms, to
MIN l$T^
IN SOFISM
0 ' namel y> w ^’ c ^ ma y exist between a slave and a '^USia/ter of absolutely unlimited power 1 .” This statement would be better applied to the Koran than to Islam in general, and though it is a true statement as far as it goes, it gives no clue to the secret of Mohammed’s enthusiasm. Few can read the short Suras, which stand last in the book but came first in order of time, without feeling that he was conscious of being, as we say, in touch with Allah conscious, after much inward tribulation, that what possessed him was not an evil spirit but the spirit of Allah who by His grace had chosen him, like the prophets of old, to warn his countrymen of their impending doom "on the day when the earth shall be ground to dust, and thy Lord shall come, and the angels row by row; and Hell on that day shall be brought nigh” (Kor. lxxxix, 22-24) 2 - The vision of Judgment stirred Mohammed to the depths of his soul, it broke down every carrier and set him face to face with the Lord who says, "Call unto Me and I will answer you” (Kor. xl, 62). So the Moslem "in prayer can come directly to God 3 .” We see from the Koran that Mohammed spoke as a prophet, heedless of logical consistency. In him were two voices, one certainly louder and more frequent than the other’ •yet "each a mighty voice 4 .” One voice declares that Allah sits on His throne, that He is the great Taskmaster whose eye is ever on His servants 5 , as ready to punish
1 Webb, God and Personality , p. 87.
2 I follow Snouck Hurgronje and Andrae (Die Person Muhammeds, 8-10), who hold that what made Mohammed a prophet was ms conviction that the Day of Judgment was at hand.
D. B. Macdonald, The religious altitude and life in Islam
11 Wordsworth, Sonnet entitled Thought of a Briton on the sub - jugation of Switzerland .
6 Kor. lxxxix, 13.
worn i
and destroy the wicked as to pardon and protect righteous; the other proclaims that Allah is the Reality (al-Haqq ) 1 which shall remain when all else has passed away 2 , that He is the Light of heaven and earth 3 , that He is nea rer to us then our neck-vein 4 , that wherever we turn He is present with us 8 . Is not this just what the Sufis are never tired of saying? For them, indeed, Allah is pre-eminently the Beloved, while Mohammed ' s lov e of Him was overshadowed by his fear. Yet the former feeling was by no means strange to him. In a Siira of the Meccan period (lxxxv, 14) Allah is described as “the Loving One” ( al-Wadud ); and in many passages it is affirmed that Ho loves the beneficent, the patient, those who keep themselves pure, and so on. Man’s love of Allah is mentioned only thrice, but one of these references I must quote because it shows how closely Mohammed could identify himself with Allah; it has, too, a further significance which will appear when we come to consider the position occupied by the Prophet in Moslem theology. The passage runs thus (Kor. m, 29): “Say: if ye love Allah, follow me, so will Allah love you and forgive you your sins, for Allah is forgiving and merciful. Say: obey Allah and the Apostle.” Here Mohammed seems to be echoing the words of Christ, " He that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me 6 ”; “the Father himself loveth you because ye have loved me 7 .” Be that as it may, tnere are many things in the Koran which a fford a real basi s f nr Sufism . To express this fact in another way, though Mohammed's relation to God cannot on the whole be called one of intimacy, it had in it a mystical aspect.
c Matthew x, 40.
,eiy, a direct consciousness of the Divine presence ich is “ religion in its most acute, intense, and living stage 1 .” Without that, I am convinced, he could never have become the founder of Islam..
When, after the Prophet's death, his followers established themselves in Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they were brought into contact with old religions, theologies and philosophies, under the influence of which their simple faith was gradually transformed. We can trace the working of these foreign ideas in every department of Moslem thought: in theology and jurisprudence no less than in asceticism and mysticism. Of course the foundation of the whole fabric was the Koran, a very quicksand of contradictory notions expressed in language that is often vague and obscure. The Koran, however, could be supplemented by the Hadith , i.e. the Traditions of the Prophet. These were particularly useful for system-building just because they were so easy to invent: every student of Islam is aware how many.sayings have been put in the Prophet's mouth by those who desired to claim Prophetic authority for their own doctrines. This pious fraud was practised by all the early Mohammedan sects. The Sufis are not a sect, but they too produced a vast number of spurious Traditions to support their contention that Sufism is in truth the esoteric teaching of the Prophet.
(fiT
e,kjjLJ
. The oldest type of mysticism in Islam was ascetic and \ devotional rather than speculative, and the word "Sufi” \ first appears in literature as a name applied to a certain lclass of ascetics 2 . In the second century of the Hijra there arose a spontaneous and wide-spread movement towards world-flight. Dreading the wrath to come, thou-
1 Rufus Jones, Studies in mystical religion , Introd. p. xv. a Ja^iz, Kitabu ’ l-Baydn , i, 138.
mismy
sands of men and women gave themselves up to the'Te^ ligious life, either singiy.or in companionship with a few friends. The consciousness of sin lay heavy on them: the slightest offence against the Law had to be expiated by a long penance. From the injunctions which they found in the Koran to think on God and trust in God they developed the practice of dliikr and the doctrine of tawakkul. Here, no doubt, they learned something from Christian asceticism. Dhikr was at first a form of meditation consisting in the incessant chanting of a brief litany such as “ Allah! Allah! ” " Subhan Allah! ” or the like. The command to trust in God {tawakkul) some of them carried out s so thoroughly that they would not act on their own initiative at all, refusing, for example, to seek food or take medicine; and they scarcely exaggerate when they describe their attitude as that of a corpse in the hands of the washer who prepares it for burial. This kind of devotion might sink into lip-service and hypocrisy; still, for many of them, it was no matter of rule: it was as intensely real as the terrors which inspired it. Hasan of Ba§ra, hearing mention made of the man who shall only be saved after having passed a thousand years in Hell-fire, burst into tears and exclaimed, “Oh, would that I were like that man! 1 ” And if in this emotional religion the master-feeling was fear, yet there was also love. With the growing influence of Hellenistic ideas Moslem asceticism became mystical: ascetic exercises began to be regarded, not as having their end in future salvation or perdition, but rather as a means of purifying the soul so that it may know and love God and attain to union with Him. As we have seen, the Koran speaks incidentally of God as loving men and of men as loving God, but the tone of 1 Qutu ’ l-Qultib , i, ioi.
IN SUFISM gl
texts does not suggest that the Sufi conception of ne Love was derived from the Koran. Already in xne second century after Mohammed the saintly woman, Rabi'a of Basra, implores God not to withhold from her ; the vision of His everlasting beauty 1 , while Ma'ruf al- Karkhi, author of the earliest definition of Sufism, declares that love is a gift of God and cannot be learned from men 2 . When Ma'ruf died, his pupil Sari al-Saqati saw him in a dream.
Meseemed he was at the foot of God’s throne, and God was saying to His angels, “Who is this?” They answered, “Thou knowest best, O Lord.” Then God said to them ,\ “ This is Ma'ruf al-Karklif, who was intoxicated with love 1 of Me and will not recover his senses except by meeting Me t face to face 3 .”
That Ma'ruf felt himself to be in the closest personal communion with God appears from his saying on one occasion to Sari al-Saqati, “When you desire anything of God, adjure Him in my name 4 .’’ According to the Divine Love is a mystery that must not be spoken of, lest it come to the ears of the vulgar 5 . Dhu ' 1 -Nun took a very important step in the development of Sufism by distinguishing the mystic's knowledge of God (ma'rifaf) from traditional or intellectual knowledge (‘Uni) and by connecting the former with love of God ( niahabbat ).
“True knowledge of God,” he says, “is not the knowledge that God is One, whiqli is possessed by all believers; nor the knowledge of Him derived from proof and demonstration, which belongs to philosophers, rhetoricians, and theologians; but it is the knowledge of the attributes of Divine Unity,
1 Tadhkiratu ’l-Awliyd, 1, 73, 5.
which belongs to the Saints of God, those who behold God with their hearts in such wise that He reveals unto them what He revealeth not unto any one else in the world L”
And again: “Real knowledge is God's illumination of the heart with the pure radiance of knowledge," i.e. the sun can be seen only by the light of the sun 2 . Hence “the more a man knoweth God, the deeper and greater his bewilderment in God/’ because (as the commentator explains) the nearer he is to the sun the more he is dazzled, until he reaches a point where he is not he 3 .
•‘They that know God,” Dhu ' 1 -Nun continues, “are not themselves and subsist not through themselves, but in so far as they are themselves they subsist through God. They move as God causes them to move, and their words are the words of God which roll upon their tongues, and their sight is the sight of God which hath entered their eyes. The Prophet, on whom be peace, told of these qualities when lie related that God said: ‘When I love a servant, I the Lord am his ear, so that he hears by Me, and his eye, so that he . sees by Me, and his tongue, so that he speaks by Me, and his hand, so that he takes by MeV ”
These quotations show that what the Sufis call ma'rifat , knowledge of God, resembles the yvcoais of Hellenistic religion: it is an immediate experience in which the intellect has no share, an ecstatic contemplation of God by the divinely illuminated heart. Moreover, it involves the. effacement of the individual seif and the substitution of divine qualities for human; yet all this is the act of God. Just as St Paul said to his Galatian converts, “Now that ye have come to know God, or rather to be known of God 6 ," so the Sufi 'drif or gnostic imputes all his “knowledge to Him who by revealing Himself causes the veil
1 Tadhkiratu ’l-Awliyd, i, 127, 3.
B Galatians *v, 9.
misT#,,
II
themess” and duality to disappear and the knower to be one with the known. And when Sufis speak of knowing the unity of God, they mean no less than this. It was this doctrine of the Divine Unity that was taught in private by Junaydof Baghdad (ob. a.h. 297 = a.d. 909) 1 and his pupil, the celebrated Hallaj, may have heard it from him.
The modem idea of Divine personality is derived from the doctrine of the Trinity, which, though it does not j affirm the personality of God, affirms the existence of personal relations in His nature. Probably most of us would agree with Professor Webb, who thinks that, be- • cause "the Christian Church has worshipped as God a real historical person,” it has been found easier in Christianity than elsewhere
to secure what may be called “a personal religion" without a mystical dissipation of the personality of its Object, and to attribute personality to that Object without removing it to a distance from the worshipper too great to admit of genuine sympathy and devotion 2 .
At any rate, those who hold such a view can find support for it in the history of Islam. For, in Islam, as I hope to show in my third Lecture, the strictly Unitarian doctrine, after having been worked out to the end, was met by the demands of the religious consciousness, which insisted on recognising the Logos in the person of Mohammed and went a long way towards identifying him with God. We shall examine that curious result of Moslem Unitarianism later on ; meanwhile let ns see in what fashion the orthodox creed was formulated.
In the Koran, for the most part, Allah is described as
Webb, uod and Personality , p. 81.
ill infinitely transcendent Being who acts and feels a human person. He can be pleased or displeased, besought, trusted, even loved: He has religions value. But Mohammed's conception was theologically indefensible. It had to be hardened into a dogmatic scheme, and the upshot may be stated in a few sentences culled from an authoritative article by Prof. D. B. Macdonald 1 .
"The situation/' he says, "decreed that, more and more precisely, the starting-point should be the absolute unity, internal and external, of Allah and the representation of that unity as a tremendous will.... Allah could suffer no change, could experience no emotions. Sorrow, pity, love, desire could have no part in him. When he acts, it is not because of any action or reaction of motives and purposes within him; it is by simple arbitrary will ”
Then as to his nature, we cannot draw any conclusions from the qualities ascribed to him in the Koran.
He may be called "Most Merciful” there, but that does not mean that he has a quality, Mercy, corresponding to anything in man. If he could be so described—that is, in similar terms with man — then he, too, would be a created being.
Further
he creates us and he creates all that we do, immediately, directly, without any secondary causes....He is the only real agent in existence.... It is open to Allah to do anything, to create good or evil, faith in one person and unbelief in another, knowledge in one and ignorance in another.. . . Every possible thing, even to the vague thoughts that suddenly rise in the mind, is controlled by Allah, by his Will and his Power.
A creed, fortunately, is not a religion. The devout Moslem keeps this Deity of dialectic well in the background. Yet He is always there and, as Professor Macdonald remarks,
1 Hartford Seminary Record , vol. xx. No. i (1910), p. 21 foil.
!ert Himself at any time in an almost overwhelming
Sufis, however, regard the Unity of God not as anything that can be apprehended by the intellect, but as a mystery that is revealed only to those whom God permits to realise it in their religious experience. We have seen that in order to love and know God the Sufi must lose himself in the love and knowledge of God. Similarly, the muwahhid or unifier of God cannot fully realise that God is One except by losing himself in the Oneness of God. Unification [tawhid) is defined as “the absoluteness of the Divine nature realised in the passing-away of the human nature 1 /' so that “ the man's last state reverts to his first state and he becomes even as he was before he existed 2 /' That a doctrine of utter transcendence should lead straight to mystical union of the human personality with the divine was inevitable as soon as that doctrine stood opposed to a religion in which God is worshipped as the object of knowledge and love. The infinite distance between God and man God alone can annihilate; man has no power to bridge the chasm, therefore it is overleaped by a tour de force of the omnipotent Will. That idea lies behind the whole theory and practice of religious ecstasy on which the Sufis throw so much stress. How should the mystic's conscious self not be oblit eiated and swept away by the transcendent glory of Him who in a sudden gleam reveals Himself as ineffably near? Must not the distinction of subject and object vanish altogether? For here God is all, and there is naught beside Him.
You will remember that we agreed to make the personality of God depend on the existence of personal
1 Kitdb al-Luma', 31 penult.
/relations between Him and His worshippers., and also treat such personal relations as incompatible either with a doctrine of extreme immanence or with a doctrine of extreme transcendence. Now in the early Sufism of which I have been speaking we often find both these extremes in combination. Even Hallaj, who said Ana ’l-Haqq, “ I am God/* asserts in the strongest terms that God is transcendent and that the Creator must always remain other than the creature. There can be no doubt that the experience of /and, the passing-away of consciousness in mystical union, is consistent with belief in a personal God, though the same experience may equally well serve as a basis for pantheism when it is conceived as an end in itself, a Nirvana in which the illusion of personality is extinguished for ever. That some Sufis have so conceived it I am ready to admit. In the third century a.h. the negative doctrine of /and was taught by the famous Persian Sufi, B&yazid of Bistara, while the positive view—that the ultimate goal is not death to self (/and) but life in God ( baqd ) — was maintained by Abu Sa‘id al-Kharraz and since his time is often adopted by Sufis who acknowledge the obligations of the Mohammedan religious law. It has been argued that Sufism reaches its logical conclusion in the state of /and rather than in the succeeding state in which the mystic, having become endowed with Divine attributes, displays the Divine truth to mankind and fulfils the Divine Law in the world: this return from " intoxication” (sukr) to “sobriety” (sahw) is alleged to be a mere figment devised for the purpose of enabling Sufis to pass for Moslems 1 . But Sufism belongs to Islam just as much as Christian mysticism to Christianity, and no one can study it without frequently being 1 R. Hartmann, al-Kuschains Darstellung des SAJUums, p. 93.
V |||W «if a profound religious sentiment which seeks its
"K^ht^latisfaction , not in denying its own existence, but in affirming that it lives, moves, and has its being in the eternally active Will of Allah, and which, as a rule, expresses itself in language drawn from the closest form of personal relationship that we can imagine, namely, love. I have said that in this experience, uniting as it does the idea of Divine transcendence with the feeling of Divine immanence, there is an essential paradox. And we mus t note that each of the extre mes^ a pproaches pantheism from j* n opposite direction. The pantheistic tendency in Sufism is not wholly due to the feeling that God is one 1 with His worshipper; it also proceeds from the notion of transcendence formulated in the scholastic-theological definition, according to which the absolute Will of Allah is the only real agent in the universe. But while the Sufis no less than the Scholastics bring Islam to the verge of pantheism, Sufism, unlike the system of Moslem theology, leaves room for personal religion. Only by ignoring the Fifty Articles of his creed can the Moslem come near to God; but the Sufi who enjoys communion with God can, if he wishes, take the creed to his heart and see in its words a partial and inadequate reflection of what his inner light has revealed to him.
I will now illustrate some of the points in question from the great poem of Ibnu ’l-Farid, an Arabian mystic of the early 13th century —he was born at Cairo in a.d. 1182 and died there in a.d. 1235. During the interval of 300 years which divides him from the Sufis with whom we have hitherto been concerned, much had happened of vital importance to the development of the doctrine and to the position of Sufism within Islam. I shall come back to this in the next Lecture, which must give some
minis r#.
:count of the speculations of Hallaj and the lifeof Ghazalf. But Ibnu ’l-Farid is a more typical Sufi than either of these, and by good luck he has left a unique record of his own mystical experiences, a Pilgrim's Progress in verse, composed in a style which is the very antithesis of Bunyan’s—symbolical, exquisite, and curiously subtle. The poet writes from the level of one who has attained to ittihad , the state of permanent oneness with God. In the prelude, addressing a real or imaginary disciple, he recalls an earlier time of spiritual ebb and flow, when his love was still imperfect, and how he sought to relieve his anguish by telling it to the Divine Beloved.
I told how I fared in my love of thee, not because impatience made me weary of my sufferings, but to assuage my grief.
'Tis good to show fortitude towards enemies, but in the presence of loved ones aught save weakness is unseemly.
The excellence of my patience keeps me from complaining, though if I complained to my enemies of what I feel, they would do away with my complaint.
And the issue of my patience in loving thee is praiseworthy if I endure the sorrows thou layest on me; but if I endure to be separated from thee, it is not praiseworthy.
Whatever woe befalls me is a favour, inasmuch as my purpose holds firm against breaking my vows;
So for every pain in love, when it arises from thee, I give thanks instead of complaining.
Ay, a 'id if the agonies of passion do me despite, yet are they reckoned in love as a kindness;
And my unhappiness, nay, my tribulation, is a bounty when wrought by thee, and my raiment of hardship wrorn for thy sake is the most ample of felicities.
For when one is snared by Beauty, methinks his soul (even) from the most delicious life is (gladly) rendered up to death.
A soul that thinks to meet with no suffering in love, when it addresses itself to love, is spurned 1 .
res the Beloved that his love for Her is unchange-
Mine is a noble soul—a soul that would not forget thee even though thou sliould’st offer it, on condition of forgetting thee, what is beyond its*wishes;
A soul that would not let go the true love I bear, even though it were removed far (from thee) by scorn and absence and hatred and the cutting-off of hope.
I have no way of departing from my Way in love, and if ever I shall turn aside from it, I shall abandon my religion 1 .
He then refers to a passage in the Koran (vn, 171), where it is written that God, having drawn forth from the loins of Adam all the future generations of mankind, said to them, Alastu bi-rabbikum, "Am I not your Lord?” and received the answer Bald, ‘ ‘Yea/' which (according to the Sufi interpretation) sealed the covenant of mutual love between God and His creatures. He gave this pledge, he says, before his soul was clothed in the shadow of his clay, and he has never been false to it. And swearing a most solemn oath by all Her attributes of beauty, majesty, and perfection, he speaks his last word:
Verily, thou art the desire of my heart, and the end of my search, and the goal of my aim, and my choice and my chosen 3 .
The Beloved now answers him. She tells him, in effect, that his claim to love Her is presumptuous and insincere. His regard for Her is really self-regard, his love self-love. The true lover must die to self.
Thou art sworn to love, but to love of self: amongst my proofs (of this) is the fact that thou sufferest one of thy attributes to remain in existence.
For thou lov'st me not, so long as thou hast not passed away
N.
If 8
in me; and thou hast not passed away so long as my
is not seen within thee.
Such is Love: unless thou die, thou wilt not win thy will of the Beloved in aught. Then choose death or leave my love alone! 1
In reply he protests that this death is his dearest wish and prays the Beloved to grant it, whatever pain it may
cost.
I said to her, “My spirit is thine: ’tis for thee to take it.”
How should it be in my power?
I am not one that loathes to die in love—I am always true (to death): my nature refuses aught else.
What should I hope to be said of me except “ Such a one died of love”? Who will ensure me of that (death)?— for it is that I seek 2 .
You will observe how entirely personal is the tone of this. Yet there is no real intimacy: the relation remains one of transcendence. Union with God lies far beyond the reach of the self per se : it can be attained only through /and, when the self “passes away" from itself and by thus dying lives in God ( bagd ).
If she lets my blood be shed in love of her, yet hath she established my rank on the heights of glory and eminence. By my life, though I lose my life in exchange for her love, I am the gainer; and if she wastes away my heart, she will make it whole once more 3 .
Fund is described as a process wherein the soul is stripped of all its desires, affections, and interests, so that in ceasing to will for itself it becomes an object of the Divine will, that is, the beloved of God; and that which loves it and which it loves is now its inward and real
self that has “passed away.” Thus the unified personality finds the subject and object of worship in itself:
Both of us are a single worshipper who, in respect of the united state, bows himself to his own essence in every act of bowing.
None prayed to me but myself, nor did I pray to any one but myself in the performance of every genuflexion 1 .
Ibnu 'l-Farid distinguishes three modes of experience, which may be called respectively normal, abnormal, and supernormal. Normal experience is the multiple, shifting, consciousness of ordinary men, abnormal experience is the loss of that consciousness in ecstasy, and supernormal experience is the higher, mystical, unified consciousness which may be the result of ecstasy. To normal experience Ibnu ’1-Farid gives the name of “ sobriety ” (sahw), to abnormal or ecstatic experience the name of ^intoxication (sukr), and to supernormal experience, the name of “the sobriety of union ” (sahuu 'l-jam l ) or “the second S&briety” (al-§ahw al-th&ni ). This last is necessarily preceded by “ intoxication ” but does not necessarily follow it. In most cases the mystic, as soon as his fit of ecstasy is over, returns to normal consciousness. On the other hand it sometimes, though rarely, happens that “intoxication ” is succeeded by a conscious state of “ sobriety ” or, as we might say, mystical clairvoyance, in which the seer regards himself as united with God. According to Ibnu ’l-Farid, this is the supreme degree of oneness (ittihdd), and he claims to possess it permanently. Thus the Sufi in the first stage of his journey is aware of himself as an individual distinct from God; in the second stage every distinction between Creator and creature has vanished;
_.id in the third stage he is aware of himself as being with the Creator from whom he, as a creature, is distinct. While during the momentary "intoxication” oifand all the attributes of the self are negated, in "the sobriety of union” they are restored “with'an increase,” as the poet says, i.e. they are transmuted and wholly spiritualised. Therefore the highest mystical experience is positive and active in the sense that he who has reached it not only manifests the Divine attributes and actions in himself to others, but maintains a personal relation to the God with whom he is one and who nevertheless transcends
him.
And through her, not through myself, I began to guide unto her those who by themselves had lost the right ways; and ’twas she that (really) guided them 1 .
It is true that Ibnu ’1-Farid uses what may seem to us pantheistic language to express his feeling of oneness with God and dwells on the aspect of immanence far more than on the aspect of transcendence. A few verses will make this clear.
When it (my essence) is not called 'two,” my attributes are hers, and since we are one, her outward aspect is mine.
If she be called, ’tis I who answer, and if I am summoned she answers him who calls me and cries “ Labbayk! ’ (‘ At
thy service!”). .
And if she speak, ’tis I who converse. Likewise, if I tell a
story, ’tis she that tells it.
The pronoun of the second person has gone out of use between us, and by its removal I am raised above the sect who separate 2 .
“The sect who separate” are those who look at things from the standpoint of duality as opposed to unity, so that, for example, they regard their acts of worship as
Ml Nisr^
eding from themselves, not as being done by God in them. But here the poet hardly goes beyond the orthodox doctrine of Islamic monotheism, that God is the only real agent in existence, a doctrine which is saved from being pantheistic by nothing else than its representation of God as a personal creative Will. And this, I believe, was essentially the position of Ibnu ’l-Farid,
though in mystical fashion he identifies himself with that Will in all its manifestations.
None lives but his life is from mine, and every willing soul is obedient to my will;
And there is no speaker but tells his tale with my words, nor any seer but sees with the sight of mine eye;
And no silent listener but hears with my hearing, nor any one that grasps but with my strength and might;
And in the whole creation there is none save me that speaks or sees or hears 1 .
In these lines Ibnu i-Farid is supposed to make himself one with Mohammed. At present it need only be said that according to the later Sufis union with the Spirit of Mohammed signifies a relation to God somewhat like the relation to Him which by the Christian Fathers of Alexandria was thought to be implied in union with the Logos.
Some Mohammedan commentators who wrote under the influence of Ibnu 'l-'Arabi have treated the poem as the work of a pantheist belonging to the same school as themselves, and a recent Italian translator takes this view of it. In my opinion, both the internal and the external evidence is against the pantheistic interpretation. I cannot go into details here, but I have no doubt that what Ibnu ' 1 -FaricJ describes, or attempts to describe, is a personal religious experience of the most intimate kind. Just for that reason the poem has great
THE IDEA OF PERSONALITY (ny
m 4 ychological interest for students of Sufism. It slM 4 ^ to us the full inner meaning of the Sufi definition of tawhid (the Divine Unity) which has been quoted above— “the absoluteness of the Divine nature realised in the passing-away of the human nature.” Ibnu ’ 1 -Farid’s ittihdd is the mystical realisation of the idea of God that was developed by Moslem Unitarianism and set forth in the orthodox creeds. Unless I am mistaken, much of the so-called “pantheism” with which the Sufis are often discredited is really founded on personal experience of the immanent and transcendent Unity of Allah. Though nothing can explain the mystical fact that two become one, we are not therefore entitled to assume that mystics, who have immediate experience of the fact, are pantheists in disguise. They may of course deserve that epithet, and if they themselves convert a state of feeling into a system of thought, they must bearthe consequences.
Ibnu ’ 1 -Farid, for the most part, simply relates the psychological history of his own experience. At the same time he teaches certain doctrines for which he claims the authority of the Koran and the Sunna. Among these is the doctrine—he gives it the name of labs (covering)— that the One God clothes Himself in the created forms through which He is revealed, as, for example, Gabriel is said to have appeared to the Prophet in the form of Dihya al-Kalbi, one of the Prophet’s Companions; but he warns the reader that this is something quite different from the heretical doctrine of incarnation (huluF) L Evidently he regarded himself as a Moslem, and the accounts of his life show that he was so regarded by most of his orthodox contemporaries. While in virtue of his union with God, or with the Prophetic Logos through whom
manifested, he rose beyond all relations of time _ sjSace, beyond all the antinomies of human thought, he found the highest expression of that mystical unity within the religion of Islam. As he tells us, he not only performed the rites of worship incumbent on every Moslem but added thereto the voluntary works of devotion by which the Sufis seek to draw nigh unto God 1 . And it is no less significant that he concludes his poem with an emphatic assertion of the Moslem creed. All depends on the Will and Power of Allah. Allah misguides whomso He pleaseth and leads aright whomso He pleaseth (Kor. xvi, 05). Moslems, Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians are what they are because Allah has decreed that so it shall be 2 . Here the poet cites the Tradition that when Allah created Adam, He drew forth his posterity from his loins in two handfuls, one white as silver and one black as coal, and said, “These are in Paradise and I care not; and these are in Hell and I care not 3 .” Those of you who have read Professor Macdonald’s admirable book, The religions attitude and life in Islam } may remember that he translates a passage in which the same Tradition is expounded by Ghazali and makes the following comment:
This is the end of thewhole matter, and to this must return the vision of the Muslim mystic and the ecstasy of the Muslim saint; the dreams of a lover and beloved, and the groanings and travailings of creation. Whenever the devout fife, with its spiritual aspirations and fervent longings, touches the scheme of Muslim theology, it must thus bend and break. For it, within Islam itself, there is no place 4 .
Rather, I should say, there cannot logically be a place. For many Moslems are, in fact, Stiffs; and in Sufism the
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//God of Islam itself, the God who does not care, repretgj the aspect of extreme transcendence which, as we have
seen, is often united with a consciousness of extreme immanence. This contrast is to some extent characteristic of the deepest religious feeling everywhere. For example, the Christian mystic commonly “identifies the personal and intimate Lover of the soul.. .with the person of Christ; the unknowable and transcendent Godhead with ,. .the Undifferentiated One in Whom the Trinity of Persons is resumed 1 .’' What Christianity conceives as the distinction of Persons in a Trinity is conceived by Islam as the distinction of aspects in a Unity. Allah as depicted in the Koran is mainly transcendent but is also immanent ; the God of $ufism is mainly immanent but is also transcendent. Only the Moslem scholastics, who make God absolutely transcendent, are thorough-going in their logic, though it must be allowed that some §ufl pantheists have produced theories of immanence not unworthy to be set beside the orthodox theology.
It is hard, to see how personal relations of love and worship can continue to exist in such a state of unification as Ibnu ’ 1 -Farid describes, especially as he himself declares that the supreme experience is beyond love 2 . Yet when he speaks, not of losing his permanent unitive state or of going outside of it, but of descending from his exaltation to perform ritual and devotional acts of worship, this can only mean that such acts, implying a personal relation to God, are consistent with his inner feeling and expressive of its true character.
I have tried to show you how close and vital is the connexion of $tifism with the Mohammedan doctrine of Divine Unity, which affirms that God is transcendent,
» E. Underhill, Mysticism, p. 411. * Td'iyya, v. 294.
ow the Sufis seek to realise that Unity and Traniendence by means of ecstasy, by passing away from themselves in order that God may make Himself known to them. And as Eckhart said, “All the truth which any master ever taught with his own reason and understanding, or ever can teach to the last day, will not in the least explain this knowledge 1 /' For the truth about God can be declared by none but God—He alone has the right to say "I” 2 ; and any man who may venture to give his testimony can only do so in virtue of having been purified and unified by God, made one with God, so that he actually represents in his own person the God whose truth he proclaims. In the first decade of the fourth century after Mohammed there came forward such a witness in the person of Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, a native of Bayda in Fars, the same town which produced the commentator Baydawi. Hall&j, as you know, uttered the words Ana ’l~Haqq, “I am God,” and was executed at Baghdad in 309 a.h. Perhaps you will hardly expect me to add that amongst the Mohammedan mystics, so far as I am acquainted with their writings, there is none whose doctrine is so original and whose religious experience cuts more deeply into life. Some facts bearing on this will be given in the next Lecture.
1 Quoted by Rufus M. Jones, Studies in mystical religion, p. 232.
WON' i°
LECTURE II
M ORE than fifty years ago Alfred von Kremer characterised the end of the third century after Mohammed as the epoch at which (to quote his own words)
‘‘Moslem asceticism passed over into the pantheistic religious enthusiasm that forms the real essence of later Sufism. Henceforth,” he adds, "‘the notion of God, the conception of the reciprocal relations existing between the finite, the human, and the Infinite, the Divine, became the principal subject of investigation and reflection. The man who first gave precise expression to those ideas which till then had remained unknown to Arabian Sufism inasmuch as they belonged to a quite different sphere of culture, was a poor artisan, a woolcarder by trade, for which reason he got the surname of Halklj... .His life-story is variously recounted by Sunnite and Shl'ite authors, but this much stands fast, that he had a great number of followers who revered him as their teacher and guide and ascribed to him supernatural powers; that the orthodox party, alarmed by his ever increasing popularity, urged the Government to take measures against him; and that finally in the year 309 a.h. he was put to death, after having borne with amazing fortitude the frightful tortures inflicted on him.”
I need not stop to discuss Von Kremer’s view of the early history of Sufism. Asa matter of fact the ideas which he describes as foreign were an outgrowth of the ascetic and mystical movement in Islam and are mainly Islamic, though at some points Hellenistic influences may have cooperated, e.g . in the doctrine of gnosis (ma'rifat) taught by the Egyptian Sufi, Dhu 1 -Nun (f a.d. 850). On the other hand, the most eminent of Dhu ; 1 -Nun ; s contemporaries, B&yazid, was a Persian; and during this period 1 Gesch. d. herrschenden Idcen des 1 slams, p. 70.
^influence of Persian thought (especially, perhaps,
)E IDEA OF PERSONALITY IN
StlFISM 27
^cne doctrine of the Shfites who looked upon their Imams as the personal representatives of God) had a large share in moulding these speculations, which gradually absorbed other elements of diverse origin. As regards the pantheistic character attributed by Von Kremer to the Sufism of which he takes Hallaj as the prototype, I hope to convince you that such a description is not applicable either to Hallaj himself or to Sufism in general. The development of Sufi pantheism comes much later than Hallaj and was chiefly due to Ibnu ; l-‘Arabi (a.d. 1165-1240). It would be a mistake to suppose that utterances like the Subhdni , “ Glory to me," of Bayazid, the Ana ’l~Haqq, "I am God/' of Hallaj, and the Ana Hiya , " I am She/' of Ibnu 1 -Farid are in themselves evidence of pantheism. So long as transcendence is recognised, the most emphatic assertion of immanence is not pantheism but panentheism—not the doctrine that all is God, but the doctrine that all is in Ggd, who is also above all. Moreover, excesses of mystical feeling must not be identified with theological beliefs. As a rule, Moslems have taken the view that between the saint and God there exists a mysterious relation which has to be respected even if it brings him into conflict with the religious law; but in the time of Hallaj the veneration of holy men had not yet gone so far as to put them out of danger. When Hallaj was brought to trial, the legal members of the court insisted that he should be impeache d for having included the Pilgrimage to Mecca amongst tiie class of religious obligations that are not absolutely binding but admit of abrogation. This doctrine, together with the charge that he was in secret conespondence with the Carmathians, who nine years afterwards sacked Mecca and carried oft the Black Stone, may have cost him his
WHlST/fy.
lie. The fact that he declared himself to be essentially united with God was only one of the four heads under which he was arraigned, and by itself it might not have secured his condemnation, though, as we shall see, his teaching on this point took a form that rendered it peculiarly abominable to Moslems 1 .
The words Ana ’l-Haqq occur in an extraordinary book composed by Hallaj, the Kitab al-Tawdsin, which was edited in 1913 by M. Louis Massignon. Written in rhymed Arabic prose and divided into eleven brief sections, it sets forth a doctrine of saintship—a doctrine founded on personal experience and clothed in the form of a subtle yet passionate dialectic. The style is so technical and obscure that even with the help of the Persian commentary we can sometimes only guess what meaning the writer intended to convey. Instead of translating the text 2 , the editor has devoted years of patient labour to understanding and illustrating it, with the result that his monograph on Hallaj must be studied carefully by every one interested in Sufism. For it is now clear that the words Ana ’ l- Haqq were not an ejkculation of visionary enthusiasm but the intuitive formula in which a whole system of mystical theology summed itself up. And this system is not only the first in time, it is also profoundly original. The power and vitality of this man's ideas are attested by the influence which they exerted upon his successors. His ashes were scattered, swept away, as he prophesied, by rushing winds and running waters, but his words lived after him and we see them, all through the Middle Ages, rising like sparks and kindling to new life.
1 An account of the trial, condemnation, and execution of Halldj is given by Miskawaihi, ed. Amedroz and Margoliouth,
It is translated in his Passion (see p. 37, note), vol. II,
^fycannot attempt to give you a full account of the octrines contained in the Tawasin and supplemented by numerous fragments which Massignon has collected. We may begin by asking, “What did Hallaj mean when he said Ana ' 1 -HaqqV ’ The expression al-Haqq is commonly used by Sufis to denote the Creator as opposed to al-khalq , “the creatures,” and there is no doubt that it bears this signification here: Ana *l-Haqq t “I am the Creative Truth,” as Massignon renders it 1 .
“Hallaj/’ he says, “while affirming the transcendence of the idea of God, did not at all conceive it as being inaccessible to man. From the old Jewish and Christian tradition that God created man in His own image Hall&j deduced a doctrine of creation, which had its counterpart in a doctrine of deification : the deified man finds in himself, b} r means of (a mystical) asceticism, the reality of the Divine image which God has imprinted on him. We possess several Hallfijian fragments that leave no doubt as to this. In the longest, Hallfij explains the matter thus : Before all things, before the creation, before His knowledge of the creation, God in His unity was holding an ineffable discourse with Himself and contemplating the splendour of His essence in itself. That pure simplicit}' of His self-admiration is Love, which in Ilis essence is the essence of the essence, beyond all limitation of attributes. In His perfect isolation God loves Himself, praises Himself, and manifests Himself by Love. And it was tliis first manifestation of Love in the Divine Absolute that determined the multiplicity of His attributes and His nr vies. Then God, by His essence, in His essence, desired to’ project out of Himself His supreme joy, that Love in aloneness, that He might behold it and speak to it. He looked in eternity and brought forth from non-existence an image, an image of Himself, endowed with all His attributes and all His names: Adam. The Divine look made that form to be His image unto everlasting. God saluted it, glorified it, chose it, and inasmuch as He manifested Himself by it and in it, that created form became Huwa Huwa , He, He! 2 ’’
1 Kitdb al-Tawdsin, p 175. 3 Ibid. p. 129 fol.
The first of the following verses by Hallaj refers to Adam, the second is said to refer to Jesus:
Glory to God who revealed in His humanity the secret of His radiant divinity,
And then appeared to His creatures visibly in the shape of one who eats and drinks 1 .
Here, you will notice, we have the doctrine of two natures in God—a divine nature (lahut) and a human nature (nasut). These terms are borrowed from Syrian Christianity, which uses them to denote the two natures of Christ. Further, Hallaj in describing the union of the Idhut with the ndsut— or, as he generally says, of the Divine Spirit with the human spirit employs the term halt'd; and hulul is a word associated, in Moslem minds, with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. In his poems his own spirit and the Divine Spirit appear as lovers conversing with each other and most intimately united.
Tby Spirit is mingled in my spirit even as wine is mingled with pure water.
When anything touches Thee, it touches me. Lo, in every case Thou art l 2 .
And again:
I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I,
We are two spirits dwelling in one body.
If thou seest me, thou seest Him,
And if thou seest Him, thou seest us both 3 .
While Hallaj assert the pre-existence of Mohammed as the Light from which a 11 prophecy emanates 4 , it is not Mohammed but Jesus in whom he finds the perfect type of the " deified man,” whose personality is not destroyed
1 Kitdb al-J'awdsin t p. 130.
mtsTfif
O
:ransfigured and essentialised, so that he stands forth
as the personal witness and representative of God, revealing from within himself al-Haqq , the Creator through whom he exists, the Creative Truth in whom he has all his being 1 . You will agree that this is singular doctrine on the lips of a Mohammedan. It is entirely opposed to pantheism, for it makes the human nature an image of the Divine, though not quite in the same sense that caused Christ to say, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father 2 /' A doctrine which is described, even metaphorically, as hulul could not take root in Islam. It perished with Hallaj and his immediate disciples. The majority of the later §ufis extol him as a martyr who died on the scaffold because he dared to reveal the Divine mystery, but they deny that he taught hulul and interpret his Ana y l-Haqq in a Unitarian or monistic sense, thus giving it a flavour of orthodoxy but altogether disguising the features which make it so remarkable. Hence in the development of his ideas by Ibnu fl-‘Arabi and Jili the living clash of personality, Divine and human, resolves itself into a logical distinction between God and man as aspects of the One Essence, whose attributes receive their most perfect manifestation in the firstcreated Light of Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah.
Strange as it may seem, Hallaj, who found his model of the saintly life in Jesus Christ, celebrates as exponents of the true mystical doctrine of Divine Unity not only Pharaoh but especially Iblfs, the Mohammedan Diabolus. The Koran, as you will remember, tells in several places how God commanded the angels to worship Adam, and how I bits—his name was then 'Azazil—refused, saying, “ I am more excellent than he: Thou hast created me of
and him of clay 1 ”; whereupon God cursed him a cast him into Hell. From the Unitarian point of view, to worship Adam, even though Adam be regarded as the Divine image, is idolatry, and Hallaj was not the fiist Devil's advocate in Islam. According to him if Iblis disobeyed the Divine command, it was only because he would not acknowledge any object of worship except the One God. When God threatened him with everlasting punishment, Iblfs asked, “Wilt not Thou behold me whilst Thou art punishing me? ” God answered, “ Yes.”
“Then,” said Iblis, “Thy beholding me will take away from me consciousness of the punishment. Do unto me as Thou wilt! 2 ” And in another dialogue Iblis, being reproached by Moses for his disobedience, replies, “It was not a command, it was a trial "—meaning a test of his devotion to God 3 . So Hallaj can make Iblis say, “In refusing to obey Thee I glorified Thee 4 ” (juhv.dl laka laqdis)., and can declare that Iblis and Pharaoh are his “friends and teachers.”
“ jf yQ do not recognise God,” he says, at least recognise His signs. I am that sign, I am the Creative Truth (Ana ’l-FIaqq), because through the Truth I am a truth eternally. My friends and teachers are Iblis and Pharaoh. Iblis was threatened with Hell-fire, yet he did not recant. Pharaoh was drowned in the sea, yet he did not recant, for he would not acknowledge anything between him and God. And I, though I am killed and crucified, and though my hands and fort are cut off—I do not recant I*”
But Hallaj, be it observed, while praising the selfsacrifice (Jutuwwat) shown by Iblis in upholding the Divine Unity, condemns him for disobeying the Divine command. Iblis justified his disobedience by the plea
1 Kor. vii, ii. 5 Kitdb al-Tawdsln, p. xii.
e knew it to be predestined. God commanded him worship Adam, but willed that he should refuse; otherwise he must have obeyed, since God wills nothing that does not come to pass. Hallaj, on the other hand, insists that obedience is & sacred duty. The command ( amr ) is eternal, whereas the will ( mashiyyat ) and foreknowledge of God concerning it, whether it shall be obeyed or disobeyed, is created, and therefore subordinate. God wills both good and evil, but commands only good. He commands us to do a thing and foreknows that we cannot do it; He wills that we sin, but He does not will that we sin by our own fault 1 . Hallaj, as Massignon says, realised profoundly the bitterness of the dilemma, which he states in a verse quoted by Ibn Khallik&n:
God cast him into the sea, with his arms tied behind his back, And said to him, “ Take care, take care, lest thou be wetted by the water! a °
That might be the final word from Iblis, who, pretending to have read the secret of Divine Providence, gave way to despair. Hallaj, however, knew that the essence of God is Love, and that it is the essence of Love to suffer without asking for reasons. It behoves the true saint to turn towards God in humble adoration and strive with all his heart to fulfil the Divine command, no matter at what cost of suffering to himself. Such, apparently, was th*' gist of tli religious teaching of Hallaj, so far as we may judge from the testimonies preserved by his disciples. Let me quote one or two of these.
Ibrahim ibn Fatik relates as follows: When Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj was brought to be crucified, and saw the cross and the nails, he laughed so greatly and
1 Kitdb al-Jawdsin, pp. 145-148.
2 Wafaydt al-A'ydn, ed. De Slane, p. 217.
violently that tears flowed from Iris eyes. Then he turn _ to the people and seeing Shibli among them said to him, “O Abu Bakr, hast thou thy prayer-carpet with theer Shibli answered, “Yes, O Shaykh!” Hallaj bade him spread it out, which he did. Then Hallaj stepped forward and prayed two rak'as on it, and I was near to im. n the first rak'a he recited the Fdtiha and a verse of e Koran, namely,
Every soul shall taste of death. Ye shall be given your full rewards on the day of Resurrection, and whbso shall be put far from Hell-fire and caused to enter Paradise, happy is he! The present life is but the goods of vanity .
In the second rak'a he recited the Fdliha and a verse of the Koran, namely,
We wifi surely try thee with somewhat of fear and hunger and loss of wealth and lives and fruits. And hnng am^e of joy unto the patient who say, when an afflict on beiaU >; thJm! “Lo, we belong to God and to Him we shafl returm Those are they upon whom are blessings ^from their Lor and mercy, and those are in the right way .
And when he had finished, he uttered a prayer of which I remember only these words:
. .0 Lord. I beseech Thee to make me thankful for the grace Thou hast bestowed upon me in concealing rom -e eyes of other men what Thou hast revealed to meofthe solendours of Thy radiant countenance which is without a £m Z in makfng it lawful for me to behold the mysteries of Thy inmost conscience which Thou hast made unlawfu to other men. And these Thy servants who are 8^ to slay me, in zeal for Thy religion and in desire! to win> Th/ favour, pardon them and have mercy upon them, i£ Thou liadst revealed to them that which Thou hast revealed ^om e. they would not have done what they have done; and if Thou hadst hidden from me that which ll.o
dden from them, I should not have suffered this lation. Glory unto Thee in whatsoever Thou doest, and glory unto Thee in whatsoever Thou wiliest!
Then he remained silent for a time, communing with his
Lord, until Abu #, 1 -Harith, the executioner, went and smote him on the cheek, breaking his nose with the blow, so that the blood gushed out. Thereat Sliibli cried aloud and rent his garment and fell in a swoon, and so did Abu ’ 1 -Husayn al-Wasiti and a number of well-known Sufis. And it almost came to a riot 1 .
On another occasion the same disciple visited Hallaj in his house.
He said, “ Come in 1 be not afraid/’ so I came in and seated myself before liim, and lo, his eyes were as two sparks of fire and bloodshot. “ O my son,” said he, “ some bear witness for me, saying that I am a saint, and others bear witness against me, saying that I am an unbeliever, lliey that bear witness that I am an unbeliever are dearer to me and to God than those who bear witness that I am a saint. ’ I said, “And why is that, O Shaykh?” “Because*’ he replied, “they that bear witness to my saintship do so on account of their good thoughts concerning me, while those who bear witness to my unbelief do so from zeal for their religion; and whosoever is zealous for his religion is dearer to me and dearer to God than one who thinks well of any man. ihen he said to me, “And how will it be with thee, O Ibrahfm, when thou seest me crucified and killed and burnt, and that day the happiest of all the days of my life? Then he said to me, “ Do not sit here. Go forth, and God protect thee ! 2 ”
One day HaMj entered the mosque of Mansur at Baghdad and said, “O people, come together and hear news from me/* A great multitude gathered to him, so many that only God could number them. Some of them
1 Massignon, Quatye icxics inidites, relatifs d la biographic d'al-IJosayn ibn Mansour al-Haildj (1914), p- 5 1
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^T^Bved Hallaj and believed in him, others hated and denie him. " Ye must know,” said he, “that God hath made my blood lawful unto you, therefore kill me! ” The people wept, and 'Abd al-Wadud ibn Sa id ibn Abd al-Gham, the ascetic, came forward and asked,
O Shaykh, how should we kill a man who performs the canonical prayers and keeps the fast and recites the Koran?
Hallaj answered him and said,
O Shaykh, the cause for which it is forbidden to shed a man's blood lies not in the canonical prayer and the fast and the reciting of the Koran. Kill me, that ye may be rewarded and that I may have rest, so shah ye be fighters
for the Faith and I a martyr 1 .
Jn Mohammedan mysticism it is prayer that s u pplies the best evidence of personality—not the ritual prayer [salat), but th e freTprayer (c In'a) and in garticularjihe loving converse with God (munajat ), when the mystic ,, , ; t of the d epths of his One spedmen oi
the munajat of Hallaj has been quoted already. Here is
another.
O God because of what I feel of the sweet breaths of Thy love and' the perfume of Thy presence 1 despise the solid mountains and hold the earths and the heavens in contempt. By Thy truth, if Thou wouldst sell me Paradise in exchange for a single moment of my ecstasy or for one passing of the least of my spiritual states, I would not buy it . And if Thou wert to set Hell-fire before me, .with all the diverse kinds of torment that are contained therein, 1 would deem it of no account in comparison with my suffering when Thou hidest Thyself from me. Forgive the people and do not forgive me, and have mercy on them and do not have mercy on me! I do not plead with Thee for my own sake, nor do I implore Thee in my own right. Do unto me as i hou wilt . j The legend of a saint gives us impressions of his per- . sonality rather than facts, and whatever the historical 1 Massignon, Quatre textes, p. 63*. a P- 7 8 *-
of these documents may be, they show at any rate
the life and religious experience of Hallaj was regarded by those nearest to him. It is a striking picture and I believe it i$ essentially a true one. You will have noticed that some of its features might have been drawn from a Christian original—I mean, of course, the prominence given to the virtues of charity, meekness and humility, and above all to the idea of holiness made perfect by suffering. It is possible to hold that Hallaj taught a doctrine of incarnation, and his prayer, " Forgive the people and do not forgive me: I do not plead with Thee for my own sake/' appears to suggest a doctrine of vicarious sacrifice. That he was no pantheist will now be clear to you. Like all the Sufis of his age, he affirms both transcendence and immanence, and it is a mark of his intense personality that while his Ana *l-Haqq unites the two extremes he finds the truest champion of the former in Iblfs and the most complete type of the latter in Jesus. In taking leave of Hallaj I must again express my obligation to M. Massignon for his labour in collecting the materials used in the present sketch as well as for the wide learning and sympathetic insight with which he has interpreted them 1 .
A personality of very different order is Abu Hamid Ghazaif, Moslems have often said that if there could have been a prophet after Mohammed, Ghazaif would have been the man. Although his career as a whole lies beyond the scope of these Lectures and in fact belongs to Islam rather than to Sufism, it was as a Sufi that he had the illuminating experiences which inspired all his work and
1 His monumental work in two volumes, La Passion d'al- Hosayn ibn Mansour id Hallaj (Paris, 1922) appeared too late tor me to make use of it.
in virtue of which his name is linked with the revival of personal religion in Islam. You are familiar with the course of his life, at least in outline—how, for all his theological training, he was a bom critic, so that “in his earliest youth he had given up acceptance of religious truth on authority how he sought to discover a real basis for knowledge and, finding none, drifted into utter scepticism; how he passed through a crisis in which “the light of God” entered his heart; how he then regained the power to think, and setting forth in search of the truth turned at last to the writings of the Sufis and saw that he was now on the right track ; how, though he felt himself to be in a false position—for he held a Professorship of Divinity at Baghdad— he could not make up his mind to abandon the world until under the strain of this moral conflict his health broke down and in despair he took refuge with God, who made the sacrifice easy to him; how he left Baghdad and lived in retirement for ten years, during which time he learned Sufism not from books but from actual experience; and how, after having resumed his public teaching for a short while, he went back to his birthplace, Tus in Khurasan, where he died in a.d. iiii.
All this is related by Ghaz&li himself in his book entitled “The Deliverer from Error” (al-MunqiJh min al - daldl), of which the autobiographical part runs almost exactly parallel with the experience of St Augustine as recorded in the Confessions. Ghaz&li, like St Augustine, distinguishes two stages in the process by which he attained to the truth. The first stage, the Divine illumination whereby he was led out of the wilderness of scepticism, he dismisses in a few words.
“God healed mn,' he says, “of this malady, and my soul regained its health and balance. Once more I accepted the
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principles of thought with confidence in their certain^ „ security. This was not the result of logical proofs but was effected by means of a light which God threw into my heart; and that light is the key to most kinds of knowledge 1 .”
Here he quotes a Tradition of the Prophet, who, on being asked to explain the meaning of the text "God will open his breast to Islam'^(Kor. vi, 125), replied, "'Tis a light which God throws into the heart, and the sign thereof is a drawing back from the world of vanity and a turning towards the world everlasting.” The last words indicate the road which Ghazalf was to take, but the second stage of his conversion was separated from the first by a long interval of time. He could now walk by the light of faith —not unquestioning faith, however. He was still a seeker, uncertain what path would lead him to the goal. Amongst his contemporaries there were four classes of men whose claims he had to examine, namely, the scholastic theologians, the philosophers, the Talfmfs or believers in an infallible Imam, and the Sufis. His investigation and refutation of scholasticism, philosophy, and what may be called Mohammedan popery, occupies a dozen pages of the Munqidh . He then comes to the climax, which I must give as it stands in the original, though with some abridgement.
"Then/' he says, ,f I turned my attention to the Way of the Stiffs. I knew that it could not be traversed to the end without both doctrine and practice, and that the gist of their doctrine lies in overcoming the appetites of the flesh and getting rid of its evil dispositions and vile qualities, so that the heart may be cleared of .all but God; and the means of clearing it is dhikr Allah , i.e. commemoration of God and concentration of every thought upon Him. Now, the doctrine was easier to me than the practice, so I began by learning their doctrine from the books and sayings of their Shaykhs, until I acquired as much of their Way as it is possible to
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/jfw quire by learning and hearing, and saw plainly that wh; most peculiar to them cannot be learned, but can only be reached by immediate experience and ecstasy and inward transformation. How great is the difference between knowing the definition, causes, and conditions of drunkenness and actually being drunk! The drunken man knows nothing about the definition and theory of drunkenness, but he is drunk ; while the sober man, knowing the definition and the principles of drunkenness, is not drunk at all. I became convinced that the Sufis are men of feeling (arbabu ahwdl), not men of words (ashdbu aqwdl), and that I had now acquired all the knowledge of Sfifism that could possibly be obtained by means of study; as for the rest, there was no way of coming to it except by leading the mystical life. From my examination of the religious and intellectual sciences I had gained a sure faith in God, in prophecy, and in the last Judgment These three cardinal points of faith were fixed in my heart. It had also become clear to me that my hope of happiness in the next world depended on fearing God and mortifying the flesh, and that in the first place I must detach myself from all worldly ties and turn wholly to God. I looked on myself as I then was. Worldly interests encompassed me on every side. Even my work as a teacher—the best thing I •was engaged in—seemed unimportant and useless in view of the life hereafter. When I considered the intention of my teaching, I perceived that instead of doing it for God's sake alone I had no motive but the desire for glory and reputation. I realised that I stood on the edge of a precipice and would fall into Hell-fire unless I set about to mend my ways 1 .”
Ghazalf describes in vivid language the ensuing struggle with himself which lasted for six months. One day he would make a firm resolution to sacrifice everything and leave Baghdad, only to break it on the morrow. He heard the voice of faith calling him to depart, while as often as he moved a foot forward the lusts of this world dragged him back. Tom asunder by two forces contending for mastery, he lost the power of speech, and after making
^in effort to lecture was stricken with melancholia, could no longer digest his food. The physicians gave him up. Then at last he gave himself up.
“ Conscious of my helplessness and having surrendered my wiU entirely, I took'refuge with God as a man in sore trouble who has no resource left. God answered my prayer and made it easy for me to turn my back on reputation and wealth and wife and children and friends 1 .”
So he quitted Baghdad, with the resolve never to enter it again. His age at this time was thirty-seven. He went to Syria, where he passed two years in seclusion, practising the ascetic and religious discipline of the Sufis; and until he died, twenty-three years after his flight from Baghdad, his life to a large extent was that of a mystic.
Ghazalfs account of his mystical experience leaves-no doubt that he owed to this experience, and to this alone, the real knowledge that was the object of his search. But while his religious and ethical teaching has its roots in Sufism, and while his writings are saturated with Sufistic ideas, he himself was more than a Sufi; otherwise he could not have done the work he did. He used the methods of critical philosophy to show that religion is the birthright of man as such, that all the powers ’and activities peculiar to man point to a faculty which is not of this world and which enables its possessor to move in the world of reality, and that even the highest religious experience—that of the prophets and saints—though it passes human understanding, is none the less grounded in human nature. All this indeed is contained in the favourite Sufi texts— God created Adam in His own image/’ and “He who knows himself knows his Lord”; but Ghazalf. instead of regarding it ‘as a mystery reserved for the elect, starts from a broad psychological basis and treats the subject 1 Muvqidh, p. 21 , at foot.
a way that appeals to the minds and consciences all who seek the truth. Here lies his strength and also, perhaps, his weakness. The personal note is almost lacking, or rather, his personality hardly ever expresses itself in the foim given by direct religious experience. The autobiographical passages of the Munqidh stand alone. Concerning his inner life after he left Baghdad he tells us nothing. The curtain drops, and we have to content ourselves with the information that ineffable things were revealed to him, and with a brief description of the stages whereby Stiffs attain to the unitive state. An interesting comparison and contrast of Ghazali with Augustine has recently appeared, in which the author, a young German scholar, declares that whereas the personality of Augustine was made complete through the living relation of his soul to God and to the person of Christ, the spiritual development of Ghazali culminates in his acknowledgment of the truth of prophecy and his consequent submission to the authority of the church. According to this view.
even when Gfeazdli speaks with admiration of the moral virtues of the Prophet, he does not get beyond the thought of an infallible doctrine, a revelation whose truth stands fast, a knowledge which is to be secured from criticism and stamped with divine authority by invoking the moral preeminence of him who promulgated it. Thus here also, where Augustine displays the deepest inwardness of Iris feeling, Ghazili is seen still clinging to intellcctualism. True, he made a push forward into the region, of super-intellectual experience, but he had not power enough for personality to break right through, and he always came back upon the single line of his whole development, to the problem of gaining unshakable knowledge of Truth. That was in a sense the tragic thing in his life 1 .
1 H. Frick, Ghavails StibAbiogvaphie: tin Veyglrich mit Augustins Konfessionen (Leipzig, i 9 I 9 ). P- 8°.
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is obvious that we cannot discuss Christian or Momedan ideas of personality without reference to the persons of Christ and Mohammed, since the archetype, whether it be historical or ideal, necessarily determines the nature of every imitation of it. The Christian idea of personality, that is, of personal relationship to God, is the Christian idea of Christ, and the Mohammedan idea of personality is the Mohammedan idea of Mohammed. Of course, neither of these ideas represents an absolutely fixed standard; both are subject to variation and development. Far apart at first, they moved nearer to each other as time went on. My next Lecture will show that the Prophet of medieval Islam was invested with some of the attributes of the Christ worshipped by St John and St Paul; and it looks as though the trend of modern thought in the West would invert that process and leave Christ with as little divinity as Mohammed claimed for himself.
The problem of GhazalTs relation to the Prophet is beset with difficulties. That he was fully cfonscious of its TOportance appears from the Munqidh , where the account of his final conversion is immediately followed by a chaptr on “the truth of prophecy.” The truth of prophecy: this was the answer to the question which he had asked himself in the days of his intellectual scepticism—• What is Truth? ” In order to find that answer, he had to become a mystic, he had to pass through a personal religious experience which convinced him that rationalists who deny prophecy are like men bom blind. Let me quote what he says of the Sufis:
All their outward actions and inward states are irradiated hy the light of the lamp of prophecy, and there is not on the face of the earth any other light from which illumination
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/ should be sought_Unless a man has felt in himself so 1
part of this matter (i.e. of the highest mystical states), he knows nothing of prophecy, as it really is, except the name. The miraculous gifts of the Stiff saints are the first things that happen to the prophets (i.e. the prophets begin with experiences similar to those of the Stiffs). Such was the case with Mohammed at the outset, when he retired to Mt Hira to be alone with God and gave himself up to devotion 1 .
Ghazali goes on to say that the truth of prophecy may be learned indirectly by considering the phenomena of dreams, by studying the Koran and the Hadith, and by other methods which he explains, but the passage translated above brings out the essential fact that he himself gained assurance of the truth of prophecy by experiencing something analogous to that which constitutes the very nature of a prophet. This would seem to imply a personal relation in which Mohammed is not only the supreme religious and moral authority but the source and inspiration of moral and religious life.
In this connexion I may refer to Ghaz^li's esoteric doctrine. He often hints at mysteries which he could reveal if it were wise and safe to speak plainly. Thus in one of his latest books, the Mishkdt al-Anwdr, he intror .Being to whom he gives the name of al-Mu(d\ y td One 2 .” The Mufd‘ is Allah's Khalifa or Vicegerent, the supreme controller of the whole Universe, and the relation of Allah to him is likened to the relation of the impalpable light-essence to the sun, or of the elemental fire to a glowing coal.” Now, it is clear that in the conception of the Mufa‘ we have before us a Mo-
3 See W. H. T. Gairdner, " Al-GhazaU's Mishkat al-Amvar and the Ghazali-Problem/' in Der Islam (1914)* PP* 121-153.
edan Logos doctrine. That being so, the term Mutd' inevitably suggests the Koranic amr, the Divine " Comman d>” through which God works His will on the world, and from which the prophets receive their inspiration 1 . Is the Mutd' a personification of the amrl 2 That explanation would fit in very well with Ghazalf s psychology.
“It is recorded in tradition/' writes Macdonald, “that the Trophet said, "God Most High created Adam in His own form (sura),* Al-Ghazz&li takes that to mean that there is a likeness between the spirit of man and God in essence, quality, and actions. Further, the spirit of man rules the body as God rules the world. Man's body is a microcosm beside the macrocosm of this world, and they correspond, part by part. Is, then, God simply the anima mundil No, because He is the creator of all by His will, the sustainer and destroyer by His will. Al-Ghazz&lf comes to this by a study of himself. His primary conception is volo ergo sum . It is not thought which impresses him, but volition. From thought he can develop nothing; from will can come the whole round universe 3 /'
The Mishkcit contradicts this passage in one particular. God indeed remains the creator of the world, but He is 110 longer in any direct sense its ruler. He is absolutely transcendent, and since the moving of the heavenly spheres would be incompatible with His unity, that function is assigned to “One by whose command the spheres are moved, 1 ' i.e. to the Mutd\ The Mutd 1 is not identical with God: he must therefore be a created being. ® u t who or what is he? It has been suggested that he may
r 1 See H. Grimme, “Der Logos in Sudarabien/' in NoUcket'estschrift, v, 453 foil.
tT Ibnu 'lf Arabf. Tadbirdi, ed. Nyberg, p. 122, 11 . 1— II, ^nd ibid., Einlcitung . pp. 106-108, where the Logos doctrine of Gbazdli is discussed;
J D. B. Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, pp. 231
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the Outb, the head of the Sufi hierarchy, but this see: very unlikely when we consider that Ghazali always rejected and opposed the Shfite = Isma'ili Imam-doctrine, from which the Sufi Qutb-doctrine was probably derived. I am rather disposed to think that in this matter Ghazali was in accord with later mystical speculations, and that the Mufd‘ represents the archetypal Spirit of Mohammed, the Heavenly Man created in the image of God 1 and regarded as a Cosmic Power on whom depends the order and preservation of the universe 2 . According to the Koran (xvn, 87), the spirit (al-rtih) belongs to the amr of God 3 , and Jili, a famous mystic of the fourteenth century, says that one of the names of the Divine Spirit, the Spirit of which Mohammed is the perfect manifestation, is Amr Allah , i.e. the "Command” of God, the
Logos 4 . Ghazali may have borrowed the name Mutd‘ from a Koranic text (111, 29) of great importance for the Mohammedan Logos doctrine—“Say: if ye love Allah, follow me, so will Allah love you and forgive you your sins, for Allah is forgiving and merciful. Say: obey Allah and the Apostle (afiu } lldha wa-r-rasul).” Those of you who read Arabic know that the word Mt<td‘ is the parti-
1 Ghaz< often alludes mysteriously to this Hadfth. Cf. Gairdner, op. cit. p. 152.
3 Zamakhsharf (. Kashshdf> ed. Nassau Lees, p. 783) explains amr by wahy, inspiration, and kaldm, word. He mentions three different interpretations of al-ruh : (1) a mighty spiritual creature, mightier than the angel; (2) Gabriel; (3) the Koran. The first of these could be applied to the Spirit of Mohammed in the sense defined above; the last is obviously nof Ghazali s Logos, and the possibility of identifying the Mufd' with Gabriel (who is described by the epithet mufd* in Kor. Lxxxr, 21) appears to be excluded by Ghazali's remark (Gairdner, op. cit. p. 141) that “the rank of Seraphiel may well be above that of Gabriel.” Moreover, the Mufd* is nowhere called an angel.
4 Studies in Islamic Mysticism, p. no.
the same verb of which atl'u is the imperative, •ivine order to obey Mohammed implies that, for every good Moslem, Mohammed is al-Mtifd*, “ the Obeyed
If the above hypothesis be accepted, Ghazali believed tha L while God in His essence is known only to those who have realised His unity in the all-consuming mystical experience, His will and providence are manifested in t e world through the Idea embodied, as it were, in the person of Mohammed 1 . But exactly what such a belief have meant for him, I am unable to say. In the tunqulh the Prophet is described as a physician skilled * n the healing of souls, one who was more than a father 0 ' * s People in his tender and loving care for their welle * n £. I must admit that neither here nor elsewhere does hazali use the language of personal intimacy. As a rule, o quote Canon Gairdner, “his thought is cast in the c eological mould”; and though his books tell us much a out the communion of the saints with God, a few pages contain the whole history of his own inner life so far as 10 attei npts to reveal it. Perhaps the truth is that he a cked the power of immediate self-expression, so that. v eie he writes from the heart his words strike the mind stir the conscience before we recognise that they could not affect us so strongly unless they rose from a spring of feeling within—from what Tennyson has called he abysmal deeps of Personality.”
I would recommend students of Ghazali to read a little
can scarcely be distinguished from the Koranic 111 any case. While there is no positive evidence that to be 1 ldcix tihed the latter with Mohammed, this would em es s a natural development from his views as to the spiritual 2 . an an< t the divine origin of prophecy.
book by Gerald Gould, first published four years agoi entitled, The Helping Hand: an essay in philosophy and religion for the unhappy. The author’s religious experiences, his methods, and many of his ideas have an astonishing resemblance to those of the great Moslem seeker of God. Time does not allow me to draw out the parallel in detail, but I should like to quote without comment one or two passages which seem to me to illustrate the religious attitude of Ghazali better than anything I have read. Their value is increased by the fact that, being neither theological nor mystical, they meet Ghazali on the common human ground to which and this is the real secret of his vitality—he always returns in his treatment of religious problems.
“ If," says Mr Gould, “ the ultimate answer to all questions is religion, then inevitably, as far as my book has any truth or worth at all, it will be a religious book... .My message is from one who lias been a troubled seeker to others who are troubled and no qualification as a religious
teacher except that which is ordinarily regarded as a disqualification—that I share the common evil and know the common bitterness. I have wandered, like so many thousands and millions of my fellows, in the darkness of scepticism which questioned not merely this creed or that, but every guide, standard and opinion in turn. If, as I cannot help believing, I have found a guide amid the darkness, and an assurance of final light, the guide and the assurance are such as any one else may find. Again and again I come back to the commonness of the experience, the universal possibility of hope.... A good deal of what I shall say is necessarily old, though I hope to put it in a new light by means of new arrangement. X shall cover a good deal of ground that is familiar to the student of religious or philosophical problems. But, student of these problems as I have been myself for years, it is not as a student, or for students, that I write.. .. It is part of my delibciate purpose to avoid quotation of works which deal with religion and philosophy as coni o-
subjects. If I refer to some of the known facts or
psvchn'w* e l mbraced in academic metaphysics and
A W1 be b y wa y reference to subordinate from 0f the main theme - M y main theme is an appeal brin A 0111111011 ex Pcrience to common experience. I want to home t ° me r > ^ rea ^ cer dral truth, as it has been brought
You may find nearly all this, ,either expressed or im- Q le ^hazali. Take, again, the topic of repentance.
- aza i shows that repentance is a universal human experience, a necessary consequence of self-knowledge 2 . This also the argument of Mr Gould:
nt iS £ reco S nise the singleness of the self (which self ( w i s P° nsiblht y lor past action) and the duality of the bonri UC 1 lm ph e s the freedom of the present self from the reJiei^ 6 ^ u* past)....The Cliristian is assured by his
•die ^w ; he Cannot be for ^ ve n by God unless he takes aprnoqt’ i stc P ° f turnin g his hack upon the sin: the sens » ,, 0e9 no * eaii y * u his mind, cannot conquer the
of hik° S lame and de gr a dation involved in the recognition turni» °t V 11 Slrdldness > unless he takes the practical step of Urmn g his back upon the sim>.
Mr Gould ’ s conclusion is quite in the spirit of Ghazalf:
Wen? 16 b ' acbin g of religion on this point, in short, is as it lief^ a * ea ding, an interpretation in the light of certain bere jl • ° a corr iraon human experience which not the least that th Can esca P e * And ^ is, I think, infinitely important reliV c uon-religious should realise this—should realise that d 0 a°t ^° eS n0t P resen f : > 33 so often it is made to seem to does S y an ^ e and face to everyday doings and feelings: a bst r n °f *°- r its consolations wholly upon remote and
under** c A >nce P tions which the plain man cannot hope to a ft s and * does Hot embody itself in maxims which have j P e^ naiural ,, sanction only, so that if the “super-
>nus G^ J ;^ bennailn ' ^ ey Philosophisehe and religiose Subjektivis- ~The helping Hand, pp. 71-81.
THE IDEA OF PERSONALITY IN SOFI
natural” does not mean anything to one’s intelligence, maxims cannot mean anything to one's heart. The opposite of all these mistakes is the simple truth. The Christian relirion (and of many other religions this is also true, but tv must here take the Christian as a type) fits closely in its teaching to the actual movements of the heart and mind .
Mr Gould asks, "What is the essence of the finality which we recognise in religion?” and answers, It is personality. That is the distinguishing mark: that is the clue to our puzzles. . . .The test of religion is the personal and spiritual peace, the assurance, that it brings . r Gould found this in Christ, Ghazali found it in Mohammed —in the Prophet whom Allah loves, and who is loved and obeyed by all who love and obey Allah.
I had intended to make some remarks on JaMlu’ddin Rfimi, but they must be left over for our next meeting as the hour is late. In order that Ghazali may have the last word, you will allow me to read the beautiful prayer with which he concludes the Munqidh:
We pray Almighty God that He will set us amongst those Whom He hath preferred and chosen, those whom He haUi "uided and led to the Trutb, those whom He hath mspned to think on Him so that they forget Him not, those whom He hath preserved from the evil of the flesh so that they choose Him above all else, those whom He hath devoted to Himself so that they worship none but Him.
i The Helping Hand, pp. 81 fol.
LECTURE III
B EFORE pursuing the ideas suggested by the doctrine of a Khalifa or Vicegerent through whom the world is brought into personal relation with its Creator, I will ask you to turn for refreshment to a Mystical poet whose personality finds utterance "in the language of emotion and imagination rather than in that °f the intellect 1 .” Jalalu'ddin Riimi holds that intellect, ^ opposed to love, is of the Devil 2 ; he scorns booklearning and traditional knowledge, and he must have condemned the scientific and philosophical method of Ghazali as alien to the true spirit of Sufism, while Ghazali °n his part would have viewed with grave reprobation fhe ecstatic flights which carry Jalalu'ddin far above the realms of morality and law. To a certain extent the teaching of the Ihyd and the Masnavi is the same, but the teachers are very different. Ghazali is systematic, precis, and lucid; Jalalu’ddin allegorical, rambling, tedious, °ften obscure; yet Ghazali can seldom compete with him in ardour and exaltation of feeling, in originality and profundity of thought, or in power and freedom of expression. On the other hand, JalahTddin writes for Sufis ^one, whereas Ghazali demonstrates that knowledge of God is not peculiar to any one class of mankind not on to* the prophets and saints, who possess it, as Jalalu’ddin says, essentially 3 —but concerns all and may
1 Whinfield, Masnai>i, 2nd ed. (1898), p. xxxv.
2 Ziraki z Iblis u ‘ishq az Adam asi.
3 Whinfield, Masnavi , p. 155
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/be acquired by all. Neither the theologian nor the | is a pantheist. From Ghazali we get the science and doctrine, from Jalalu’ddln the sentiment, faith, and experience of personal religion. I am aware that, as regards Jalalu'ddm, this judgment may appear questionable to those who have read certain passages in the Diwdni Shamsi Tabriz where he describes his oneness with God in terms which look pantheistic at first sight and which I myself understood in a pantheistic sense at a time when I knew less about the history of Sufism than I do now. As we saw in the case of Ibnu 'l-Farid, the mystic who has attained to the unitive state can identify himself with the all-comprehending reality of God. Jalalu’ddfn, for example, says in one of his odes:
I am the theft of rogues, 1 am the pain of the sick,
I am both cloud and rain, I have rained in the meadows 1 .
Now, belief in such a Universal Being need not involve the pantheist’s belief that all things are God and that God is all things. The Neoplatonists, with their doctrine of emanation, were theists, although "the One” of Plotinus is not a personal God; and a similar position is reached in some types of mysticism which are not so much religious as philosophical. But the mysticism of Hallaj, Ghazali, Ibnu ‘1-Farid, and Jalalu’ddin Rumi, like that of all the early Sufis, is predominantly religious. Take a M few definitions: "hatred of the world and love of the Lord ; "death to self and life in God”; "to form one’s self on the character of God.” The object of this religious feeling is not a Being without personal attributes but "a personality so wide as to include in itself all existence and all action, all matter and all force 2 .” It is at once
1 Selected poems from the Diwdni Shamsi Tabriz, p. 332. • , .
3 Whinfield, Masnavi, p. xix.
t>ally immanent and absolutely transcendent, and it expresses itself most completely in Man, who is nothing except in so far as he realises his true nature to be the image of the Divine. “The eterflal being of God is then that in which ours is rooted, which, since He is before and beyond our individual being, we can worship and love and make the object of our devotion 1 .” It is the religious life of the soul, its longing for union with God, and its contemplation of Him in moments of ecstasy, that Jalalu ddin chiefly dwells on. Any one who is acquainted 'with the writings of St Teresa, St John of the Cross, and other Christian nasties will easily find parallels to such passages as the following:
O Thou who art my soul’s comfort in the season of sorrow, J Thou who art my spirit’s treasure in the bitterness of dearth,
That which the imagination hath not conceived, that which the understanding hath not seen,
isiteth my soul from Thee; hence in worship I turn toward Thee.
a never-ceasing bounty should offer kingdoms, ft a hidden treasure should set before me all that exists,
1 would bow dowu with my soul, I would lav my face in the dust,
I would say, “ Of all these the love of such a One for me!” 2 Usually, as here, the poet turns to God with praise and taanksgiving, but sometimes it is God himself that speaks:
Come, come, for you will not find another friend like me; ^diere mdeed is a Beloved like me in all the world?
Come, come, and do not spend your life in wandering to and fro,
Since there is no market elsewhere for your money.
1 Prof. C. C. J. Webb, Problems in the relations of God and Man,
8 Selected poems from the Diwdnt Shamsi Tabriz, pp. 23-24.
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( S ll/ THE IDEA 0F PERSONALITY
are as a dry valley and I as the rain,
You are as a ruined city and I as the architect.
Except my service, which is joy’s sunrise,
Man never has felt and never will feel an impression of joy
The call of the Divine “ Thou ” to the human " I ” implies that the " I ” is free to accept or refuse, even though all its actions are ultimately determined by the “Thou.’ Hence Jalalu’ddin can say:
Thee I choose, of all the world, alone;
Wilt Thou suffer me to sit in grief?
My heart is as a pen in Thy hand,
Thou art the cause if I am glad or melancholy.
Save what Thou wiliest, what will have I ?
Save what Thou showest, what do I see?
If Thou keep’st me that, that I am ;
If Thou would’st have Ine this, I am this. 1 k
In the vessel where Thou givest colour to the soul,
Who am I? What is my love and hate?
When Thou art hidden, I am of the infidels;
When Thou art manifest, I am of the faithful*.
This brings us to the question of evil, pain, and sin Jalalu’ddin, as the head of a religious order, had to deal with these matters in,a practical way. Like Plotinus, he holds evil in itself to be mere defect and negation—notbeing as opposed to Being; but while he knows that it is altogether unreal in relation to liod, he is deeply con scious of its reality in relation to man.
“If thou hast not seen the Devil,” he exclaims, “look at th /self! 3 Be ashamed of thy sins, confess them humbly t God., beseech Him to pardon them and so change thy hau that thou wilt loathe what thou hast done and renounce * utterly.”
But why, it may be asked, has God created that to which
1 Selected poems from the Diwdni Shamsi Tabriz, p. * 79 -
3 Whinfieid, Masnavi, p. 5*.
ve the name of evil? And since He is the only real how are we to blame for the actions that we are caused to commit? It is characteristic of Jalalu’ddin that he finds the answer to this old riddle not in thought but in feeling, not in theological speculation but in religious experience. We can feel as one what we must think as two. Every thing has an opposite by means of which it is manifested; God alone, whose being includes all things, has no opposite, and therefore He remains hidden 1 . Evil is the inevitable condition of good: “out of darkness was created light 2 .” From this standpoint it possesses a positive value: it serves the purposes of God, it is relatively good. There is reason as well as rhyme in uniting ranj, pain, with ganj, gain.
The prayers of those free from pain are dull and cold. The prayers of the sorrowful come from burning hearts 3 .
Suffering purifies, sin leads to repentance, and evil is turned to good for the righteous who say like Adam, Rabband zalamnd anfusand, “O Lord, we have done wrong unto our souls 4 .”
Answering the Necessitarian argument, Jalalu’ddin insists that our actions, though the effect of Divine agency, are nevertheless freely willed by us, so that we have no right to make God responsible for them. The Divine gift of free will, he says, was refused by the heavens and the earth but was accepted by man at his own peril 5 . It is true that God decrees evil in order that good may be manifested and realised; it is true that in this world the spirit and the flesh are wedded to each other and wage unceasing strife; but it is also true that while the good
1 Whinfield, Masnavl, p. 23.
6 Whiniield, Masnavl , p. 279.
/ /man accepts evil so far as it is God's ordinance, he not willingly consent to it so far as it proceeds from his own lusts and passions. Jalalu'ddin would have agreed with Professor Webb in defining sin as “the voluntary surrender of oneself to lower instincts where a different course of action was open 1 ." Not that man in the exercise of his will can act at all apart from the will of God, or act well unless he be constantly helped by the grace of God. Spinoza, it will be remembered, taught that “through acquiescence in the universal order based upon knowledge of what it is and what is our place therein we enjoy that liberty which the man who is 'passion’s slave' can never have 2 ." According to him, real freedom consists in knowledge of the determining causes of our actions. The religious counterpart of this doctrine is Jalalu'ddin's assertion that freedom in the full sense of the term belongs only to the man who loves God so perfectly that his will is one with the Divine will: in that unity of feeling the antithesis of freedom and necessity disappears.
The word ‘ compulsion ” makes me impatient for Love’s sake, 'Tis only he who loves not that is fettered by “compulsion.” This is communion with God, not "compulsion,”
The shining of the moon, not a cloud.
Or it it be "compulsion,” it is not ordinary "compulsion,” It is not the ''compulsion” exerted by self-will, inciting us to sin 3 .
The man who has thus passed away from his individual self and under the control of God is called by Moslems wall, a word which is usually translated in English by
saint. Not all Sufis are saints: the walls form a comparatively small class of men and women who have at-
1 Problems in the relations of God and Man , p. 118.
miSTfiy.
to the highest mystical experience. Their relation od is such that in them the Divine personality reflects itself, and through them is revealed to others. Jalalu’ddin says:
The mosque that is built in the hearts of the saints Is the place of worship for all, for God dwells there 1 .
In the Masnavi we read how Bayazid Bistami set out to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and on his way met with the head of the saintly hierarchy, who bade him go no further, saying—
Of a truth that is God which your soul sees in me, For God has chosen me to be His house.
When you have seen me, you have seen God And have circumambulated the real Ka‘ba.
To serve me is to worship and praise God ;
Think not that God is distinct from me 2 .
The idea of Divine personality is objectified in the perfect saint, whose hand is as the hand of God 3 and by whom the grace of God is dispensed to those who invoke God in his name. Such was the attitude of Jalalu’ddin himself towards his spiritual preceptor, Shamsu’ddin of Tabriz. But every Sufi who adheres to Islam- -and for the present we may ignore the wild pantheists and freethinking dervishes who reject positive religion altogether —must acknowledge that above the saints, even the most perfect of them, stands the Prophet Mohammed. The religious life in Islam could not find its supreme ideal anywhere but in the person of Mohammed. We shall come, therefore, to the heart of our subject if we now proceed to consider what are the relations which Moslems and especially Sufis believe to exist between the Prophet and
1 Whinfield, Masnavi , p. ioo.
God on the one hand and between the Prophet and thenfe- Selves on the other. If this question had been settled in accordance with the plain meaning of the Koran and the early Traditions, Mohammed, instead of being superior to the Sufistic wall and the Shf'ite Imam, would not have been worthy to loose their shoes. Both the wall and the Imam are, in a certain sense, delot avdpairot, divine men, really one with God, whereas Mohammed, as described in the Koran, is no more than a man subject to human weaknesses, who receives at intervals the Divine revelation, not from God but from an angel. He has never seen God, he does not share God’s secrets, he cannot foretell the future, he can work no miracle: he is only the servant and messenger of Allah. The historical Prophet was incredible even to his contemporaries. They could not understand him when he disclaimed all supernatural powers, and when he died, ‘Umar (who afterwards became Caliph) swore that he was not dead and would assuredly return and cut off the hands and feet of the blasphemers 1 . Such ideas developed rapidly when Islam spread over Western Asia and came into contact with ancient traditions, feelings, and beliefs which it was unable to uproot and which penetrated it in every direction. Under these influences the conception of the Prophet's person was transformed so as to satisfy the religious consciousness. At an early date the dogma of his pre-existence established itself among the Shi'ites, and ere long the Sunnis too adopted it. We find it in many sayings attributed to Mohammed; for example, in the famous Hadith, "I was a prophet whilst Adam was still between the water and the clay,” i.e. before Adam’s body was created. Th: pre-existent form of Mohammed, which is the first thing that God
miST/tr
vas conceived as a celestial light: this light (nur
_ nmadi) became incarnate in Adam and in the whole
series of prophets after him from generation to generation until its final appearance, according to the Sunnis, in Mohammed himself; according to the Shi'ites it passed from Mohammed to ‘Ali and the Imams of his House. The Sufis make use of this doctrine in their own way. By them the Light of Mohammed is identified with the Divine Spirit, which God breathed into Adam, with the Neoplatonic vov<{, which is the first emanation from the One, and with the Logos which, according to some Christian Gnostics, becomes incarnate in the prophets and carries on the cycle of Revelation. The Islamic Logos doctrine, as it may fairly be called, assumes various shapes and is set forth in such a mystical fashion that its details are often difficult to understand. But the main features arc clear enough. Mohammed, that is, the essential Idea (kaqiqat) of Mohammed as opposed to his earthly manifestation, is regarded, firstly, as the centre and animating principle of the whole created universe, the spirit and life of all things, and secondly as the Mediator of Divine grace, the channel through which God imparts knowledge of Himself to his worshippers and endows them with
every spiritual gift.
In speaking of Hallaj I referred to the tradition, taken over by the Sufis from Judaism, that God created Adam in His own image. Hallaj interpreted this as meaning that God manifested Himself in Adam, who objectified the whole Divine nature—both the lahut and the ndsiit. Ibnu 1 -Arab! in the 13th century a.d. and ‘Abdu ’1-Karim at Jill in the 14th made the Hallajian theory a basis for far-reaching speculations in which the place of Adam is occupied by Mohammed, who, as the Logos, is now identi-
lo THE IDEA OF PERSONALITY
ned with the ideal type of humanity, the Perfect Man
(< avdpunro ? reXetos).
" You must know/’ says Jill, “that the Perfect Man is a copy of God. That is so because God is Living, Knowing, Mighty, Willing, Hearing, Seeing, and Speaking; and Man too is all these.. . .Further, you must know that the Divine Names and Attributes belong to the Perfect Man by fundamental and sovereign right in virtue of a necessity inherent in his essence, for it is he whose Idea ( haqiqat ) is signified by those expressions and whose spiritual reality is indicated by these symbols: they have no subject in existence whereto they should be attached, except the Perfect Man. As a mirror in which a person sees the form of himself and cannot see it without the mirror, such is the relation of God to the Perfect Man, who cannot possibly see his own form but in the mirror of the name Allah; and he is also a mirror to God, for God laid upon Himself the necessity that His Names and Attributes should not be seen save in the Perfect Man 1 .”
Hence the Prophet said, or at least is believed by the Sufis to have said, “He that hath seen me hath seen Allah/ 1 just as Christ said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father/'
Mohammed, then, is not only the source of all the knowledge which the prophets and saints possess concerning God; he himself is the Divine Idea immanent in Creation and the final cause of all that exists, the cosmic thought assuming form and connecting Absolute Being with the world of Nature. He represents the Divine Providence whereby the world is sustained and governed. He is the Khalifat Allah, the Vicegerent of God, the God-Man who has descended to this earthly sphere that he may make manifest the glory of Him who brought the universe into existence. The universe is but the copy of the Idea of Mohammed, even as the Idea of Mohammed
1 Studies in Islamic Mysticism , pp. 106-107.
opy of God. The Perfect Man is the microcosm, the iverse the macrocosm. Therefore it is appropriate that he should be described in words like these—
All the beauty in the world is borrowed from him and subsists through his beauty and his light. 'Tis his beauty that is beheld in every beauty; 'tis his light that is seen in every light, in the &un, the moon, and the stars. Those who love the Prophet ought to behold his perfection in all that is beautiful and meditate on him, revering him in their hearts and praising him with their tongues, I know cno of our Shaykhs who, whenever he saw or thought of anything beautiful, used to Cry, “ Blessings and peace on thee, O Apostle of God!” 1
Reference has been made to the belief that the preexistent Light of Mohammed was revealed in all the prophets from Adam to Jesus and finally manifested in the Seal of the prophets, the last of the whole line, namely, Mohammed himself. His death, however, did not bring the revelation to an end. According to the Sufis, it continues to this day, and those persons who carry on the Prophetic torch are, of course, the waks or saints. The relation in which the spiritual adepts of Sufism stand to Mohammed is far closer than that of his most devout and devoted followers amongst the Sunnis, who venerate him as the embodiment of their highest moral and religious ideals. Veneration is not the same thing as love; and love, in the true mystical sense, means that lover and beloved are essentially one. As we have seen, the Sufi saints claim oneness with God, and in this respect they have the closest personal communion with Mohammed, who as the Perfect Man reflecting all the Divine attributes is himself the saint par excellence , the absolute type of that peculiar relation to God which the Sufis call wildyat ; and
1 Andrae, Die Person Muhammeds , p. 354.
nay be added that this inward and saintly aspect ^ ^ '"'"Mohammed’s nature is generally regarded by the Sufis
.1 i J_in nP
as being superior to the outward aspect in which he appears as prophet and apostle. From one point of view,
the saints are his personal representatives and vicegerents
to whom he has delegated his functions as the Khalifa of God. Without their invisible government the world would fall into disorder and ruin, and without their mediation the Divine blessings would not be dispensed to mankind. Hence they often speak of themselves in terms which would be more suitably applied to God or the Prophetic Logos, but this is not the language of blasphemous arrogance: it is only a tribute to the Divine Being with whom they feel themselves to be one or to the Spirit of Mohammed which lives and works in them. As a mle, the unique pre-eminence of Mohammed is acknowledged even by those Moslem saints who are most conscious of their own deification.
‘‘That which the prophets have/’ said Bayazfd T3is^amf # “ m ay be compared to a skin containing honey. A single drop trickles from it, and that drop is the portion of the saints, while to our Prophet—on whom be peace !—belongs all the honey in the skin 1 .'
It is true that in the experience of union with God there is no room for a Mediator: here the absolute Divine Unity is realised. And of course we find, especially amongst the ancient Sufis, a feeling that God must be the sole object of adoration, that any regard for other objects is an offence against Him. The woman-saint, Rabi'a of Basra, was asked:
“Dost, thou love God Almighty?" “Yes." " And dost thou hate the Devil?” "Nay," she replied; “my love ol God leaves me no leisure to hate the Devil. I saw the Prophet.
km. He said, 1 0 Rabi'a, dost thou love me? ’ I said, _ 5 ostle of God, who does not love thee?—but love of God hath so absorbed me that neither love nor hate of any other thing remains in my heart.' 1,1
To Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz, however, who also had seen the Prophet in a dream and given the same answer to the same question, Mohammed said, “He that loves God must have loved me 2 "; and later on, when a different view prevailed of the Prophet’s relation to God, so that he was identified with the Divine Spirit and with Universal Reason, it became easy to love and worship him without compromising the Unitarian principle. Gliazalf, as I said in my last Lecture, seems to have approached this position in his doctrine of “the Obeyed One.” ( al - Mutd*). At any rate, during the Middle Ages the Person of Mohammed stands in the very centre of the mystical life of Islam. Abu ' 1 -Hasan al-Hirali, a Sufi of the 13th century, describes three kinds of faith in the Prophet. The third and highest kind is peculiar to those in reference to whom God hath said, “Heaven and earth contain Me not, but the heart of my believing servant containeth Me.” They love one another in God and are the vicegerents of God in the world. Their faith consists in the belief that when the Prophet ascended to heaven he received of God's Word (amr) that which is hidden from all the prophets and angels and from Gabriel himself. None of the holy spirits and cherubim ever enjoyed such a Divine Revelation as was bestowed on Mohammed. And faith in Mohammed is the measure of one's faith in God. The only way to God is through faith in Mohammed 8 . Here, as Andrae remarks, Mohammed is no more
} Andrae, Die Person Muhammeds , pp. 310-31 2.
MI Nisr^
le Messenger of Allah but the Confidant familiar ivine mysteries.
Not the Book, which he has brought, but he himself, his own person, is the Truth and the Guide.. . .Faith in him is not a belief in the Prophetic message, but the mystic’s personal relation to the Prophet himself : the perfect saints are united with him through love and spiritual brotherhood.
The language in which this devotion to the Prophet is expressed often recalls that of erotic hymns to the Deity. He is the Beloved of God [Habib Allah), and therefore the Beloved of all Sufis. We hear of mystical union with him, of "passing away" (Jana) in him. Imitation of his actions and qualities is not enough: his living presence is longed for. Sometimes he assumes the form of a saint and is recognised by the initiated, but it is more usual to see him in dreams. Such visions indeed are a regular feature of the Sufi’s experience, and their effect upon his outward and inward life may be momentous. To take one specimen of a type which frequently recurs, it is well known, says Hujwiri, that Junayd of Baghdad refused to discourse on Sufism as long as his spiritual director, Sari al-Saqati, was alive. One night he dreamed that the Prophet said to him, "O Junayd, speak to the people, for God hath made thy words the means of saving a multitude of mankind." When he awoke, it came into his head that he was superior to Sari, inasmuch as the Prophet had commanded him to preach. At daybre a k, however. Sari sent a disciple to Junayd with the following message:
You would not discourse to your disciples when they urged you to do so, and you rejected the intercession of the Shaykhs of Baghdad and my personal entreaty. Now that the Prophet has ordered you, obey his command!.
d said,
I perceived that the rank of Sari was higher than mine, since he was acquainted with my secret thoughts. I went to him and begged his pardon and asked him how he knew that I had dreamed of the Prophet. He answered, ‘‘I dreamed of God, who told me that He had sent the Prophet to bid you preach 1 //
Hujwfri adds the remark that this anecdote clearly indicates that spiritual directors are always acquainted with the inward experiences of their disciples.
Through the mediation of their Prophet the Mohammedan mystics receive guidance in perplexity, aid in misfortune, and comfort in sorrow. But he gives them more than this. On one occasion Abu Hamza Baghdadi fell into an ecstasy in which, as he declared, he saw God face to face. His biographer, Faridu’ddin ‘Attar, makes the following comment:
If such a vision be vouchsafed to any one of the Mohammedan community, it comes not from himself but through the light of the Spirit of Mohammed, omwhom be peace. Not that a hundred saints can attain to the rank of the Prophet, but it is in the power of the Prophet to bestow on his community a portion of that which he enjoys, just as Moses caused his people to hear the words which God spoke to him in their presence 2 .
Then there is the cardinal matter of intercession for sins. One of the things every Moslem must believe is that the Prophet “will make intercession on the Day of Resurrection in the midst of the Judgment, when we shall stand and long to depart even though it be into the Fire 3 /' Though, according to the orthodox, the right o i inter-
1 Kashf al-Mahjub, transl., p. 129.
3 Al-Fudali, translated by D. B. Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology , p. 349.
N.
Of ' NDW
cession belongs to the Prophet alone, it is claimed bjK Sufi saints as part of their heritage from him, and they vie with each other in promising forgiveness to all who have loved them and done good work for them, or even seen them. This at least introduces a personal relation between the mediator and the sinner, which in some cases is accompanied by a deep sense of sin. In early Sufism we meet with the pessimistic idea that the amount of sin in the world grows ever greater in proportion to the length of time that has elapsed since the Prophet's decease. One day—so the story is told—Muhammad ibn 'All al-Tirmidhi, who was then an old man, was reviewing his past life. He remembered how once in his youth he had been tempted to sin but had resisted the temptation. He thought to himself, “What if I had yielded to it; for I was young, and I could have repented afterwards." It grieved him bitterly that such a sinful thought should have entered his heart, and for three days he sat plunged in remorse. Then he dreamed that the Prophet came to him and said: “Do not grieve: it is no fault of thine, but forty more years have passed since my death and I am farther away from the world. That is the cause of thy backsliding 1 .” A doctrine so unspiritual as this could not satisfy those who sought personal intercourse with the Piophet. “Mohammed is not dead,” said Abu VAbbas al-Qa§sab; “what is dead is thy gift of seeing him with thine inward eye 2 .” And how intimately personal arc the feelings with which some Islamic mystics regard him you may judge from the following verses written in the 12th century a.d. by Abdu ’ 1 -Rahim al-Bur‘i, a Sufi of Yemen. You will notice, too, that here the Prophet is invoked, not as one whose intercession with God brings
orgiveness of sin, but as one who can himself forand take away sin in virtue of the Divine grace and mercy with which he is endowed.
O my Lord, O Apostle of God, O my hope on the day when I shall stand before the J udge!
I beseech thee, by thy glory, to forgive the sins which I have committed, and let thy merit weigh down my scales 1 Hearken to my prayer and deliver me from the troubles which have befallen me; comfort me in all my afflictions t Thou art the nearest in whom we may have hope, albeit thou art far from my house and home.
With thee, O son of Abraham, I seek refuge from my sins and trespasses.
Do thou take my hand, O thou who art quick to answer when I call thee, and graciously pardon me and say, “To-morrow (on the Day of Judgment) ‘Abdu 'l-Rahbn will be my friend/’ He that is thy friend need not fear he will be lost.
O Lord of the Revelation, there is nothing more precious to me than thy grace.
■ am bound fast in my sins. I who have been conquered and made captive by my sins call unto thee.
Wilt not thou of thy grace set me free? My back is laden with heavy sins, for I have walked in perilous ways in company with sinners.
I have broken my covenant with God. O thou who liast kept thy covenant, turn in compassion and lovingkindness towards \Abdu ' 1 -Rahim! 1
It must have occurred to many of you that the ideas which we have been discussing - the ideas developed in later Sufism concerning the person of Mohammed—show u remarkable likeness to what is known in Christian theology as the doctrine of a Mediator. I am not qualified 1 Andrae, Die Person Muhammeds. p. 389.
to speak with any authority on the subject, but in order to bring out some points of resemblance and difference between Christian and Islamic conceptions of personality, I may quote part of the explanation given by Professor Webb, from whose books I have already drawn a good deal of interesting matter. In Christianity, he says, the Mediator is the Son of God, in whom, according to St Paul, “dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily/
The thought of St Paul.. .seems to be that the longer and inclusive life in which that of any individual man or woman must find its completion is the life of God.. .yet it can only find this completion in the divine life when that life is poured out, so to say, into a person who, while thus sharing the divine nature, is yet distinguished from God. The distinction from God which Religion implies remains to the end; but the difference of the created nature from the divine is transcended through the intimate union (symbolised by that of the members of a body with its head) with a Spirit essentially one with God, though distinguishable from him, the archetype of the created spirits, who obtain iii their union with this Spirit what is described as a sonship, not, like that Spirit's own, by nature, but by adoption 1 .
The facts of religious experience (he goes on to say)
will be found to involve, when worked into a theological doctrine, the recognition of a twofold Personality in the Divine Nature. For we have to express a consciousness of personal communion with God felt on the one hand to be a communion of spirit with kindred spirit, of Son with Father, and yet on the other to belong as such not to the individual in isolation and imperfection but in the ideal and archetype
of his nature_Here the personal communion itself, as be
longing to the true nature of God—and in nothing less than tliis can the aspiration of the religious consciousness find satisfaction—implies a personal distinction within that
1 God and Personality, p. 166.
S XV\ IN SUFISM 69
while the individual further distinguishes his own ^^Q^rate and imperfect personality from the ideal personality \vlnch is thought of as eternally distinguishing itself from God in the communion which is the consummation of the religious life 1 .
There are obvious reasons why no similar development of the Idea of Personality could have been reached in Islam. In the first place, it is impossible for any Moslem to conceive the relationship between God and man as that of Father .and Son. Allah is the Creator; and though the metaphor of “creation,” which implies His transcendence, is often exchanged for “emanation/* which implies His immanence, yet all beings, including Mohammed himself, are on one side of their nature His creatures. His slaves, absolutely inferior to Him: And Allah in His essence is One. In His essence there can be no interplay of personality. The Islamic conception of plurality in the Divine Unity signifies not the relation of persons within that Unity, but the relations existing between that Unity and the manifold aspects in which it reveals itself. All these aspects are reflected in the Perfect Man, who may therefore be described as the personified Idea in and through whom the Divine nature makes itself known. While the Christian doctrine expresses “ the realisation of human personality as characterised by and consummatedan the indwelling reality of the Spirit of Christ, which is God 2 ,” in Mohammedan theology the main stress falls on Revelation. In Islam the oldest form of the Logos doctrine is impersonal. The Logos is represented by the Koran, the eternal Word of Allah. “This, it may be said roughly, is our Nicene form of the Logos doctrine. On
and Personality , p. 182.
3 R C. Moberly, cited by Rufus Jones, Studies in mystical religion, Introd., p xvi.
misT/tf
'he other hand, the Arian form appears in the doct: of the person of Mohammed. He is the first of created beings and for his sake the worlds were created 1 .” But the worlds were created in order that God might be known, and the Perfect Man is pre-eminently the Mediator through whom all knowledge of God is revealed. You will recollect that the religious life of the Sufi culminates in knowledge of God, gnosis (ma'rifat). Professor Browne, speaking of the IsmaTHs, has admirably explained this point of view.
" The truth is/’ he writes, “ that there is a profound difference between the Persian idea of Religion and that which obtains in the West. Here it is the ideas of Faith and Righteousness (in different proportions, it is true) which are regarded as the essentials of Religion; there it is Knowledge and Mystery. Here Religion is regarded as a rule by which to live and a hope wherein to die; there as a Key to unlock the Secrets of the Spiritual and Material Universe. Here it is associated with Work and Charity; there with Rest and Wisdom 2 /'
The contrast, however, must not be pressed too far. In the present course of Lectures some examples have been given—and their number might easily be increased—of experiences and feelings of faith, love, and devotion which are entirely religious in the sense attached to the word by Christians. The $iifi who would know God must first be made pure in heart. Journeying along this path he sees before him the figure of Mohammed—"poor, humble, self-abasing, misunderstood by the world, mild, forgiving, compassionate to all.” It may be, says Andrae, that the character of the Prophet, as depicted by the Sufis, represents the moral ideal of the East—an ideal which
1 I>. B. Macdonald, in Vital forces of Christianity and Islam
2 Literary History of Persia, vol. 1, p. 405.
MINIS r^j.
to have been powerfully influenced by its embodit in the person of Christ. “And indeed, ,, he adds, “the ethics of Sufism would appear to be more akin than any other system of morality to the Sermon on the Mount 1 /'
There are, of course, many aspects of our subject which I have left untouched, either from want of time or because they could not be treated adequately by one who has had no special training in philosophy. I should have liked, for instance, to show you how the idea of personality in Sufism is fostered by the intensely and peculiarly personal intercourse of the Stiffs with each ther. The closeness of the tie between Shaykh and murid, teacher and disciple, is almost proverbial—the murid is called the son of the Shaykh—-and apart from this unique relation every disciple has his own little group of intimate friends, to whom he is a centre, so to speak, of psychological interest, who share his thoughts and feelings and enter with sympathy into all that concerns him 2 . Further, the whole Sufi community forms one indivisible brotherhood, so that the meanest famulus feels himself to be
i- DJu
joined in spirit with the most exalted hierophant. The Sufis look upon themselves as God's chosen people, loved by Him and loving one another in Him; and the bond between them can never be broken, for it is a marriage of true souls, which was made in Heaven. This is what Abu Sa'fd ibn Abi 'l-Khayr says in the following passage:
Four thousand years before God created these bodies, He created the souls and kept them beside Himself and shed a fight upon them. He knew what quantity of light each soul
1 Andrao, Die Person Muhamtneds, pp. 227 ful.
rlfejLLj
deceived and He was showing favour to each in propor its illumination. The souls remained all that time in the light until they became fully nourished. Those who in this world live in joy and agreement with one another must have been akin to one another in yonder place. Here they love another and are called the friends of God, and they are brethren who love one another for God’s sake. These souls know each other by the smell, like horses. Though one be in the East and the other in the West, yet they feel joy and comfort in each other’s talk, and one who lives in a later generation than the other is instructed and consoled by the words of his friend 1 .
In an atmosphere thus charged with personal forces and influences we find, as might be expected, great emphasis laid on the survival of personality after death and on intercourse with the spirits of those who have passed away. The literature of Sufism furnishes innumerable testimonies that deceased saints are seen in dreams, relate what has happened to them in the next world, and speak words of counsel, encouragement, or reproof to their friends living on earth. It may be said, I think, that many Sufis have held a doctrine resembling that of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) as to the immortality of the individual soul and its union—but not its complete unification— with the World-Spirit, such union constituting the blessedness of the good 2 . Others, again, seem to regard “absorption in the Deity, the merging of the individual soul of the saint in the Universal Soul of God,” as the ideal which, though temporarily attainable in this life, only receives permanent realisation in another state of existence. Ibn Sina, Tbnu '1-Farid, and Jalalu’ddm Rumi reject the doctrine of transmigration of souls (tandsukh), but Jalalu'ddin teaches that as man has risen from inanimate
1 Siudies in Islamic Mysticism, p. 56.
2 T. J. de Boer, The History of Philosophy in Islam , pp. 142 fol.
IN SttFISM
i through the vegetable and animal worlds, to the of humanity, so after death he will continue his spiritual evolution and become an angel in heaven. But this is not the end. “ Pass on even from angelhood,” says the poet; “enter that Sea, that your drop of water may become a boundless ocean 1 .” These words can only mean, I take it, that human personality is a transient phenomenon which ultimately disappears in what alone is real—the eternal and everlasting Personality of God.
So we come back to the point from which we started to the absolute unity and transcendence of the Divine nature. It is very curious that notwithstanding the strength and depth of the personal relations which, as we have seen, unite Sufis with each other, with the Prophetic Mediator, and with God Himself, these relations so often appear to reach their climax in a unity which excludes all relations—the unity of the rain-drop lost in the ocean 01 of the moth consumed in the flame of the candle 2 . I do n °t know how to explain this, and certainly the word pantheism” does not give a satisfactory explanation of it. Any attempt at a solution would have to begin, I think, by recognising that the Moslem's conception of personality is different from ours. In Islam God, not man, is the measure of all things. In Islam there has hitherto been no place for what we call Humanism, implying the v alue and sufficiency of the individual as such. In Islam the Perfect Man, who is identified with Mohammed, repiesr nts the idea of Divinity revealing itself in men rather than the ideal of Humanity realising itself in the personal
rf ^l e I ect f d P oems from the Diwdni Shamsi Tabriz, pp. 47-48. °f. Whmfi e id, Masnavi, p. 159.
the <, n* k urn t m °th, however, is used by HaU£j as an emblem of pp £^ ated P ers onaiity of the saint united with God (fawdsiu.
fy THE IDEA OF PERSONALITY IN StfFI!
life of jGod. Hence it is not surprising that the experience^
of the $ufis should lack the psychological richness and variety which is to be found in Western mysticism. Still, they are interesting, as I hope the slight account of them given in these Lectures may have shown; and in any case they must be studied because of the light they shed on the ways in which Moslems think of the great mysteries of life and religion.
The Idea of Personality in Sufism. Cambridge, 1923. Hermetic Cloud, https://hermeticcloud.com/library/nicholson-idea-of-personality-in-sufism/. Public-domain text reproduced in full; markup only.
Machine-read text of the Internet Archive scan dli.csl.6299; the reading is uncorrected apart from the removal of page numbers, running heads, line-end hyphens and the scan's own marks.