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ISLAM: THE SPIRITUAL WAY TO PERFECTION FOR
MAN BASED ON KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE OF GOD
Man has innate inclination to know
where he comes from, what his end will be, and what is his
purpose in life
Man has innate inclination to know where he
comes from, what his end will be, and what is his purpose in
life. While traditional man had no difficulty in answering
these questions and knew with certainty where he came from,
why he was living and where he was going, modern man, under
the heavy burden of modern life and the influence of modern
conceptions, knows almost nothing of these essential problems
arising from his very nature. This ignorance does not,
however, change his situation: he, like the traditional man,
is born and dies, and this fact has never changed nor will it
do so, in spite of the ‘gigantic’ advancements in science
and technology. The only difference is that what was once
certainty has been replaced by doubt and fear.
He is a finite being contained by an
infinitude
Man’s situation between these two fixed
points, that is, birth and death, has not changed at all. He
is still a finite being contained by an infinitude, who cannot
escape being stirred by his very nature to an understanding of
the Infinite and the Absolute. With regard to the Absolute and
all the states of being which comprise the universe, man is
what he has always been and always will be, one of the fairest
creatures with the highest point of creation, yet with the
potentiality to fall down to ‘the lowest of the low’.
According to the Qur’an, the process of
creation is circular (As He brought you forth in the
beginning so unto Him shall you also return. 7:29) in the
sense that it ends at the point from where it started. The
atheist is also of the same view, but he conceives matter,
space and time or something presentable in terms of four
dimensions as the point wherefrom the process starts and at
which it also ends. Although matter is furthest from the state
of perfection, he holds it, in its most chaotic condition, as
the beginning and the end of the creation, which he deems as
accidental and purposeless. Whereas according to the Qur’an,
the existence starts with the highest state of perfection, and
then proceeds down to matter, which has the least degree of
perfection, and then again it turns back upward to the point
from where it started.
He regulates the affair from the
heaven to the earth, then shall it go up to Him in one
day the measure of which is thousand years of what you
reckon. (32:5)
Creation is the
“Breath”
of the Compassionate
This process is designed and administered
by the Creative Will, and the Divine Grace and Compassion (rahma)
is an a Priori factor in the manifestation of this Will.
Therefore Compassion is the principle of the manifestation of
the Infinite, so that the universe is called by the Muslim
sufis ‘the Breath of the Compassionate’. Each particle of
existence is immersed in this Breath, which endows it with a
‘sympathy’, with an ‘attraction’ to other beings, and
above all with the source of the Breath, the Divine
Compassion. That is why each atom of the universe is regarded
as the theophany of the Divine Names and Attributes. Mahmud
Shabstari, in his Gulshan-i Raz (The Mystic Rose
Garden), expresses the Divine Being as manifested in
everything, whether big or small:
Know the world is a mirror from head
to foot,
In every atom a hundred blazing suns.
If you cleave the heart of one drop
of water,
A hundred pure oceans emerge from it.
If you examine closely each grain of
sand,
A thousand Adams may be seen in it.
In its members a gnat is like an
elephant;
In its qualities a drop of rain is
like the Nile.
The heart of a barley-corn equals a
hundred harvests,
A world dwells in the heart of a
millet seed.
In the wing of a gnat is the ocean of
the life,
In the pupil of the eye a heaven;
What though the grain of the heart be
small,
It is a station for the Lord of both
worlds to dwell therein. (Translated by E. H.
Whinfield)
The Light of Muhammad is actually the
theatre of the theophany of all the Divine Names and
Attributes
Because existence is the manifestation of
God’s grace or compassion, the order and hierarchy of
creation begins with the highest and most comprehensive
created entity, who is the compassion unto all worlds or
beings, and the foremost in having within the fold of his
existence all the excellences which are to be revealed in the
chain of beings next to him in grade and elevation. This
entity, being the most comprehensive in perfection and the
embodiment of God’s Compassion, is presented in various
terms but the most appropriate one is ‘the Light of Muhammad’
or ‘Reality of Muhammad’. Like sunshine radiating through
everything from a molecule of water to the whole surface of
the sea, and to the heavenly bodies, so the Light of Muhammad
is actually the theatre of the theophany of all the Divine
Names and Attributes, and the archetype of the cosmos.
The hierarchy of creation
The hierarchy of creation then unfolds
itself in innumerable spheres of intellectual and angelical
beings. In the Qur’an, they are termed ‘the Malakut’
or realms of unseen active spiritual and psychic entities.
Each sphere is held by the one above it and this holds the
sphere below it, ending in the four dimensional sphere known
as material being. This is the lowest sphere which is held but
has no holding faculty of its own at all, so it is termed in
the Qur’an ‘Alam-i Mulk’ or ‘Alam-i Shadat’,
the held-world or seen-world. This world forms the base of the
hierarchy, the summit of which is the first and the most
perfect and comprehensive entity. This base has nothing of the
actual or the creative in it, but it is endowed with unlimited
potentiality and recipience which forms the background of its
upward and spiritually evolutionary movement.
Thus matter in its upward course begins
with the simplest form of particles of atom and then proceeds
towards the formation of atoms into nebulae and solar system,
populated with inanimate and animate things, of plants,
animals, man and other conscious and intellectual beings of
various species, the nature and number of whom the Creator
alone knows. So far as the earth is concerned, inanimate
elements are employed by the Creator to develop into plants,
thus being elevated to the simplest degree of life. Life
evolves through plants and animals until it reaches perfection
with man, who is the most complicated and the highest
intellectual entity, into which matter has developed, and with
which the hierarchy of creation returns to the point from
where it started.
Man is endowed with the power of
discovery and invention, and has been taught ‘the names’,
which are the keys to the knowledge of all things
Man is endowed with the power of discovery
and invention, and has been taught ‘the names’, which are
the keys to the knowledge of all things. He is also gifted
with the power to receive through his external and internal
senses all that is manifested by God’s Will in the various
spheres -terrestrial, celestial and supercelestial, and to
reflect and reproduce all that he has received. Although man
is at the summit of the hierarchy of creation on account of
his celestial origin, he has to live upon the earth because of
the vegetable and animal aspects of his existence. It is
precisely because of these contradictory features of his
being, the angelic nature and the terrestrial crust hiding the
spiritual core, that man lives in this world and yet is bound
by his own nature to transcend it.
Man is the bearer of the Supreme Divine
Trust
The Quranic verse “Surely We
created man of the fairest creature; then We reduced him to
the lowest of the low” (95:4-5) defines the situation of
man in this world in a manner that is at once perennial and
universal. Man was created in the fairest stature, then he
fell into the condition of separation and withdrawal from his
celestial prototype, to a condition which the Quran calls
the lowest of the low. Upon this point, a Muslim Sufi
commentator writes that God created man as the most complete
and perfect theophany, the most universal and all-embracing
theatre of Divine Names and Attributes, so that he might
become the bearer of the Divine Trust (amana) and the
source of an unlimited effusion of light. He identifies ‘the
lowest of the low’ with the world of natural passions and
heedlessness. The grandeur of the human state, its great
possibilities and perils, and the permanent nature of man’s
quest after the Divine thus lie at the very root of human
existence. Avicenna, a famous Muslim philosopher of the
eleventh century, expresses in the following poem this idea
that the human soul feels constrained to leave this world and
to return to the angelic world from where it came:
...
Now why from its perch on high was it
cast like this
To the lowest Nadir’s gloomy and
dear abyss?
Was it God who cast it forth for some
purpose wise,
Concealed from the keenest seeker’s
inquiring eyes?
Then is its descent a discipline wise
but stern,
That the things that it has not heard
it thus may learn.
So ‘tis she whom Fate does plunder,
while the star
Sets at length in a place from its
rising far,
Like a gleam of lightning which over
the meadows shone,
And, as though it never had been, in
a moment is gone.
(E.G.Brown’s
translation)
Finite forms in the cosmos reveal the
traces of the Infinite
The cosmos continually reveals to man the
eternal message of the Truth. Its finite forms reveal the
traces of the Infinite. As Ali ibn Ali Talib said, “I wonder
at the man who observes the universe created by God and doubts
His existence.” The Qur’an says concerning this point:
To God belongs the Kingdom of the
heavens and of the earth; and God is powerful over
everything. Surely in the creation of the heavens and
earth and in the alternation of night and day there are
signs for men possessed of minds, who remember God,
standing and sitting and lying on their sides, and
reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth:
“Our Lord, You have not created
this for vanity. Glory be to You! Guard us against the
chastisement of the Fire. Our Lord, whomsoever You admit
into the Fire, You will have abased; and the evildoers
shall have no helpers. Our Lord, we have heard a caller
calling us to belief, saying, “Believe you in your
Lord!” And so we believe. Our Lord, forgive You us our
sins and acquit us for our evil deeds, and take us to
You with the pious. Our Lord, give us what You have
promised us through Your Messengers, and abase us not on
the Day of Resurrection; You will not fail the tryst.”
And their Lord answers them: “I waste not the labor of
any that labors among you, be you male or female -the
one of you is as the other.” (3:189-195)
Revelation enables the human soul to make
a journey from the outward to the inward, from the periphery
to the center, from form to meaning, the journey which is
none other than the mystical quest itself
Man has need of revelation, which like the
cosmos itself comes from the Infinite and the Absolute, and
hence serves as the key for the unfolding of the mysteries of
man’s own being as well as those of the universe. Revelation
is in itself a gift that has descended from the Divine mercy
to enable man to pass beyond the finite to the Infinite.
Revelation enables the human soul to make a
journey from the outward to the inward, from the periphery to
the center, from form to meaning, the journey which is none
other than the mystical quest itself. Because of the intimate
relation the soul has with the cosmos, this journey is at once
a penetration to the center of the soul and a migration to the
abode beyond the cosmos. In both places the Divine Presence
resides. Man, by following the ‘outer’ form of Islam,
migrates into the inner and by the grace of God transcends the
finite world to regain his primordial angelic state, and thus
to complete the circle of creation. The spiritual path, as it
exists in Islam, is one in which man dies to his carnal soul
in order to be reborn in his angelic self.
Those who have found the Truth have
found Him in their souls;
Those who have been detained
half-way have been hindered by conjectures.
Who truly seeks will truly find
Him, while the indolent can do neither;
For His slaves on their spiritual
journey, He is the final destination.
The souls who do not recognize Him
as friend, who do not die to themselves to be raised
again in him,
The souls who do not die for His
sake are utterly bereft and destitute.
Come, friends, let’s set out to
reach the realm of the Beloved;
And let us see the rose of His
beauty for a moment in light.
The world is pitiless and cruel,
all around in fog and cloud;
It is but a loss and waste of time
to stay here even for a short while.
We are travelers, and our
home-coming is with Him alone; what an honor then to
reach him; and
Faith is the only means of
attaining this aim by His leave and grace.
As frequently pointed out in this book,
Islam is the religion of unity and all the aspects of the
Islamic doctrine and practice reflect this central and
cardinal principle. The Shari‘a itself is a vast network of
injunctions and regulations which relate the world of
multiplicity inwardly to a single center, and which conversely
is reflected in the multiplicity of the circumference. In the
same way Islamic art always seeks to relate the multiplicity
of forms, shapes and color to the One, to the center and
Origin, thereby reflecting Tawhid in its own way in the
world of forms with which it is concerned.
Sufism, being the inner dimension of the
Islamic revelation, is the means par excellence whereby Tawhid
is achieved
Sufism, being the inner dimension of the
Islamic revelation, is the means par excellence whereby Tawhid
is achieved. All Muslims believe in unity as expressed in the
most universal sense possible by the Shadah, La ilahe ill’Allah,
that is, there is not deity but God.
The whole program of Sufism, of the Islamic
spiritual way, is to free man from the prison of multiplicity,
and to purify him of any mental process or physical action
which diverts his ego-center towards temporal and sensual
desires. It is to cure him of hypocrisy and to make him whole,
for it is only in being whole that man can become holy. Men
confess the one God but actually live and act as if there were
many gods. Thus they suffer from the cardinal sin of ‘polytheism’
or shirk, and from a hypocrisy whereby they profess one thing
but act according to something different. Sufism seeks to
bring shirk into the open, and thereby to cure the soul of
this deadly malady. The aim and goal of Sufism is to integrate
man at every level of his existence.
Such an integration is brought about by the
harmonization of all the faculties, the body, the mind, and
the spirit, and not through the negation of the intelligence
which so often occurs with modern religious movements. The
methods of Sufism base themselves upon the practices of the
Shari‘a, and in particular, the daily prayers, which are a
most powerful means of integrating man’s psychic faculties
and harmonizing them with his corporeal being.
The main method of Sufism, in fact, is to
extend the prayers so that they become continuous. This
extension is not only quantitative, but also qualitative, that
is, Sufism uses this quintessential form of prayer, the dhikr
or invocation, in which all otherness and separation from the
Divine is removed and man achieves Tawhid. With the
help of dhikr, combined with appropriate forms of
meditation or fikr, man first gains an integrated soul,
pure and whole like gold, and then by means of dhikr,
he offers his soul to God so as to return to him in ecstasy.
The man who has achieved this integration
possesses certain characteristics discernible to everyone; it
leaves its imprint even upon his outward appearance, which of
necessity reflects his inner state. Such a person is first of
all cured of all the maladies of the soul, not by having all
tensions and complexes removed in the manner of modern
psycho-analysis, but by having those tensions which arise from
man’s urge and need for the transcendent realized and
fulfilled. Moreover, such a man does not live a
compartmentalized existence, his thoughts and actions all
issue from a single center and are based on a series of
immutable principles. In him, the Islamic ideal of unifying
contemplation with the practical is realized. He does not act
or think in the normal manner, rather his contemplation and
meditation are combined in the purest and most intense
activity. By virtue of his becoming integrated, he reflects
the Divine Unity and becomes the total theophany of the Divine
Names and Qualities. He acts and lives in such a manner that
there is a spiritual fragrance and beauty about all he does
and says. Somehow he is in touch with that baraka or
Divine grace which runs through the arteries of the universe.
The man who has achieved integration has
reached the goal of his life, and is cured forever of the fear
of death, which is so destructive to modern man. He perceives
that death is not total annihilation but merely a shifting
from a state of lesser sensitivity to a higher one. Man
belongs to God, and as stated in the Qur’an, the movement of
every individual, as well as the societies of beings a whole,
is toward God. Death is, therefore, nothing but a shift and
change from one stage of existence to a higher one which
ultimately terminates with God. Of man’s sensory faculties,
whether external or internal, none is destroyed by death, on
the contrary, all these become refined and sharpened. The only
relationship which is severed by death is the direct
relationship of the conscious ego with the outer material
world, with which it is connected through external senses. The
material life is a veil to human senses and consciousness; on
the removal of this veil by death all the faculties are
sharpened. This is confirmed by a tradition of the Holy
Prophet, who said, “Men are at present in a state of sleep;
they will awake when they die.” So death is actually an
ascension, and therefore not something to be feared by the
sincere Muslim but is a gate opening towards the higher
realities and pleasures of existence. It is a transference
from the dungeons of worldly life to the gardens of Paradise,
and from the world of labor and troubles to the abode of
rewards.
In a Prophetic tradition in which God
speaks God says:
My servant draws near unto me by
works of supererogation, so that I love him; and when I
love him, I am his ear with which he hears through Me,
and his eye with which he sees through Me, and his
tongue with which he speaks through Me, and his hand
with which he takes through Me.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Said Nursi, Mesnevi-i Nuriye, (‘Epitomes
of Light’), Istanbul
-
M. Abdulfettah
Sahin, Truth through
Colours, Izmir,1992
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Emerald Hills of the Heart, Izmir
1998
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S. Hussain
Nasr, Sufi Essays,
London
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Three Muslim Sages, Cambridge,1964
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Science and Civilization in Islam,
London,1987
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Mahmud Shabstari,
Gulshan-i Raz,
(Turkish trans.) Ankara
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M. M. Pouya, Fundamentals of Islam,
Karachi
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M. Ibn al-Arabi,
Shajarat al-Kawn,
1982
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Ataullah Iskenderani,
Hikmetler Kitabi,
(Turkish trans.)1981
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Martin Lings, Yirminci Yuzyilda Bir
Veli (Turkish trans.)1980
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Titus
Burckhardt, Islam Tasavvuf
Doktrinine Giris (Turkish trans)1982
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Abdul-Karim
al-Jili, Insan al-Kamil
(Turkish trans) 1975
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Abdul-Karim
al-Qushairi, Qushairi
Risalesi (Turkish trans.) Istanbul
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