لطفا منتظر باشید ...
The Interior
Life in Islam
Seyyed Hossein Nasr Vol. III, Nos. 2
& 3
"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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
