CHAPTER VI THE UNITIVE STATE
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Nicholson, Reynold Alleyne
I adore not the Cross nor the Crescent, I am not a Giaour nor a Jew.
East nor West, land nor sea is my home, I have kin nor with angel nor gnome,
I am wrought not of fire nor of foam, I am shaped not of dust nor of dew.
I was born not in China afar, not in Saqsīn and not in Bulghār;
Not in India, where five rivers are, nor ʿIrāq nor Khorāsān I grew.
Not in this world nor that world I dwell, not in Paradise, neither in Hell;
Not from Eden and Rizwān I fell, not from Adam my lineage I drew.
In a place beyond uttermost Place, in a tract without shadow of trace,
Soul and body transcending I live in the soul of my Loved One anew!”
The following poem, also by Jalāluddīn, expresses the positive aspect of the cosmic consciousness:
“If there be any lover in the world, O Moslems, ’tis I.
If there be any believer, infidel, or Christian hermit, ’tis I.
The wine-dregs, the cupbearer, the minstrel, the harp, and the music,
The beloved, the candle, the drink and the joy of the drunken—’tis I.
The two-and-seventy creeds and sects in the world
Do not really exist: I swear by God that every creed and sect—’tis I.
Earth and air and water and fire—knowest thou what they are?
Earth and air and water and fire, nay, body and soul too—’tis I.
Truth and falsehood, good and evil, ease and difficulty from first to last,
Knowledge and learning and asceticism and piety and faith—’tis I.
The fire of Hell, be assured, with its flaming limbos,
Yes, and Paradise and Eden and the Houris—’tis I.
This earth and heaven with all that they hold,
Angels, Peris, Genies, and Mankind—’tis I.”
What Jalāluddīn utters in a moment of ecstatic vision Henry More describes as a past experience:
“How lovely” (he says), “how magnificent a state is the soul of man in, when the life of God inactuating her shoots her along with Himself through heaven and earth; makes her unite with, and after a sort feel herself animate, the whole world. He that is here looks upon all things as One, and on himself, if he can then mind himself, as a part of the Whole.”
For some Sūfīs, absorption in the ecstasy of fanā is the end of their pilgrimage. Thenceforth no relation exists between them and the world. Nothing of themselves is left in them; as individuals, they are dead. Immersed in Unity, they know neither law nor religion nor any form of phenomenal being. But those God-intoxicated devotees who never return to sobriety have fallen short of the highest perfection. The full circle of deification must comprehend both the inward and outward aspects of Deity—the One and the Many, the Truth and the Law. It is not enough to escape from all that is creaturely, without entering into the eternal life of God the Creator as manifested in His works. To abide in God (baqā) after having passed-away from selfhood (fanā) is the mark of the Perfect Man, who not only journeys to God, i.e. passes from plurality to unity, but in and with God, i.e. continuing in the unitive state, he returns with God to the phenomenal world from which he set out, and manifests unity in plurality. In this descent
“He makes the Law his upper garment
And the mystic Path his inner garment,”
for he brings down and displays the Truth to mankind while fulfilling the duties of the religious law. Of him it may be said, in the words of a great Christian mystic:
“He goes towards God by inward love, in eternal work, and he goes in God by his fruitive inclination, in eternal rest. And he dwells in God; and yet he goes out towards created things in a spirit of love towards all things, in the virtues and in works of righteousness. And this is the most exalted summit of the inner life.”[28]
ʿAfīfuddīn Tilimsānī, in his commentary on Niffarī, describes four mystical journeys:
The first begins with gnosis and ends with complete passing-away (fanā).
The second begins at the moment when passing-away is succeeded by ‘abiding’ (baqā).
He who has attained to this station journeys in the Real, by the Real, to the Real, and he then is a reality (haqq).[29] Thus travelling onward, he arrives at the station of the Qutb,[30] which is the station of Perfect Manhood. He becomes the centre of the spiritual universe, so that every point and limit reached by individual human beings is equally distant from his station, whether they be near or far; since all stations revolve round his, and in relation to the Qutb there is no difference between nearness and farness. To one who has gained this supreme position, knowledge and gnosis and passing-away are as rivers of his ocean, whereby he replenishes whomsoever he will. He has the right to guide others to God, and seeks permission to do so from none but himself. Before the gate of Apostleship was closed,[31] he would have deserved the title of Apostle, but in our day his due title is Director of Souls, and he is a blessing to those who invoke his aid, because he comprehends the innate capacities of all mankind and, like a camel-driver, speeds every one to his home.
In the third journey this Perfect Man turns his attention to God’s creatures, either as an Apostle or as a Spiritual Director (Sheykh), and reveals himself to those who would fain be released from their faculties, to each according to his degree: to the adherent of positive religion as a theologian; to the contemplative, who has not yet enjoyed full contemplation, as a gnostic; to the gnostic as one who has entirely passed-away from individuality (wāqif); to the wāqif as a Qutb. He is the horizon of every mystical station and transcends the furthest range of experience known to each grade of seekers.
Source notes
[28] Ruysbroeck, quoted in E. Underhill’s Introduction to Mysticism, p. 522.
[29] See p. 155 above.
[30] See p. 123.
[31]I.e. before the time of Mohammed, who is the Seal of the Prophets.