O thou soul which are at peace, return unto thy Lord, with gladness that is
thine in Him and His in thee. Enter thou among My slaves. Enter thou My
Paradise." (Quran - 89; 27-30 (trans. by M. Lings.)
The function of religion is to bestow order upon human life and to establish an
"outward" harmony upon whose basis man can return inwardly to his Origin by
means of the journey toward the "interior" direction. This universal function is
especially true of Islam, this last religion of humanity, which is at once a
Divine injunction to establish order in human society and within the human soul
and at the same time to make possible the interior life, to prepare the soul to
return unto its Lord and enter the Paradise which is none other than the Divine
Beatitude. God is at once the First (al-awwal) and the Last (al-akhir), the
Outward (al-zahir) and the Inward (al-batin). [1] By function of His outwardness
He creates a world of separation and otherness and through His inwardness He
brings men back to their Origin. Religion is the means whereby this journey is
made possible, and it recapitulates in its structure the creation itself which
issues from God and returns unto Him. Religion consists of a dimension which is
outward and another which, upon the basis of this outwardness, leads to the
inward. These dimensions of the islamic revelation are called the Shariah (the
Sacred Law), the Tariqah (the Path) and the Haqiqah (the Truth), [2] or from
another point of view they correspond to islam, iman, and ihsan, or "surrender",
"faith" and "virtue".[3]
Although the whole of the Quranic revelation is called "islam", from the perspective in question here it can be said that not all those who follow the tradition on the level of islam are mu'mins, namely those who possess iman, nor do all those who are mu'mins possess ihsan, which is at once virtue and beauty and by function of which man is able to penetrate into the inner meaning of religion. The Islamic revelation is meant for all human beings destined to
follow this tradition. But not all men are meant to follow the interior path. It
is enough for a man to have lived according to the Shariah and in surrender (islam) to the Divine Will to die in grace and to enter into Paradise. But there are those who yearn for the Divine here and now and whose love for God and
propensity for the contemplation of the Divine Realities (al-haqaiq) compel them
to seek the path of inwardness. The revelation also provides a path for such
men, for men who through their iman and ihsan "return unto their Lord with
gladness" while still walking upon the earth.
While the concrete embodiment of the Divine Will, which is the Shariah, is
called the exoteric dimension in the sense of governing all of man's outward
life as well as his body and psyche, the spiritual path, which leads beyond the
usual understanding of the "soul" as a separated and forgetful substance in the
state which Christians call the "fallen state", is called the esoteric
dimension. In Sunni Islam, this dimension is almost completely identified with
Sufism (tasawwuf) while in Shi'ism, in addition to Sufism, the esoteric and the
exoteric are intermingled within the general structure of the religious
doctrines and practices themselves.[4] And even within Sunnism, there is an
intermediate region between the exoteric and the esoteric, a world of religious
practice and doctrines which while not strictly speaking esoteric are like the
reflection of the inner teachings of Sufism within the whole community and a
foretaste of its riches. In fact, many of the prayer manuals which occupy such a
position in the Sunni world, such as the Dalail al- khayrat, were written by
Sufi masters, while in the Shi'ite world, the prayers almost all of which, such
as the al-Sahifah al-sajjadiyyah of the fourth Imam Zayn al- Abidin, were
written by esoteric authors, partake of both an esoteric and an exoteric
character.[5] Occasionally, there has even been the penetration of one domain
upon another, such as the sayings of many of the Imams which have appeared in
Sufi writings and even of some Sufi writings which have penetrated into certain
Shi'ite prayers identified with some of the Imams.[6]
Prayers such as those of Khwajah 'Abdallah Ansari, the great saint of Herat
contained in his Supplications (Munajat) are at once the deepest yearning of the
heart for the Ineffable and the Infinite and common devotional prayers chanted
by many of the devout in the community and thus belonging to the intermediate
level alluded to above:
I live only to do Thy will,
My lips move only in praise of Thee
O Lord, whoever becometh aware of Thee
Casteth out all else other than Thee.
O Lord, give me a heart
That I may pour it out in Thanksgiving
Give me life
That I may spend it
In working for the salvation of the world.
O Lord, give me understanding
That I stray not from the path
Give me light
To avoid pitfalls.
O Lord, give me eyes
Which see nothing but Thy glory.
Give me a mind
That finds delight in Thy service.
Give me a soul
Drunk in the wine of Thy wisdom.[7]
In the same way that the dimension of inwardness is inward in relation to the
outward and the outward is necessary as the basis and point of departure for the
journey toward the inward, so is the experience of the Divinity as imminent
dependent upon the awareness of the Divinity as transcendent. No man has the
right to approach the Imminent without surrendering himself to the Transcendent,
and it is only in possessing faith in the Transcendent that man is able to
experience the Imminent. Or from another point of view, it is only in accepting
the Shari'ah that man is able to travel upon the Path (tariqah) and finally to
reach the Truth (haqiqah) which lies at the heart of all things and yet is
beyond all determination and limitation.
To interiorize life itself and to become aware of the inward dimension, man must
have recourse to rites whose very nature it is to cast a sacred form upon the
waves of the ocean of multiplicity in order to save man and bring him back to
the shores of Unity. The major rites or pillars (arkan) of Islam, namely the
daily prayers (salat), fasting (sawm), the pilgrimage (hajj), the religious tax
(zakat) and holy war (jihad), are all means of sanctifying man's terrestrial
life and enabling him to live and to die as a central being destined for
beatitude. But these rites themselves are not limited to their outer forms.
Rather they possess inward dimensions and levels of meaning which man can reach
in function of the degree of his faith (iman) and the intensity and quality of
his virtue or inner beauty (ihsan).
The daily prayers (salat in Arabic, namaz in Persian, Turkish and Urdu) are the
most fundamental rites of Islam, preceded by the ablutions and the call to
prayers (adhan), both of which contain the profoundest symbolic significance.
The form of these prayers is derived directly from the sunnah of the Holy
Prophet and the daily prayers are considered as the most important of religious
deeds for as the Prophet has said, "The first of his deeds for which a man will
be taken into account on the day of resurrection will be his prayer. If it is
sound he will be saved and successful, but if it is unsound he will be
unfortunate and miserable. If any deficiency is found in his obligatory prayer
the Lord who is blessed and exalted will issue instructions to consider whether
His servant has said any voluntary prayers so that what is lacking in the
obligatory prayer may be made up by it. Then the rest of his actions will be
treated in the same fashion." [8] The salat punctuates man's daily existence,
determines its rhythm, provides a refuge in the storm of life and protects man
from sin. Its performance is obligatory and its imprint upon Islamic society and
the soul of the individual Muslim fundamental beyond description.
Yet, the meaning of the prayers are not to be understood solely through the
study of their external form or their impact upon Islamic society, as
fundamental as those may be. By virtue of the degree of man's ihsan, and also by
virtue of the grace (barakah) contained within the sacred forms of the prayers,
man is able to attain inwardness through the very external forms of the prayers.
He is able to return, thanks to the words and movements which are themselves the
echoes of the inner states of the Holy Prophet, back to the state of perfect
servitude (ubudiyyah) and nearness to the Divine (qurb) which characterize the
inner journey of the Holy Prophet as the Universal Man (al-insan al-kamil) to
the Divine Presence on that nocturnal ascent (al-miraj), which is at once the
inner reality of the prayers and the prototype[9] of spiritual realization in
Islam.[10]
Not only do the canonical prayers possess an interior dimension, but they also
serve as the basis for other forms of prayer which become ever more inward as
man progresses upon the spiritual path leading finally to the "prayer of the
heart", the invocation (dhikr) in which the invoker, invocation and the invoked
become united, and through which man returns to the Center, to the Origin which
is pure Inwardness.[11] The interior life of Islam is based most of all upon the
power of prayer and the grace issuing from the sacred language of Arabic in
which various prayers are performed. Prayer itself is the holy barque which
leads man from the world of outwardness and separation to that of union and
interiority, becoming ultimately unified with the center of the heart and the
rhythm which determines human life itself.
The same process of interiorization takes place as far as the other central
rites or pillars of Islam are concerned. Fasting is incumbent upon all Muslims
who are capable of it during the holy month of Ramadan, a month full of
blessings when according to the well-known hadith "the gates of heaven are
opened".[12] But the outward observation of its rules, while necessary, is one
thing and the full realization of its meaning is another. Fasting means not only
abstention from eating, drinking and passions during daylight but above all the
realization of the ultimate independence of man's being from the external world
and his dependence upon the spiritual reality which resides within him. Fasting
is, therefore, at once a means of purification and interiorization complementing
the prayers. In fact, it is itself a form of prayer.
The same truth holds true of the other rites. The pilgrimage or hajj is
outwardly the journey towards the house of God in Mecca and inwardly
circumambulation around the Ka'bah of the heart which is also the house of God.
Moreover, the outward hajj is the means and support for that inner journey to
the Center which is at once nowhere and everywhere and which is the goal of
every wayfaring and journeying. The zakat or religious tax is likewise not only
the "purifying" of one's wealth through the act of charity which helps the poor,
but also the giving of oneself and the realization of the truth that by virtue
of the Divine origin of all things, and not because of some form of sentimental
humanitarianism,[13] the other or the neighbour is myself. Zakat, therefore, is,
in addition to a means of preserving social equilibrium, a way of
self-purification and interiorization, of creating awareness of one's inner
nature shown from artificial attachment to all that externalizes and dissipates.
Finally, the holy war or jihad is not simply the defense or extension of the
Islamic borders which has taken place only during certain episodes of Islamic
history, but the constant inner war against all that veils man from the Truth
and destroys his inner equilibrium. The greater holy war (al-jihad al-akbar) as
this inner battle has been called, by the Holy Prophet, is, like the "unseen
warfare" of Orthodox spirituality, the very means of opening the royal path to
the center of the heart. It is the battle which must of necessity be carried out
to open the door to the way of inwardness. Without this greater jihad man's
externalizing and centrifugal tendencies cannot be reversed and the precious
jewels contained in the treasury of the heart cannot be attained. The jihad,
like the prayers, fasting, pilgrimage and religious tax, while a pillar of Islam
and a foundation of Islamic society, is also a means toward the attainment of
the inner chamber and an indispensable means for the pursuit of the inner life
in its Islamic form.
An understanding of the interior life in Islam would be incomplete without
reference to the imprint of the Divine Beauty upon both art and nature. Islamic
art, although dealing with world of forms, is, like all genuine sacred art, a
gate towards the inner life. Islam is based primarily on intelligence and
considers beauty as the necessary complement of any authentic manifestation of
the Truth. In fact beauty is the inward dimension of goodness and leads to that
Reality which is the origin of both beauty and goodness. It is not accidental
that in Arabic moral goodness or virtue and beauty are both called husn. Islamic
art, far from being an accidental aspect of Islam and its spiritual life, is
essential to all authentic expressions of Islamic spirituality and the gate
towards the inner world. From the chanting of the Holy Quran, which is the most
central expression of the Islamic revelation and sacred art par excellence, to
calligraphy and architecture which are the "embodiments" in the worlds of form
and space of the Divine Word, the sacred art of Islam has always played and
continues to play a fundamental role in the interiorization of man's life.[14]
The same could of course be said of traditional music (sama`) and poetry which
have issued from Sufism and which are like nets cast into the world of
multiplicity to bring men back to the inner courtyard of the Beloved. [15]
Likewise, nature and its grand phenomena such as the shining of the Sun and the
Moon, the seasonal cycles, the mountains and the streams, are, in the Islamic
perspective, means for the contemplation of the spiritual realities. They are
signs (ayat) of God and although themselves forms in the external world, mirrors
of a reality which is at once inward and transcendent. Nature is not separated
from grace but is a participant in the Quranic revelation. In fact in Islamic
sources, it is called the "macrocosmic revelation". Virgin nature is the
testament of God and gives the lie to all forms of pretentious naturalism,
rationalism, skepticism and agnosticism, these maladies from which the modern
world suffers so grievously. It is only in the artificial ugliness of the modern
urban setting, created by modern man to forget God, that such ailments of the
mind and the soul appear as real and the Divine Truth as unreal. Modern
skeptical philosophies are the products of those living in urban centers and not
of men who have been born and who have lived in the bosom of nature and in
awareness of His macrocosmic revelation.[16] In Islamic spirituality, nature
acts as an important and in some cases indispensable means for recollection and
as an aid towards the attainment of inwardness. Many Muslim saints have echoed
over the ages the words of the Egyptian Sufi Dhu'l-nun who said:
"O God, I never hearken to the voices of the beasts or the rustle of the trees,
the splashing of waters or the song of birds, the whistling of the wind or the
rumble of thunder, but I sense in them a testimony to Thy Unity and a proof of
Thy Incomparableness that Thou art the All-prevailing, the All-knowing, the
All-wise, the All-just, the All-true, and that in Thee is neither overthrow nor
ignorance nor folly nor injustice nor lying. O God, I acknowledge Thee in the
proof of Thy handiwork and the evidence of Thy acts: grant me, O God, to seek
Thy Satisfaction with my satisfaction and the Delight of a Father in His child,
remembering Thee in my love for Thee, with serene tranquility and firm resolve."
[17]
St. Francis of Assisi would surely have joined this chorus in the praise of the
Lord through the reflection of His Beauty and Wisdom in His Creation.
The goal of the inward life in Islam is to reach the Divine as both the
Transcendent and the Imminent. It is to gain a vision of God as the Reality
beyond all determination and at the same time of the world as "plunged in God".
It is to see God everywhere.[18] The inward dimension is the key for the
understanding of metaphysics and traditional cosmology as well as for the
penetration into the essential meaning of religion and of all religions, for at
the heart of every authentic religion lies the one Truth which resides also at
the heart of all things and most of all of man. There are of course differences
of perspective and of form. In Christianity, it is the person of Christ who
saves and who washes away the dross of separation and externalization. In Islam,
such a function is performed by the supreme expression of the Truth Itself, by
the Shahadah, La ilaha ill'llah. To take refuge in it is to be saved from the
debilitating effect of externalization and "objectivization" and to be brought
back to the Center, through the inward dimension. [19]
It is not for all men to follow the interior life. As already mentioned, it is
sufficient for a Muslim to live according to the Shari'ah to enter paradise
after death and to follow the interior path after the end of his terrestrial
journey. But for those who seek the Divine Center while still walking on earth
and who have already died and become resurrected; in this life the interior path
opens before them at a point which is here and a time which is now.
"It is related that one night Shaykh Bayazid went outside the city and found
everything wrapped in deep silence, free from the clamour of men. The moon was
shedding her radiance upon the world and by her light made night as brilliant as
the day. Stars innumerable shone like jewels in the heavens above, each pursuing
its appointed task. For a long time the Shaykh made his way across the open
country and found no movement therein, nor saw a single soul. Deeply moved by
this he cried: "O Lord, my heart is stirred within me by this Thy Court
displayed in all its splendour and sublimity, yet none are found here to give
Thee the adoring worship which is thy due. Why should this be, O Lord? Then the
hidden voice of God spoke to him: "O thou who art bewildered in the Way, know
that the King does not grant admission to every passer-by. So exalted is the
Majesty of His Court that not every beggar can be admitted thereto. When the
Splendour of My Glory sheds abroad its radiance from this My sanctuary, the
heedless and those who are wrapped in the sleep of indolence are repelled
thereby. Those who are worthy of admittance to this Court wait for long years,
until one in a thousand of them wins entrance thereto." [20]
No religion would be complete without providing the path for the "one in a
thousand". Islam as an integral tradition and the last plenary message of Heaven
to the present humanity has preserved to this day the possibility of following
the interior life, a life which, although actualized fully only by the few, has
cast its light and spread its perfume over all authentic manifestations of the
Islamic tradition.
Notes:
1. See F. Schuon, Dimensions of Islam, trans. P. Townsend, London, 1969, chapter
2.
2. See S. H. Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, London, 1966, chapter 1, 3 and
4 (trans. into Italian by D. Venturi as Ideali e realita dell' Islam, Milan,
1974.
3. See F. Schuon, "Iman, Islam, Insan", in his L'Oeil du coeur, Paris, 1974, pp.
91-94, where the relation of this division to the tripartite division of the
Islamic tradition into Shari'ah, Tariqah and Haqiqah is also explained.
4. Concerning Shi'ism see Allamah Tabataba'i, Shi'ite Islam, trans. by S. H.
Nasr, New York and London, 1975.
5. On Muslim prayers from both Sunni and Shi'ite sources and dealing mostly with
this "intermediate" domain of religious life, between external religious acts
and the "prayer of the heart", see C. E. Padwick, Muslim Devotions, A Study of
Prayer-Manuals in Common Use, London, 1961.
6. For a rather remarkable instance of this second category dealing with a
Prayer written by Ibn 'Ata'allah al-Iskandari in a famous Shi'ite prayer
attributed to Imam Husayn the third Shi'ite Imam, see W. Chittick, "A Shadhili
Presence in Shi'ite Islam?", Sophia Perennis (Journal of the Imperial Iranian
Academy of Philosophy), vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 1975, pp. 97-100.
7. Quoted in M. Smith, The Sufi Path of Love, An Anthology of Sufism, London,
1954, p. 82.
8. Mishkat al-masabih, trans. with explanatory notes by J. Robson, Lahore, 1972,
p.278.
9. The external movements of the prayers are said, by traditional Islamic
authorities to be reflections in the world of form, movement, time and space of
the states experienced by the Holy Prophet during his nocturnal ascension.
10. Concerning the symbolism and inner meaning of the details of the movements
actions and words of the prayers as reflecting in the teachings of one of the
greatest of the Sufi masters of the recent period see M Lings, A Sufi Saint of
the Twentieth Century, London, 1971, pp.176 ff. As for the inner meaning of the
prayers as seen by a Shi'ite theosopher and saint see Hajji Mulla Hadi Sabziwari,
Asrar al-hikam, Tehran, 1380, pp. 456 ff.
11. Jami has said, "Oh, happy man whose heart has been illuminated by invocation
in the shade of which the carnal soul has been vanquished, the thought of
multiplicity chased away, the invoker transmuted into invocation and the
invocation transmuted into the Invoked." Quoted in F. Schuon, Understanding
Islam, trans D. M. Matheson, London, 1976, p. 123.
12. Mishkat al-masabih, vol. II, p. 417, where many hadiths of this kind are
accounted.
13. In modern times, few virtues have been as externalized, depleted of their
spiritual significance and even made into a channel for demonic rather than
celestial forces as charity whose modern, secularized understanding in the West
is the direct caricature and parody of the authentic Christian conception of
this cardinal virtue. See F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts,
trans. D. M. Matheson, London 1953, pp. 171 ff.
14. Considering the spiritual principles of Islamic art see T. Burckhardt, The
Art of Islam, trans. P. Hobson, London, 1976; and his Sacred Art, East and West,
trans Lord Northbourne, London, 1967, chapter IV, also S. H. Nasr, Sacred Art in
Persian Culture, London, 1976.
15. Concerning the spiritual and interiorizing effect of music in Sufism see J.
Nourbakhsh "Sama`", Sophia Perennis, vol. III no. 1, Spring 1977, S. H Nasr
"Islam and Music", Studies in Comparative Religion, Winter, 1976, pp. 37-45. (italian
trans. as "L'Islam e la musica secondo Ruzbahan Bagli, Santo Patrono di Sciraz,"
Conoscenza Religiosa, vol. 4, 1976, pp. 373 ff.
16. Concerning the Islamic and traditional view of nature and its contrast with
the modern view see S. H. Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam, New York,
1970 (Italian trans. as Scienzia e civilta nel' Islam, trans. L. Sosio, Milan,
1977), Nasr, Man and Nature, London, 1976 (Italian translation as L'uomo e la
natura, trans. G. Spina, Milan, 1977); Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic
Cosmological Doctrines, London, 1977, Nasr, Islamic Science - An Illustrated
Study, London, 1976, also Th. Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends, New York 1973
and Roszak, Unfinished Animal, New York, 1975. "Les vertus qui par leu; natupe
meme temoignent de la Verite, possedent elles aussi une qualite interiorisante
dans la mesure ou elles sont fondamentales, il en va de mem des etres et des
choses qui transmettent des messages de lteternelle Beaute; d'ou la puissance
d'interiorisation propre a la nature vierge, a l'harmonie des creatures, a l'art
sacre, a la musique. La sensation esthetique-nous l'avons fait remarquer bien
des fois-possede en soi une qualite ascendante- elle provoque dans l'ame
contemplative directement ou indirectement, un ressouvenir des divines
essences." F. Schuon 'La religion du coeur", Sophia Perennis, vol. III, no. 1,
Spring, 1977.
17. A. J. Arbery, Sufism, London, 1950, p. 52-53.
18. See F. Schuon, "Seeing God Everywhere", in his Gnosis, Divine Wisdom, trans.
G. E. H. Palmer, London, 1959, pp. 106 ff.
19. See S. H. Nasr, "Contemporary Western Man, between the rim and the axis" in
his Islam and the Plight of Modern Man, London, 1976, pp. 3 ff.
20. From 'Attar quoted in M. Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam, London,
1950, pp. 26-27.
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