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the Message Continues ... 10/114
Newsletter for February 2011
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The
Interior Life in Islam
by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
"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 - LXXXIX; 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 out wardness 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:
See F. Schuon, Dimensions of Islam, trans. P. Townsend, London,
1969, chapter 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.
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.
Concerning Shi'ism see Allamah Tabataba'i, Shi'ite Islam, trans.
by S. H. Nasr, New York and London, 1975.
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.
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.
Quoted in M. Smith, The Sufi Path of Love, An Anthology of
Sufism, London, 1954, p. 82.
Mishkat al-masabih, trans. with explanatory notes by J. Robson,
Lahore, 1972, p.278.
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.
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.
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.
Mishkat al-masabih, vol. II, p. 417, where many hadiths of this
kind are accounted.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A. J. Arbery, Sufism, London, 1950, p. 52-53.
See F. Schuon, "Seeing God Everywhere", in his Gnosis, Divine
Wisdom, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, London, 1959, pp. 106 ff.
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.
From 'Attar quoted in M. Smith, Readings from the Mystics of
Islam, London, 1950, pp. 26-27.
Courtesy: al-Seart, Vol. III, Nos. 2 & 3
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