لطفا منتظر باشید ...
119}meaning that the base alloy of self has been purified and spiritualised.
In another ode he says:"O my soul, I searched from end to end: I saw in thee naught save
the Beloved;
Call me not infidel, O my soul, if I say that thou thyself art He.
"
And yet more plainly:"Ye who in search of God, of God, pursue,
Ye need not search for God is you, is you!
Why seek ye something that was missing ne'er?
Save you none is, but you are--where, oh, where?"
Where is the lover when the Beloved has displayed Himself? Nowhere and everywhere: his individuality has passed away from him.
In the bridal chamber of Unity God celebrates the mystical marriage of the soul.
{p.
120}
CHAPTER V
SAINTS AND MIRACLES
LET us suppose that the average Moslem could read English, and that we placed in his hands one of those admirable volumes published by the Society for Psychical Research.
In order to sympathise with his feelings on such an occasion, we have only to imagine what our own would be if a scientific friend invited us to study a treatise setting forth the evidence in favour of telegraphy and recording well-attested instances of telegraphic communication.
The Moslem would probably see in the telegraph some kind of spirit--an afreet or jinni.
Telepathy and similar occult phenomena he takes for granted as self-evident facts.
It would never occur to him to investigate them.
There is something in the constitution of his mind that makes it impervious to the idea that the supernatural may be subject to law.
He believes, because he cannot help believing, in the reality of an unseen world which 'lies about us,' not in our infancy alone, but always and every-{p.
121}where; a world from which we are in no wise excluded, accessible and in some measure revealed to all, though free and open intercourse with it is a privilege enjoyed by few.
Many are called but few chosen.
"Spirits every night from the body's snare
Thou freest, and makest the tablets clean.
{By erasing all the sensuous impressions which form a veil between
the soul and the world of reality.
}
Spirits are set free every night from this cage,
Independent, neither ruled nor ruling.
At night prisoners forget their prison,
At night kings forget their power:
No sorrow, no brooding over gain and loss,
No thought of this person or that person.
This is the state of the gnostic, even when he is awake;
God hath said, 'Thou wouldst deem them awake while they slept.
'
{Kor.
18.
17}
He is asleep, day and night, to the affairs of the world,
Like a pen in the controlling hand of the Lord.
"
The Sufis have always declared and believed themselves to be God's chosen people.
The Koran refers in several places to His elect.
According to the author of the Kitab al-Luma, this title belongs, firstly, to the prophets, elect in virtue of their sinlessness, their inspiration, and their apostolic mission; and secondly, to certain Moslems, elect in virtue of their sincere devotion and self-mortification and firm attachment to the{p.
122}eternal realities: in a word, the saints.
While the Sufis are the elect of the Moslem community, the saints are the elect of the Sufis.
The Mohammedan saint is commonly known as a wali (plural, awliya).
This word is used in various senses derived from its root-meaning of 'nearness'; e.
g.
next of kin, patron, protector, friend.
It is applied in the Koran to God as the protector of the Faithful, to angels or idols who are supposed to protect their worshippers, and to men who are regarded as being specially under divine protection.
Mohammed twits the Jews with professing to be protégés of God (awliya lillah).
Notwithstanding its somewhat equivocal associations, the term was taken over by the Sufis and became the ordinary designation of persons whose holiness brings them near to God, and who receive from Him, as tokens of His peculiar favour, miraculous gifts (karamat, «charísmata»); they are His friends, on whom "no fear shall come and they shall not grieve" {Kor.
10.
63}; any injury done to them is an act of hostility against Him.
The inspiration of the Islamic saints, though verbally distinguished from that of the prophets and inferior in degree, is of the same kind.
In consequence of their intimate relation to God, the veil shrouding the{p.
123}supernatural, or, as a Moslem would say, the unseen world, from their perceptions is withdrawn at intervals, and in their fits of ecstasy they rise to the prophetic level.
Neither deep learning in divinity, nor devotion to good works, nor asceticism, nor moral purity makes the Mohammedan a saint; he may have all or none of these things, but the only indispensable qualification is that ecstasy and rapture which is the outward sign of 'passing-away' from the phenomenal self.
Anyone thus enraptured (majdhub) is a wali {Waliyyat, if the saint is a woman.
}, and when such persons are recognised through their power of working miracles, they are venerated as saints not only after death but also during their lives.
Often, however, they live and die in obscurity.
Hujwiri tells us that amongst the saints "there are four thousand who are concealed and do not know one another and are not aware of the excellence of their state, being in all circumstances hidden from themselves and from mankind.
"The saints form an invisible hierarchy, on which the order of the world is thought to depend.
Its supreme head is entitled the Qutb (Axis).
He is the most eminent Sufi of his age, and presides over the meetings regularly held by this august parliament, whose members are not hampered in their attendance by the inconvenient fictions of{p.
124}time and space, but come together from all parts of the earth in the twinkling of an eye, traversing seas and mountains and deserts as easily as common mortals step across a road.
Below the Qutb stand various classes and grades of sanctity.
Hujwiri enumerates them, in ascending series, as follows: three hundred Akhyar (Good), forty Abdal (Substitutes), seven Abrar (Pious), four Awtad (Supports), and three Nuqaba (Overseers).
"All these know one another and cannot act save by mutual consent.
It is the task of the Awtad to go round the whole world every night, and if there should be any place on which their eyes have not fallen, next day some flaw will appear in that place, and they must then inform the Qutb in order that he may direct his attention to the weak spot and that by his blessing the imperfection may be remedied.
"
We are studying in this book the mystical life of the individual Moslem, and it is necessary to keep the subject within the narrowest bounds.
Otherwise, I should have liked to dwell on the external and historical organisation of Sufism as a school for saints, and to describe the process of evolution through which the wali privately conversing with a small circle of friends became, first, a teacher and spiritual guide gathering{p.
125}disciples around him during his lifetime, and finally the head of a perpetual religious order which bore his name.
The earliest of these great fraternities date from the twelfth century.
In addition to their own members--the so-called 'dervishes'--each order has a large number of lay brethren attached to it, so that their influence pervades all ranks of Moslem society.
They are "independent and self-developing.
There is rivalry between them; but no one rules over the other.
In faith and practice each goes its own way, limited only by the universal conscience of Islam.
Thus strange doctrines and grave moral defects easily develop unheeded, but freedom is saved.
" {D.
B.
Macdonald, The Religious Life and Attitude in Islam, p.
164.
} Of course, the typical wali is incapable of founding an order, but Islam has produced no less frequently than Christendom men who combine intense spiritual illumination with creative energy and aptitude for affairs on a grand scale.
The Mohammedan notion of the saint as a person possessed by God allows a very wide application of the term: in popular usage it extends from the greatest Sufi theosophists, like Jalaluddin Rumi and Ibn al-Arabi, down to those who have gained sanctity only by losing sanity--victims of epilepsy and hysteria, half-witted idiots and harmless lunatics.
{p.
126}* * *Both Qushayri {Author of a famous work designed to close the breach between Sufism and Islam.
He died in 1074 A.
D.
} and Hujwiri discuss the question whether a saint can be conscious of his saintship, and answer it in the affirmative.
Their opponents argue that consciousness of saintship involves assurance of salvation, which is impossible, since no one can know with certainty that he shall be among the saved on the Day of Judgment.
In reply it was urged that God may miraculously assure the saint of his predestined salvation, while maintaining him in a state of spiritual soundness and preserving him from disobedience.
The saint is not immaculate, as the prophets are, but the divine protection which he enjoys is a guarantee that he will not persevere in evil courses, though he may temporarily be led astray.
According to the view generally held, saintship depends on faith, not on conduct, so that no sin except infidelity can cause it to be forfeited.
This perilous theory, which opens the door to antinomianism, was mitigated by the emphasis laid on fulfilment of the religious law.
The following anecdote of Bayazid al-Bistami shows the official attitude of all the leading Sufis who are cited as authorities in the Moslem text-books.
"I was told (he said) that a saint of God was living in such-and-such a town,
{p.
127}and I set out to visit him.
When I entered the mosque, he came forth from his chamber and spat on the floor.
I turned back without saluting him, saying to myself, 'A saint must keep the religious law in order that God may keep him in his spiritual state.
Had this man been a saint, his respect for the law would have prevented him from spitting on the floor, or God would have saved him from marring the grace vouchsafed to him.
"
Many walis, however, regard the law as a curb that is indeed necessary so long as one remains in the disciplinary stage, but may be discarded by the saint.
Such a person, they declare, stands on a higher plane than ordinary men, and is not to be condemned for actions which outwardly seem irreligious.
While the older Sufis insist that a wali who breaks the law is thereby shown to be an impostor, the popular belief in the saints and the rapid growth of saint-worship tended to aggrandise the wali at the expense of the law, and to foster the conviction that a divinely gifted man can do no wrong, or at least that his actions must not be judged by appearances.
The classical instance of this jus divinum vested in the friends of God is the story of Moses and Khadir, which is related in the Koran (18.
64-80).
Khadir or Khizr--the Koran does not mention him by name{p.
128}--is a mysterious sage endowed with immortality, who is said to enter into conversation with wandering Sufis and impart to them his God-given knowledge.
Moses desired to accompany him on a journey that he might profit by his teaching, and Khadir consented, only stipulating that Moses should ask no questions of him.
"So they both went on, till they embarked in a boat and he (Khadir) staved it in.
'What!' cried Moses, 'hast thou staved it in that thou mayst drown its crew? Verily, a strange thing hast thou done.
'
"He said, 'Did not I tell thee that thou couldst no way have patience with me?'
"Then they went on until they met a youth, and he slew him.
Said Moses, 'Hast thou slain him who is free from guilt of blood? Surely now thou hast wrought an unheard-of thing!'"
After Moses had broken his promise of silence for the third time, Khadir resolved to leave him.
"But first," he said, "I will tell thee the meaning of that with which thou couldst not have patience.
As to the boat, it belonged to poor men, toilers on the sea, and I was minded to damage it, for in their rear was a king who seized on every boat by force.
And
{p.
129}as to the youth, his parents were believers, and I feared lest he should trouble them by error and unbelief.
"
The Sufis are fond of quoting this unimpeachable testimony that the wali is above human criticism, and that his hand, as Jalaluddin asserts, is even as the hand of God.
Most Moslems admit the claim to be valid in so far as they shrink from applying conventional standards of morality to holy men.
I have explained its metaphysical justification in an earlier chapter.
