Al-Huda
Foundation, NJ U. S. A
the Message Continues ... 8/112
Article 1 - Article 2 - Article 3 - Article 4 - Article 5 - Article 6 - Article 7 - Article 8 - Article 9 - Article 10 - Article 11 - Article 12
Newsletter for December 2010
In offering the two Latin words
mundus imaginalis as the title of this discussion, I
intend to treat a precise order of reality corresponding to a
precise mode of perception, because Latin terminology gives the
advantage of providing us with a technical and fixed point of
reference, to which we can compare the various more-or-less
irresolute equivalents that our modern Western languages suggest
to us.
I will make an immediate admission. The choice of these two
words was imposed upon me some time ago, because it was
impossible for me, in what I had to translate or say, to be
satisfied with the word
imaginary. This is by no means a criticism addressed
to those of us for whom the use of the language constrains
recourse to this word, since we are trying together to
reevaluate it in a positive sense. Regardless of our efforts,
though, we cannot prevent the term
imaginary, in current usage that is not deliberate,
from being equivalent to signifying unreal, something that is
and remains outside of being and existence-in brief, something
utopian. I was absolutely obliged to find another
term because, for many years, I have been by vocation and
profession an interpreter of Arabic and Persian texts, the
purposes of which I would certainly have betrayed if I had been
entirely and simply content-even with every possible
precaution-with the term
imaginary. I was absolutely obliged to find another
term if I did not want to mislead the Western reader that it is
a matter of uprooting long-established habits of thought, in
order to awaken him to an order of things, the sense of which it
is the mission of our colloquia at the "Society of Symbolism" to
rouse.
In other words, if we usually speak of the
imaginary as the unreal, the utopian, this must
contain the symptom of something. In contrast to this something,
we may examine briefly together the order of reality that I
designate as
mundus imaginalis, and what our theosophers in Islam
designate as the "eighth climate"; we will then examine the
organ that perceives this reality, namely, the imaginative
consciousness, the
cognitive Imagination; and finally, we will present
several examples, among many others, of course, that suggest to
us the topography of these interworlds, as they have been seen
by those who
actually have been there.
1. "NA-KOJA-ABAD" OR THE "EIGHTH CLIMATE" I have just mentioned
the word
utopian. It is a strange thing, or a decisive
example, that our authors use a term in Persian that seems to be
its linguistic calque:
Na-kojd-Abad, the "land of No-where." This, however,
is something entirely different from a
utopia.
Let us take the very beautiful tales-simultaneously visionary
tales and tales of spiritual initiation-composed in Persian by
Sohravardi, the young shaykh who, in the twelfth century, was
the "reviver of the theosophy of ancient Persia" in Islamic
Iran. Each time, the visionary finds himself, at the beginning
of the tale, in the presence of a supernatural figure of great
beauty, whom the visionary asks
who he is and from
where he comes. These tales essentially illustrate
the experience of the gnostic, lived as the personal history of
the Stranger, the captive who aspires to return home.
At the beginning of the tale that Sohravardi entitles "The
Crimson Archangel,"1
the captive, who has just escaped the surveillance of his
jailers, that is, has temporarily left the world of sensory
experience, finds himself in the desert in the presence of a
being whom he asks, since he sees in him all the charms of
adolescence, "0 Youth! where do you come from?" He receives this
reply: "What? I am the first-born of the children of the Creator
[in gnostic terms, the
Protoktistos, the First-Created] and you call me a
youth?" There, in this origin, is the mystery of the crimson
color that clothes his appearance: that of a being of pure Light
whose splendor the sensory world reduces to the crimson of
twilight. "I come from beyond the mountain of Qaf... It is there
that you were yourself at the beginning, and it is there that
you will return when you are finally rid of your bonds."
The mountain of Qaf is the cosmic mountain constituted from
summit to summit, valley to valley, by the celestial Spheres
that are enclosed one inside the other. What, then, is the road
that leads out of it? How long is it? "No matter how long you
walk," he is told, "it is at the point of departure that you
arrive there again," like the point of the compass returning to
the same place. Does this involve simply leaving oneself in
order to attain oneself) Not exactly. Between the two, a great
event will have changed everything; the
self that is found there is the one that is beyond
the mountain of Qaf a superior
self, a self "in the second person." It will have
been necessary, like Khezr (or Khadir, the mysterious prophet,
the eternal wanderer, Elijah or one like him) to bathe in the
Spring of Life. "He who has found the meaning of True Reality
has arrived at that Spring. When he emerges from the Spring, he
has achieved the Aptitude that makes him like a balm, a drop of
which you distill in the hollow of your hand by holding it
facing the sun, and which then passes through to the back of
your hand. If you are Khezr, you also may pass without
difficulty through the mountain of Qaf.
Two other mystical tales give a name to that "beyond the
mountain of Qaf and it is this name itself that marks the
transformation from cosmic mountain to
psychocosmic mountain, that is, the transition of
the physical cosmos to what constitutes the first level of the
spiritual universe. In the tale entitled "The Rustling of
Gabriel's Wings," the figure again appears who, in the works of
Avicenna, is named
Hayy ibn Yaqzan ("the Living, son of the Watchman")
and who, just now, was designated as the Crimson Archangel. The
question that must be asked is asked, and the reply is this: "I
come from
Na-koja-Abad."2
Finally, in the tale entitled "Vade Mecum of the Faithful in
Love" (Mu'nis
al-'oshshaq) which places on stage a cosmogonic
triad whose dramatis personae are, respectively, Beauty, Love,
and Sadness, Sadness appears to Ya'qab weeping for Joseph in the
land of Canaan. To the question, "What horizon did you penetrate
to come here?," the same reply is given: "I come from
Na-koja-Abad
Na-koja-Abad
is a strange term. It does not occur in any Persian dictionary,
and it was coined, as far as I know, by Sohravardi himself, from
the resources of the purest Persian language. Literally, as I
mentioned a moment ago, it signifies the city, the country or
land (abad)
of No-where (Na-koja)
That is why we are here in the presence of a term that, at first
sight, may appear to us as the exact equivalent of the term
ou-topia, which, for its part, does not occur in the
classical Greek dictionaries, and was coined by Thomas More as
an abstract noun to designate the absence of any localization,
of any given
situs in a space that is discoverable and verifiable
by the experience of our senses. Etymologically and literally,
it would perhaps be exact to translate
Na-koja-Abad by
outopia, utopia, and yet with regard to the concept,
the intention, and the true meaning, I believe that we would be
guilty of mistranslation. It seems to me, therefore, that it is
of fundamental importance to try, at least, to determine why
this would be a mistranslation.
It is even a matter of indispensable precision, if we want to
understand the meaning and the real implication of manifold
information concerning the topographies explored in the
visionary state, the state intermediate between waking and
sleep-information that, for example, among the spiritual
individuals of Shi'ite Islam, concerns the "land of the hidden
Imam'' A matter of precision that, in making us attentive to a
differential affecting an entire region of the soul, and thus an
entire spiritual culture, would lead us to ask: what conditions
make possible that which we ordinarily call a utopia, and
consequently the type of utopian man? How and why does it make
its appearance? I wonder, in fact, whether the equivalent would
be found anywhere in Islamic thought in its
traditional form. I do not believe, for example,
that when Farabi, in the tenth century, describes the "Perfect
City," or when the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Bajja (Avempace),
in the twelfth century, takes up the same theme in his "Regime
of the Solitary"3
-I do not believe that either one of them contemplated what we
call today a social or political utopia. To understand them in
this way would be, I am afraid, to withdraw them from their own
presuppositions and perspectives, in order to impose our own,
our own dimensions; above all, I am afraid that it would be
certain to entail resigning ourselves to confusing the Spiritual
City with an imaginary City.
The word
Na-koja-Abad does not designate something like
unextended being, in the dimensionless state. The Persian word
abad certainly signifies a city, a cultivated and
peopled land, thus something extended. What Sohravardi means by
being "beyond the mountain of Qaf is that he himself, and with
him the entire theosophical tradition of Iran, represents the
composite of the mystical cities of Jabalqa, Jabarsa, and
Hurqalya. Topographically, he states precisely that this region
begins "on the convex surface" of the Ninth Sphere, the Sphere
of Spheres, or the Sphere that includes the whole of the cosmos.
This means that it begins at the exact moment when one leaves
the supreme Sphere, which defines all possible orientation in
our world (or on this side of the world), the "Sphere" to which
the celestial cardinal points refer. It is evident that once
this boundary is crossed, the question "where?"
(ubi,
koja) loses its meaning, at least the meaning in
which it is asked in the space of our sensory experience. Thus
the name
Na-koja-Abad: a place outside of place, a "place"
that is not contained in a place, in a
topos, that permits a response, with a gesture of
the hand, to the question "where?"
But when we say, "To depart from the
where," what does this mean?
It surely cannot relate to a change of local position,4
a physical transfer from one place to another place, as though
it involved places contained in a single homogeneous space. As
is suggested, at the end of Sohravardi's tale, by the symbol of
the drop of balm exposed in the hollow of the hand to the sun,
it is a matter of entering, passing
into the interior and, in passing into the interior,
of finding oneself, paradoxically,
outside, or, in the language of our authors, "on the
convex surface" of the Ninth Sphere--in other words, "beyond the
mountain of Qaf The relationship involved is essentially that of
the external, the visible, the exoteric ( Arabic,
zahir), and the internal, the invisible, the
esoteric (Arabic,
batin), or the natural world and the spiritual
world. To depart from the
where, the category of ubi, is to leave the external
or natural appearances that enclose the hidden internal
realities, as the almond is hidden beneath the shell. This step
is made in order for the Stranger, the gnostic, to return
home-or at least to lead to that return.
But an odd thing happens: once this transition is accomplished,
it turns out that henceforth this reality, previously internal
and hidden, is revealed to be enveloping, surrounding,
containing what was first of all external and visible, since by
means of
interiorization, one has
departed from that
external reality. Henceforth, it is spiritual
reality that envelops, surrounds, contains the reality called
material. That is why spiritual reality is not "in the
where." It is the "where"
that is in it. Or, rather, it is itself the "where"
of all things; it is, therefore, not itself in a place, it does
not fall under the question "where?"-the
category ubi referring to a place in sensory space. Its place
(its
abad) in relation to this is
Na-koja (No-where), because its
ubi in relation to what is
in sensory space is an
ubique (everywhere). When we have understood this,
we have perhaps understood what is essential to follow the
topography of visionary experiences, to distinguish their
meaning (that is, the signification and the direction
simultaneously) and also to distinguish something fundamental,
namely, what differentiates the visionary perceptions of our
spiritual individuals (Sohravardi and many others) with regard
to everything that our modern vocabulary subsumes under the
pejorative sense of creations, imaginings, even
utopian madness.
But what we must begin to destroy, to the extent that we are
able to do so, even at the cost of a struggle resumed every day,
is what may be called the "agnostic reflex" in Western man,
because he has consented to the divorce between
thought and
being. How many recent theories tacitly originate in
this reflex, thanks to which we hope to escape the
other reality before which certain experiences and
certain evidence place us-and to escape it, in the case where we
secretly submit to its attraction, by giving it all sorts of
ingenious explanations, except one: the one that would permit it
truly to mean for us, by its existence, what it is! For it to
mean that to us, we must, at all events, have available a
cosmology of such a kind that the most astounding information of
modern science regarding the physical universe remains inferior
to it. For, insofar as it is a matter of that sort of
information, we remain bound to what is "on this side of the
mountain of Qaf What distinguishes the traditional cosmology of
the theosophers in Islam, for example, is that its
structurewhere the worlds and interworlds "beyond the mountain
of Qaf that is, beyond the physical universes, are arranged in
levels intelligible only for an existence in which the
act of being is in accordance with its
presence in those worlds, for reciprocally, it is in
accordance with this act of being that these worlds are present
to it.5
What dimension, then, must this
act of being have in order to be, or to become in
the course of its future rebirths, the
place of those worlds that are
outside the place of our natural space? And, first
of all, what are those worlds?
I can only refer here to a few texts. A larger number will be
found translated and grouped in the book that I have entitled
Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth.6
In his "Book of Conversations," Sohravardi writes: "When you
learn in the treatises of the ancient Sages that there exists a
world provided with dimensions and extension, other than the
pleroma of Intelligences [that is, a world below that of the
pure archangelic Intelligences], and other than the world
governed by the Souls of the Spheres [that is, a world which,
while having dimension and extension, is other than the world of
sensory phenomena, and superior to it, including the sidereal
universe, the planets and the "fixed stars"], a world where
there are cities whose number it is impossible to count, cities
among which our Prophet himself named Jabalqa and Jabarsa, do
not hasten to call it a lie, for pilgrims of the spirit may
contemplate that world, and they find there everything that is
the object of their desire."7
These few lines refer us to a schema on which all of our
mystical theosophers agree, a schema that articulates three
universes or, rather, three categories of universe. There is our
physical sensory world, which includes both our earthly world
(governed by human souls) and the sidereal universe (governed by
the Souls of the Spheres); this is the sensory world, the world
of phenomena (molk).
There is the suprasensory world of the Soul or Angel-Souls, the
Malakut, in which there are the mystical cities that
we have just named, and which begins "on the convex surface of
the Ninth Sphere." There is the universe of pure archangelic
Intelligences. To these three universes correspond three organs
of knowledge: the senses, the imagination, and the intellect, a
triad to which corresponds the triad of anthropology: body,
soul, spirit-a triad that regulates the triple growth of man,
extending from this world to the resurrections in the other
worlds.
We observe immediately that we are no longer reduced to the
dilemma of thought and extension, to the schema of a cosmology
and a gnoseology limited to the empirical world and the world of
abstract understanding. Between the two is placed an
intermediate world, which our authors designate as
'alam al-mithal, the world of the Image,
mundus imaginalis: a world as ontologically real as
the world of the senses and the world of the intellect, a world
that requires a faculty of perception belonging to it, a faculty
that is a cognitive function, a
noetic value, as fully real as the faculties of
sensory perception or intellectual intuition. This faculty is
the imaginative power, the one we must avoid confusing with the
imagination that modern man identifies with "fantasy" and that,
according to him, produces only the "imaginary." Here we are,
then, simultaneously at the heart of our research and of our
problem of terminology.
What is that intermediate universe? It is the one we mentioned a
little while ago as being called the "eighth climate."8
For all of our thinkers, in fact, the world of extension
perceptible to the senses includes the
seven climates of their traditional geography. But
there is still another climate, represented by that world which,
however, possesses extension and dimensions, forms and colors,
without their being perceptible to the senses, as they are when
they are properties of physical bodies. No, these dimensions,
shapes, and colors are the proper object of imaginative
perception or the "psycho- spiritual senses"; and that world,
fully objective and real, where everything existing in the
sensory world has its analogue, but not perceptible by the
senses, is the world that is designated as the
eighth climate. The term is sufficiently eloquent by
itself, since it signifies a climate
outside of climates, a place
outside of place, outside of
where (Na-koja-Abad!).
The technical term that designates it in Arabic,
'alam a mithal, can perhaps also be translated by
mundus archetypus, ambiguity is avoided. For it is
the same word that serves in Arabic to designate the Platonic
Ideas (interpreted by Sohravardi terms of Zoroastrian
angelology). However, when the term refers to Platonic Ideas, it
is almost always accompanied by this precise qualification:
mothol (plural of
mithal)
aflatuniya nuraniya, the "Platonic archetypes of
light." When the term refers to the world of the eighth climate,
it designates technically, on one hand, the
Archetype-Images of individual and singular things;
in this case, it relates to the
eastern region of the eighth climate, the city of
Jabalqa, where these images subsist preexistent to and ordered
before the sensory world. But on the other hand, the term also
relates to the
western region, the city of Jabarsa, as being the
world or interworld in which are found the Spirits after their
presence in the natural terrestrial world and as a world in
which subsist the forms of all works accomplished, the forms of
our thoughts and our desires, of our presentiments and our
behavior.9
It is this composition that constitutes
'alam al-mithal, the
mundus imaginalis.
Technically, again, our thinkers designate it as the world of
"Images in suspense" (mothol
mo'allaqa). Sohravardi! and his school mean by this
a mode of being proper to the realities of that intermediate
world, which we designate as
Imaginalia.10
The precise nature of this ontological status results from
vision any spiritual experiences, on which Sohravardi asks that
we rely fully, exactly as we rely in astronomy on the
observations of Hipparchus or Ptolemy. It should be acknowledged
that forms and shapes in the
mundus imaginalis do not subsist in the same manner
as empirical realities in the physical world; otherwise anyone
could perceive them. It should also be noted that the) cannot
subsist in the pure intelligible world, since they have
extension and dimension, an "immaterial" materiality, certainly,
in relation to that of the sensory world, but, in fact, their
own "corporeality" and spatiality (one might think here of the
expression used by Henry More, a Cambridge Platonist,
spissitudo spiritualis, an expression that has its
exact equivalent in the work of Sadra Shirazi, a Persian
Platonist). For the same reason, that they could have only our
thought as a substratum would be excluded, as it would, at the
same time, that they might be unreal, nothing; otherwise, we
could not discern them, classify them into hierarchies, or make
judgments about them. The existence of this intermediate world,
mundus imaginalis, thus appears metaphysically
necessary; the cognitive function of the Imagination is ordered
to it; it is a world whose ontological level is above the world
of the senses and below the pure intelligible world; it is more
immaterial than the former and less immaterial than the latter.11
There has always been something of major importance in this for
all our mystical theosophers. Upon it depends, for them, both
the validity of visionary accounts that perceive and relate
"events in Heaven" and the validity of dreams, symbolic rituals,
the reality of places formed by intense meditation, the reality
of inspired imaginative visions, cosmogonies and theogonies, and
thus, in the first place, the truth of the
spiritual sense perceived in the imaginative data of
prophetic revelations.12
In short, that world is the world of "subtle bodies," the idea
of which proves indispensable if one wishes to describe a link
between the pure spirit and the material body. It is this which
relates to the designation of their mode of being as "in
suspense," that is, a mode of being such that the Image or Form,
since it is itself its own "matter," is independent of any
substratum in which it would be immanent in the manner of an
accident.13
This means that it would not subsist as the color black, for
example, subsists by means of the black object in which it is
immanent, The comparison to which our authors regularly have
recourse is the mode of appearance and subsistence of Images "in
suspense" in a mirror. The material substance of the mirror,
metal or mineral, is not the substance of the image, a substance
whose image would be an accident. It is simply the "place of its
appearance." This led to a general theory of epiphanic places
and forms (mazhar,
plural
mazahir) so characteristic of Sohravardi's
Eastern Theosophy.
The active Imagination is the preeminent
mirror, the epiphanic place of the Images of the
archetypal world; that is why the theory of the
mundus imaginalis is bound up with a theory of
imaginative knowledge and imaginative function--a function truly
central and mediatory, because of the median and mediatory
position of the
mundus imaginalis. It is a function that permits all
the universes to
symbolize with one another (or exist in symbolic
relationship with one another) and that leads us to represent to
ourselves, experimentally, that the same substantial realities
assume forms corresponding respectively to each universe (for
example, Jabalqa and Jabarsa correspond in the subtle world to
the Elements of the physical world, while Hurqalya corresponds
there to the Sky). It is the cognitive function of the
Imagination that permits the establishment of a rigorous
analogical knowledge, escaping the dilemma of
current rationalism, which leaves only a choice between the two
terms of banal dualism: either "matter" or "spirit," a dilemma
that the "socialization" of consciousness resolves by
substituting a choice that is no less fatal: either "history" or
"myth."
This is the sort of dilemma that has never defeated those
familiar with the "eighth climate," the realm of "subtle
bodies," of "spiritual bodies," threshold of the
Malakut or world of the Soul. We understand that
when they say that the world of Hurqalya begins "on the convex
surface of the supreme Sphere," they wish to signify
symbolically that this world is at the boundary where there is
an inversion of the relation of interiority expressed by the
preposition
in or
within, "in the interior of." Spiritual bodies or
spiritual entities are no longer
in a world, not even
in their world, in the way that a material body is
in its place, or is contained in another body. It is their world
that is
in them. That is why the
Theology attributed to Aristotle, the Arabic version
of the last three
Enneads of Plotinus, which Avicenna annotated and
which all of our thinkers read and meditated upon, explains that
each spiritual entity is "in the totality of the sphere of its
Heaven"; each subsists, certainly, independently of the other,
but all are simultaneous and each is within every other one. It
would be completely false to picture that other world as an
undifferentiated, informal heaven. There is multiplicity, of
course, but the relations of spiritual space differ from the
relations of space understood
under the starry Heaven, as much as the fact of
being
in a body differs from the fact of being "in the
totality of its Heaven." That is why it can be said that "behind
this world there is a Sky, an Earth, an ocean, animals, plants,
and celestial men; but every being there is celestial; the
spiritual entities there correspond to the human beings there,
but no earthly thing is there."
The most exact formulation of all this, in the theosophical
tradition of the West, is found perhaps in Swedenborg. One
cannot but be struck by the concordance or convergence of the
statements by the great Swedish visionary with those of
Sohravardi, Ibn 'Arabi, or Sadra Shirazi. Swedenborg explains
that "all things in heaven appear, just as in the world, to be
in place and in space, and yet the angels have no notion or idea
of place or space." This is because "all changes of place in the
spiritual world are effected by changes of state in the
interiors, which means that change of place is nothing else than
change of state.... Those are near each other who are in like
states, and those are at a distance who are in unlike states;
and spaces in heaven are simply the external conditions
corresponding to the internal states. For the same reason the
heavens are distinct from each other. . . . When anyone goes
from one place to another . . . he arrives more quickly when he
eagerly desires it, and less quickly when he does not, the way
itself being lengthened and shortened in accordance with the
desire.... This I have often seen to my surprise. All this again
makes clear how distances, and consequently spaces, are wholly
in accord with states of the interiors of angels; and this being
so, no notion or idea of space can enter their thought, although
there are spaces with them equally as in the world."14
Such a description is eminently appropriate to
Na-koja-Abad and its mysterious Cities. In short, it
follows that there is a spiritual place and a corporeal place.
The transfer of one to the other is absolutely not effected
according to the laws of our homogeneous physical space. In
relation to the corporeal place, the spiritual place is a
No-where, and for the one who reaches
Na-koja-Abad everything occurs inversely to the
evident facts of ordinary consciousness, which remains
orientated to the interior of our space. For henceforth it is
the
where, the place, that resides in the soul; it is
the corporeal substance that resides in the spiritual substance;
it is the soul that encloses and bears the body. This is why it
is not possible to say
where the spiritual place is situated; it is not
situated, it is, rather, that which situates, it is situative.
Its
ubi is an ubique. Certainly, there may be
topographical correspondences between the sensory world and the
mundus imaginalis, one symbolizing with the other.
However, there is no passage from one to the other without a
breach. Many accounts show us this. One sets out; at a given
moment, there is a break with the geographical coordinates that
can be located on our maps. But the "traveler" is not conscious
of the precise moment; he does not realize it, with disquiet or
wonder, until later. If he were aware of it, he could change his
path at will, or he could indicate it to others. But he can only
describe where he was; he cannot show the way to anyone.
II. THE SPIRITUAL IMAGINATION
A
first postulate is that this Imagination is a pure
spiritual faculty, independent of the physical organism, and
consequently is able to subsist after the disappearance of the
latter. Sadra Shirazi, among others, has expressed himself
repeatedly on this point with particular forcefulness.15
He says that just as the soul is independent of the physical
material body in receiving intelligible things in act, according
to its intellective power, the soul is equally independent with
regard to its
imaginative power and its
imaginative operations. In addition, when it is
separated from this world, since it continues to have its active
Imagination at its service, it can perceive by itself, by its
own essence and by that faculty, concrete things whose
existence, as it is actualized in its knowledge and in its
imagination, constitutes
eo ipso the very form of concrete existence of those
things (in other words: consciousness and its object are here
ontologically inseparable). All these powers are gathered and
concentrated in a single faculty, which is the active
Imagination. Because it has stopped dispersing itself at the
various thresholds that are the five senses of the physical
body, and has stopped being solicited by the concerns of the
physical body, which is prey to the vicissitudes of the external
world, the imaginative perception can finally show its essential
superiority over sensory perception.
"All the faculties of the soul," writes Sadra Shirazi, "have
become as though a single faculty, which is the power to
configure and typify (taswir
and
tamthil); its imagination has itself become like a
sensory perception of the suprasensory: its
imaginative sight is itself like its sensory sight.
Similarly, its senses of hearing, smell, taste, and touch-all
these
imaginative senses-are themselves like sensory
faculties, but regulated to the suprasensory. For although
externally the sensory faculties are five in number,
each having its organ localized in the body,
internally, in fact, all of them constitute a single
synaisthesis (hiss
moshtarik)." The Imagination being therefore like
the
currus subtilis (in Greek
okhema, vehicle, or [in Proclus, Iamblichus, etc.]
spiritual body) of the soul, there is an entire physiology of
the "subtle body" and thus of the "resurrection body," which
Sadra Shirazi discusses in these contexts. That is why he
reproaches even Avicenna for having identified these acts of
posthumous imaginative perception with what happens in this life
during sleep, for here, and during sleep, the imaginative power
is disturbed by the organic operations that occur in the
physical body. Much is required for it to enjoy its maximum of
perfection and activity, freedom and purity. Otherwise, sleep
would be simply an awakening in the other world. This is not the
case, as is alluded to in this remark attributed sometimes to
the Prophet and sometimes to the First Imam of the Shi'ites:
"Humans sleep. It is when they die that they awake."
A
second postulate, evidence for which compels
recognition, is that the spiritual Imagination is a cognitive
power, an organ of true knowledge. Imaginative perception and
imaginative consciousness have their own
noetic (cognitive) function and value, in relation
to the world that is theirs-the world, we have said, which is
the
'alam al-mithal, mundus imaginalis, the world of the
mystical cities such as Hurqalya, where time becomes reversible
and where space is a function of desire, because it is only the
external aspect of an internal state.
The Imagination is thus firmly
balanced between two other cognitive functions: its
own world
symbolizes with the world to which the two other
functions (sensory knowledge and intellective knowledge)
respectively correspond. There is accordingly something like a
control that keeps the Imagination from wanderings and
profligacy, and that permits it to assume its full function: to
cause the occurrence, for example, of the events that are
related by the visionary tales of Sohravardi and all those of
the same kind, because every approach to the eighth climate is
made by the imaginative path. It may be said that this is the
reason for the extraordinary gravity of mystical epic poems
written in Persian (from 'Attar to jami and to Nur 'Ali1-Shah),
which constantly amplify the same archetypes in new symbols. In
order for the Imagination to wander and become profligate, for
it to cease fulfilling its function, which is to perceive or
generate symbols leading to the internal sense, it is necessary
for the
mundus imaginalis--the proper domain of the
Malakut, the world of the Soul-to disappear. Perhaps
it is necessary, in the West, to date the beginning of this
decadence at the time when Averroism rejected Avicennian
cosmology, with its intermediate angelic hierarchy of the
Animae or
Angeli caelestes. These Angeli caelestes (a
hierarchy below that of the
Angeli intellectuales) had the privilege of
imaginative power in its pure state. Once the universe of these
Souls disappeared, it was the imaginative function as such that
was
unbalanced and devalued. It is easy to understand,
then, the advice given later by Paracelsus, warning against any
confusion of the
Imaginatio vera, as the alchemists said, with
fantasy, "that cornerstone of the mad."16
This is the reason that we can no longer avoid the problem of
terminology. How is it that we do not have in French [or in
English] a common and perfectly satisfying term to express the
idea of the
'alam al-mithal? I have proposed the Latin
mundus imaginalis for it, because we are obliged to
avoid any confusion between what is here the
object of imaginative or imaginant perception and
what we ordinarily call the
imaginary. This is so, because the current attitude
is to oppose the real to the imaginary as though to the unreal,
the utopian, as it is to confuse symbol with allegory, to
confuse the exegesis of the
spiritual sense with an allegorical interpretation.
Now, every allegorical interpretation is harmless; the allegory
is a sheathing, or, rather, a disguising, of something that is
already known or knowable otherwise, while the appearance of an
Image having the quality of a symbol is a primary phenomenon (Urphanomen),
unconditional and irreducible, the appearance of something that
cannot manifest itself otherwise to the world where we are.
Neither the tales of Sohravardi, nor the tales which in the
Shi'ite tradition tell us of reaching the "land of the Hidden
Imam," are imaginary, unreal, or allegorical, precisely because
the eighth climate or the "land of No-where" is not what we
commonly call a
utopia. It is certainly a world that remains beyond
the empirical verification of our sciences. Otherwise, anyone
could find access to it and evidence for it. It is a
suprasensory world, insofar as it is not perceptible except by
the imaginative perception, and insofar as the events that occur
in it cannot be experienced except by the imaginative or
imaginant consciousness. Let us be certain that we understand,
here again, that this is not a matter simply of what the
language of our time calls an imagination, but of a
vision that is
Imaginatio vera. And it is to this
Imaginatio vera that we must attribute a
noetic or plenary cognitive value. If we are no
longer capable of speaking about the imagination except as
"fantasy," if we cannot utilize it or tolerate it except as
such, it is perhaps because we have forgotten the norms and the
rules and the "axial ordination" that are responsible for the
cognitive function of the imaginative power (the
function that I have sometimes designated as
imaginatory).
For the world into which our witnesses have penetrated-we will
meet two or three of those witnesses in the final section of
this study-is a perfectly
real world, more evident even and more coherent, in
its own reality, than the
real empirical world perceived by the senses. Its
witnesses were afterward perfectly conscious that they had been
"elsewhere"; they are not schizorphrenics. It is a matter of a
world that is hidden in the act itself of sensory perception,
and one that we must find under the apparent objective certainty
of that kind of perception. That is why we positively cannot
qualify it as
imaginary, in the current sense in which the word is
taken to mean unreal, nonexistent. Just as the Latin word
origo has given us the derivative "original," I
believe that the word
imago can give us, along with
imaginary, and by regular derivation, the term
imaginal. We will thus have the
imaginal world be intermediate between the
sensory world and the
intelligible world. When we encounter the Arabic
term
jism mithali to designate the "subtle body" that
penetrates into the "eighth climate," or the "resurrection
body," we will be able to translate it literally as
imaginal body, but certainly not as
imaginary body. Perhaps, then, we will have less
difficulty in placing the figures who belong neither to "myth"
nor to "history," and perhaps we will have a sort of password to
the path to the "lost continent."
In order to embolden us on this path, we have to ask ourselves
what constitutes our
real, the
real for us, so that if we leave it, would we have
more than the imaginary, utopia? And what is the
real for our traditional Eastern thinkers, so that
they may have access to the "eighth climate," to
Na-koja-Abad, by leaving the sensory place without
leaving the real, or, rather, by having access precisely to the
real? This presupposes a scale of being with many more degrees
than ours. For let us make no mistake. It is not enough to
concede that our predecessors, in the West, had a conception of
the Imagination that was too rationalistic and too
intellectualized. If we do not have available a cosmology whose
schema can include, as does the one that belongs to our
traditional philosophers, the plurality of universes in
ascensional order, our Imagination will remain
unbalanced, its recurrent conjunctions with the will
to power will be an endless source of horrors. We will be
continually searching for a new discipline of the Imagination,
and we will have great difficulty in finding it as long as we
persist in seeing in it only a certain way of keeping our
distance with regard to what we call the
real, and in order to exert an influence on that
real. Now, that real appears to us as arbitrarily limited, as
soon as we compare it to the real that our traditional
theosophers have glimpsed, and that limitation degrades the
reality itself. In addition, it is always the word
fantasy that appears as an excuse: literary fantasy,
for example, or preferably, in the taste and style of the day,
social fantasy.
But it is impossible to avoid wondering whether the
mundus imaginalis, in the proper meaning of the
term, would of necessity be lost and leave room only for the
imaginary if something like a secularization of the
imaginal into the
imaginary were not required for the fantastic, the
horrible, the monstrous, the macabre, the miserable, and the
absurd to triumph. On the other hand, the art and imagination of
Islamic culture in its traditional form are characterized by the
hieratic and the serious, by gravity, stylization, and meaning.
Neither our utopias, nor our science fiction, nor the sinister "omega
point"-nothing of that kind succeeds in leaving this world or
attaining
Na-koja-Abad. Those who have known the "eighth
climate" have not invented utopias, nor is the ultimate thought
of Shi'ism a social or political fantasy, but it is an
eschatology, because it is an
expectation which is, as such, a
real Presence here and now in another world, and a
testimony to that other world.
111. TOPOGRAPHIES OF THE "EIGHTH CLIMATE"
It is impossible to describe here, even in broad terms, what
constitutes the essence of Shi'ite Islam in relation to what is
appropriately called Sunni orthodoxy. It is necessary, however,
that we should have, at least allusively present in mind, the
theme that dominates the horizon of the mystical theosophy of
Shi'ism, namely, the "eternal prophetic Reality" (Haqiqat
mohammadiya) that is designated as "Muhammadan
Logos" or "Muhammadan Light" and is composed of fourteen
entities of light: the Prophet, his daughter Fatima, and the
twelve Imams. This is the pleroma of the "Fourteen Pure Ones,"
by means of whose countenance the mystery of an eternal
theophany is accomplished from world to world. Shi'ism has thus
given Islamic prophetology its metaphysical foundation at the
same time that it has given it lmamology as the absolutely
necessary complement. This means that the sense of the Divine
Revelations is not limited to the letter, to the exoteric that
is the cortex and containant, and that was enunciated by the
Prophet; the true sense is the hidden internal, the esoteric,
what is symbolized by the cortex, and which it is incumbent upon
the Imams to reveal to their followers. That is why Shi'ite
theosophy eminently possesses the sense of symbols.
Moreover, the closed group or dynasty of the twelve Imams is not
a political dynasty in earthly competition with other political
dynasties; it projects over them, in a way, as the dynasty of
the guardians of the Grail, in our Western traditions, projects
over the official hierarchy of the Church. The ephemeral earthly
appearance of the twelve Imams concluded with the twelfth, who,
as a young child (in A.H. 260/A.D. 873) went into occultation
from this world, but whose parousia the Prophet himself
announced, the Manifestation at the end of our Aion, when he
would reveal the hidden meaning of all Divine Revelations and
fill the earth with justice and peace, as it will have been
filled until then with violence and tyranny. Present
simultaneously in the past and the future, the Twelfth Imam, the
Hidden Imam, has been for ten centuries the
history itself of Shi'ite consciousness, a history
over which, of course, historical criticism loses its rights,
for its events, although real, nevertheless do not have the
reality of events in our climates, but they have the reality of
those in the "eighth climate," events of the soul which are
visions. His occultation occurred at two different times: the
minor occultation (260/873) and the major occultation (330/942).17
Since then, the Hidden Imam is in the position of those who were
removed from the visible world without crossing the threshold of
death: Enoch, Elijah, and Christ himself, according to the
teaching of the Qur'an. He is the Imam "hidden from the senses,
but present in the heart of his followers," in the words of the
consecrated formula, for he remains the mystical pole [qotb]
of this world, the
pole of poles, without whose existence the human
world could not continue to exist. There is an entire Shi'ite
literature about those to whom the Imam has manifested himself,
or who have approached him but without seeing him, during the
period of the Great Occultation.
Of course, an understanding of these accounts postulates certain
premises that our preceding analyses permit us to accept. The
first point is that the Imam lives in a mysterious place that is
by no means among those that empirical geography can verify; it
cannot be situated on our maps. This place "outside of place"
nonetheless has its own topography. The second point is that
life is not limited to the conditions of our visible material
world with its biological laws that we know. There are events in
the life of the Hidden Imam-even descriptions of his five sons,
who are the governors of mysterious cities. The third point is
that in his last letter to his last visible representative, the
Imam warned against the imposture of people who would pretend to
quote him, to have seen him, in order to lay claim to a public
or political role in his name. But the Imam never excluded the
fact that he would manifest himself to aid someone in material
or moral distress-a lost traveler, for example, or a believer
who is in despair.
These manifestations, however, never occur except at the
initiative of the Imam; and if he appears most often in the
guise of a young man of supernatural beauty, almost always,
subject to exception, the person granted the privilege of this
vision is only conscious afterward, later, of whom he has seen.
A strict incognito covers these manifestations; that is why the
religious event here can never be socialized. The same incognito
covers the Imam's companions, that elite of elites composed of
young people in his service. They form an esoteric hierarchy of
a strictly limited number, which remains permanent by means of
substitution from generation to generation. This mystical order
of knights, which surrounds the Hidden Imam, is subject to an
incognito as strict as that of the knights of the Grail,
inasmuch as they do not lead anyone to themselves. But someone
who has been led there will have penetrated for a moment into
the eighth climate; for a moment he will have been "in the
totality of the Heaven of his soul."
That was indeed the experience of a young Iranian shaykh, 'Ali
ibn Fazel Mazandarani, toward the end of our thirteenth century,
an experience recorded in the
Account of strange and marvelous things that he contemplated and
saw with his own eyes on the Green Island situated in the White
Sea. I can only give a broad outline of this account
here, without going into the details that guarantee the means
and authenticity of its transmission.18
The narrator himself gives a long recital of the years and
circumstances of his life preceding the event; we are dealing
with a scholarly and spiritual personality who has both feet on
the ground. He tells us how he emigrated, how in Damascus he
followed the teaching of an Andalusian shaykh, and how he became
attached to this shaykh; and when the latter left for Egypt, he
together with a few other disciples accompanied him. From Cairo
he followed him to Andalusia, where the shaykh had suddenly been
called by a letter from his dying father. Our narrator had
scarcely arrived in Andalusia when he contracted a fever that
lasted for three days. Once recovered, he went into the village
and saw a strange group of men who had come from a region near
the land of the Berbers, not far from the "peninsula of the
Shi'ites." He is told that the journey takes twenty-five days,
with a large desert to cross. He decides to join the group. Up
to this point, we are still more or less on the geographical
map.
But it is no longer at all certain that we are still on it when
our traveler reaches the peninsula of the Shi'ites, a peninsula
surrounded by four walls with high massive towers; the outside
wall borders the coast of the sea. He asks to be taken to the
principal mosque. There, for the first time, he hears, during
the muezzin's call to prayer, resounding from the minaret of the
mosque, the Shl'ite invocation asking that "Joy should hasten,"
that is, the joy of the future Appearance of the Imam, who is
now hidden. In order to understand his emotion and his tears, it
is necessary to think of the heinous persecutions, over the
course of many centuries and over vast portions of the territory
of Islam, that reduced the Shi'ites, the followers of the holy
Imams, to a state of secrecy. Recognition among Shi'ites is
effected here again in the observation, in a typical manner, of
the customs of the "discipline of the arcanum."
Our pilgrim takes up residence among his own, but he notices in
the course of his walks that there is no sown field in the area.
Where do the inhabitants obtain their food? He learns that food
comes to them from "the Green Island situated in the White Sea,"
which is one of the islands belonging to the sons of the Hidden
Imam. Twice a year, a flotilla of seven ships brings it to them.
That year the first voyage had already taken place; it would be
necessary to wait four months until the next voyage.The account
describes the pilgrim passing his days, overwhelmed by the
kindness of the inhabitants, but in an anguish of expectation,
walking tirelessly along the beach, always watching the high
sea, toward the west, for the arrival of the ships. We might be
tempted to believe that we are on the African coast of the
Atlantic and that the Green Island belongs, perhaps, to the
Canaries or the "Fortunate Isles." The details that follow will
suffice to undeceive us. Other traditions place the Green Island
elsewhere-in the Caspian Sea, for example-as though to indi-
cate to us that it has no coordinates in the geography of this
world.
Finally, as if according to the law of the "eighth climate" ar-
dent desire has shortened space, the seven ships arrive somewhat
in advance and make their entry into the port. From the largest
of the ships descends a shaykh of noble and commanding
appearance,with a handsome face and magnificent clothes. A
conversation begins,and our pilgrim realizes with astonishment
that the shaykh already knows everything about him, his name and
his origin. The shaykh is his Companion, and he tells him that
he has come to find him: together they will leave for the Green
Island. This episode bears a characteristic feature of the
gnostic'sfeeling everywhere and always: he is an exile,
separated from his own people, whom he barely remembers, and he
has still less an idea of the way that will take him back to
them. One day, though, a message arrives from them, as in the
"Song of the Pearl" in the
Acts of Thomas, as in the "Tale of Western Exile" by
Sohravardi. Here, there is something better than a message: it
is one of the companions of the Imam in person. Our narrator
exclaims movingly: "Upon hearing these words, I was overwhelmed
with happiness.
Someone remembered me, my name was known to them!"
Was his exile at an end? From now on, he is entirely certain
that the itinerary cannot be transferred onto our maps.
The crossing lasts sixteen days, after which the ship enters an
area where the waters of the sea are completely white; the Green
Island is outlined on the horizon. Our pilgrim learns from his
Companion that the White Sea forms an uncrossable zone of
protection around the island; no ship manned by the enemies of
the Imam and his people can venture there without the waves
engulfing it. Our travelers land on the Green Island. There is a
city at the edge of the sea; seven walls with high towers
protect the precincts (this is the preeminent symbolic plan).
There are luxuriant vegetation and abundant streams. The
buildings are constructed from diaphanous marble. All the
inhabitants have beautiful and young faces, and they wear
magnificent clothes. Our Iranian shaykh feels his heart fill
with joy, and from this point on, throughout the entire second
part, his account will take on the rhythm and the meaning of an
initiation account, in which we can distinguish
three phases. There is an initial series of conversations with a
noble personage who is none other than a grandson of the Twelfth
Imam (the son of one of his five sons), and who governs the
Green Island: Sayyed Shamsoddin These conversations compose a
first initiation into the secret of the Hidden Imam; they take
place sometimes in the shadow of: mosque and sometimes in the
serenity of gardens filled with per fumed trees of all kinds.
There follows a visit to a mysterious sanctuary in the heart of
the mountain that is the highest pea on the island. Finally,
there is a concluding series of conversations of decisive
importance with regard to the possibility or in possibility of
having a vision of the Imam.
I am giving the briefest possible summary here, and I must pass
over in silence the details of scenery depiction and of an
intensely animated dramaturgy, in order to note only the central
episode. At the summit or at the heart of the mountain, which is
in the center of the Green Island, there is a small temple, with
a cupola, where one can communicate with the Imam, because it
happens that he leaves a personal message there, but no one is
permitted to ascend to this temple except Sayyed Shamsoddin and
those who are like him. This small temple stands in the shadow
of the
Tuba tree; now, we know that this is the name of the
tree that shades Paradise; it is the
Tree of Being. The temple is at the edge of a
spring, which, since it gushes at the base of the Tree of
Paradise, can only be the
Spring of Life. In order to confirm this for us, our
pilgrim meets there the incumbent of this temple, in whom we
recognize the mysterious prophet Khezr (Khadir). It is there, at
the heart of being, in the shade of the Tree and at the edge of
the Spring, that the sanctuary is found where the Hidden Imam
may be most closely approached. Here we have an entire
constellation of easily recognizable archetypal symbols.
We have learned, among other things, that access to the little
mystical temple was only permitted to a' person who, by attainMg
the spiritual degree at which the Imam has become his personal
internal Guide, has attained a state "similar" to that of the
actual descendant of the Imam. This is why the idea of internal
conformation is truly at the center of the initiation account,
and it is this that permits the pilgrim to learn other secrets
of the Green Island: for example, the symbolism of a
particularly eloquent ritual.19
In the Shi'ite liturgical calendar, Friday is the weekday
especially dedicated to the Twelfth Imam. Moreover, in the lunar
calendar, the middle of the month marks the midpoint of the
lunar cycle, and the middle of the month of Sha'ban is the
anniversary date of the birth of the Twelfth Imam into this
world. On a Friday, then, while our Iranian pilgrim is praying
in the mosque, he hears a great commotion outside. His
initiator, Sayyed, informs him that each time the day of the
middle of the month falls on a Friday, the chiefs of
the mysterious militia thatsurrounds the Imam assemble in
"expectation of joy," a consecrated term, as we know, which
means: in the expectation of the Manifestation of the Imam in
this world. Leaving the mosque, he sees a gathering of horsemen
from whom a triumphal clamor rises. These are the 313 chiefs of
the supernatural order of knights always present incognito in
this world, in the service of the Imam. This episode leads us
gradually to the final scenes that precede the farewell. Like a
leitmotiv, the expression of the desire to see the Imam returns
ceaselessly. Our pilgrim will learn that twice in his life he
was in the Imams presence: he was lost in the desert and the
Imam came to his aid. But as is an almost constant rule, he knew
nothing of it then; he learns of it now that he has come to the
Green Island. Alas, he must leave this island; the order cannot
be rescinded; the ships are waiting, the same one on which he
arrived. But even more than for the voyage outward, it is
impossible for us to mark out the itinerary that leads from the
"eighth climate" to this world. Our traveler obliterates his
tracks, but he will keep some material evidence of his sojourn:
the pages of notes taken in the course of his conversations with
the Imam's grandson, and the parting gift from the latter at the
moment of farewell.
The account of the Green Island allows us an abundant harvest of
symbols: (1) It is one of the islands belonging to the son of
the Twelfth Imam. (2) It is that island, where the Spring of
Life gushes, in the shade of the Tree of Paradise, that ensure
the sustenance of the Imams followers who live far away, an that
sustenance can only be a "suprasubstantial" food. (3) It
situated in the west, as the city of Jabarsa is situated in the
we of the
mundus imaginalis, and thus it offers a strange
analogy with the paradise of the East, the paradise of Amitabha
in Pure Land Buddhism; similarly, the figure of the Twelfth Imam
suggestive of comparison with Maitreya, the future Buddha; there
is also an analogy with Tir-na'n-0g, one of the worlds the
Afterlife among the Celts, the land of the West and the forever
ever young. (4) Like the domain of the Grail, it is an
interworld that is self-sufficient. (5) It is protected against
and immune to any attempt from outside. (6) only one who is
summoned there can find the way. (7) A mountain rises in the
center; we have noted the symbols that it conceals. (8) Like
Mont-Salvat, the inviolable Green Island is the place where his
followers approach the mystical
pole of the world, the Hidden Imam, reigning
invisibly over this age- the jewel of the Shi'ite faith.
This tale is completed by others, for, as we have mentioned,
nothing has been said until now about the islands under the
reign of the truly extraordinary figures who are the five sons
of the Hidden Imam (homologues of those whom Shi'ism designates
as the "Five Personages of the Mantle"20
and perhaps also of those whom Manichaeism designates as the
"Five Sons of the Living Spirit"). An earlier tale21
(it is from the middle of the twelfth century and the narrator
is a Christian) provides us with complementary topographical
information. Here again it involves travelers who suddenly
realize that their ship has entered a completely unknown area.
They land at a first island,
al Mobaraka, the Blessed City. Certain difficulties,
brought about by the presence among them of Sunni Muslims,
oblige them to travel farther. But their captain refuses; he is
afraid of the unknown region. They have to hire a new crew. In
succession, we learn the names of the five islands and the names
of those who govern them:
al-Zahera, the City Blooming with Flowers;
al Ra'yeqa, the Limpid City;
al-Safiya, the Serene City, etc. Whoever manages to
gain admittance to them enters into joy forever. Five islands,
five cities, five sons of the Imam, twelve months to travel
through the islands (two months for each of the first four, four
months for the fifth), all of these numbers having a symbolic
significance. Here, too, the tale turns into an initiation
account; all the travelers finally embrace the Shi'ite faith.
As there is no rule without an exception, I will conclude by
citing in condensed form a tale illustrating a case of
manifestation of the Imam in person.22
The tale is from the tenth century. An Iranian from Hamadan made
the pilgrimage to Mecca. On the way back, a day's journey from
Mecca (more than two thousand kilometers from Hamadan), having
imprudently gone astray during the night, he loses his
companions. In the morning he is wandering alone in the desert
and placing his trust in God, Suddenly, he sees a garden that
neither he nor anyone else has ever heard of. He enters it. At
the door of a pavilion, two young pages dressed in white await
him and lead him to a young mar of supernatural beauty. To his
fearful and awestruck astonishment, he learns that he is in the
presence of the Twelfth Imam The latter speaks to him about his
future Appearance and finally addressing him by name, asks him
whether he wants to return to his home and family. Certainly, he
wants to do so. The Imam signals to one of his pages, who gives
the traveler a purse, take him by the hand, and guides him
through the gardens. The, walk together until the traveler sees
a group of houses, a mosque, and shade trees that seem familiar
to him. Smiling, the page asks him: "Do you know this land?"
"Near where I live in Hamadan'' he replies, "there is a land
called Asadabad, which exactly resembles this place." The page
says to him, "But
you are in Asadabad. "Amazed, the traveler realizes
that he is actually near his home. He turns around; the page is
no longer then he is all alone, but he still has in his hand the
viaticum that ha been given to him. Did we not say a little
while ago that the
where, the
ubi of the "eighth climate" is an
ubique?
I know how many commentaries can be applied to these tale
depending upon whether we are metaphysicians, traditionalist or
not, or whether we are psychologists. But by way of provisional
conclusion, I prefer to limit myself to asking three small
questions:
1. We are no longer participants in a traditional culture; we
live in a scientific civilization that is extending its control,
it said, even to images. It is commonplace today to speak of a
"civilization of the image" (thinking of our magazines, cinema,
and television). But one wonders whether, like all commonplace
this does not conceal a radical misunderstanding, a complete
error. For instead of the image being elevated to the level of a
world that would be proper to it, instead of it appearing
invested with a
symbolic function, leading to an internal sense,
there is above all a reduction of the image to the level of
sensory perception pure and simple, and thus a definitive
degradation of the image. Should it not be said, therefore, that
the more successful this reduction is, the more the sense of the
imaginal is lost, and the more we are condemned to
producing only the
imaginary?
2. In the second place, all imagery, the scenic perspective of a
tale like the voyage to the Green Island, or the sudden
encounter with the Imam in an unknown oasis-would all this be
possible without the absolutely primary and irreducible,
objective, initial fact (Urphanomen)
of a world of image-archetypes or image-sources whose origin is
nonrational and whose incursion into our world is unforeseeable,
but whose postulate compels recognition?
3. In the third place, is it not precisely this postulate of the
objectivity of the
imaginal world that is suggested to us, or imposed
on us, by certain forms or certain symbolic emblems (hermetic,
kabbalistic; or
mandalas) that have the quality of effecting a magic
display of mental images, such that they assume an objective
reality?
To indicate in what sense it is possible to have an idea of how
to respond to the question concerning the
objective reality of supernatural figures and
encounters with them, I will simply refer to an extraordinary
text, where Villiers de L'Isle-Adam speaks about the face of the
inscrutable Messenger with eyes of clay; it "could not be
perceived except by the spirit. Creatures experience only
influences that arc inherent in the archangelic entity.
"Angels," he writes, "are
not, in substance, except in the free sublimity of
the absolute Heavens, where reality is unified with the
ideal.... They only externalize themselves in the ecstasy they
cause and which forms a part of themselves."23
Those last words,
an ecstasy ... which forms part of themselves, seem
to me to possess a prophetic clarity, for they have the quality
of piercing even the granite of doubt, of paralyzing the
"agnostic reflex," in the sense that they break the reciprocal
isolation of the consciousness and its object, of thought and
being; phenomenology is now an ontology. Undoubtedly, this is
the postulate implied in the teaching of our authors concerning
the
imaginal. For there is no external criterion for the
manifestation of the Angel, other than the manifestation itself.
The Angel is itself the
ekstasis, the "displacement" or the departure from
ourselves that is a "change of state" from our state. That is
why these words also suggest to us the secret of the
supernatural being of the "Hidden Imam'' and of his Appearances
for the Shi'ite consciousness: the Imam is the
ekstasis itself of that consciousness. One who is
not in the same spiritual state cannot see him.
This is what Sohravardi alluded to in his tale of "The Crimson
Archangel" by the words that we cited at the beginning: "If you
are Khezr, you also may pass without difficulty through the
mountain of Qaf."
HOME - NEWSLETTERS - BOOKS - ARTICLES - CONTACT - FEEDBACK
DISCLAIMER:
All material published by Al-Huda.com / And the Message Continues is the sole responsibility of its author's).
The opinions and/or assertions contained therein do not necessarily reflect the editorial views of this site,
nor of Al-Huda and its officers.