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ON THE DOCTRINE OF “UNITY OF BEING”
Most people regard
the rank of those who assert the ‘transcendent Unity of
Being’ to be the highest rank, whereas this assertion
has been made neither by the Companions of the Prophet,
upon him be peace and blessings, including the Rightly-Guided
Caliphs, nor by the Imams descending from the Prophet’s
family, nor by the Imams of the generation that followed
the Companions including the four greatest jurists who
are the ‘founders’ of the four schools of jurisprudence.
Does this mean that the rank of those who follow the doctrine
of the ‘transcendent Unity of Being’ is really the highest,
and their way is the most perfect?
Answer:
God forbid that anyone
could be greater than the pure scholars who are ‘the nearest
stars to the sun of Prophethood’. Besides, the way of these
pure successors to the Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings,
is the most perfect and the safest. The doctrine of the ‘transcendent
Unity of Being’ is only an assertion which some saints make
in the state of spiritual ecstasy. The followers of this doctrine,
although their way is not perfect, go into spiritual ecstasies
when they attain this rank in their spiritual journey, and
regard their rank to be the highest. If a follower of this
doctrine has been able to get into the spiritual state where
he can discern some hidden truths and attribute every occurrence
solely to God without ascribing any part to any causes in
his life and in the operation of the universe, and can discern
God’s direct manipulation of affairs, he can attain some degree
of perfection by accepting the ‘transcendent Unity of Being’,
provided that this acceptance should also be dependent on
his spiritual state, not on scientific knowledge. He may even
go so far as to deny the existence of the universe in the
name of God because he sees everything annihilated in God.
If, on the other hand, he strongly believes in the law of
causality, and accordingly sees the universe as subject to
this law, and himself is immersed in materialism, then his
assertion of the unity of being may lead him to monism or
pantheism, that is, to deny God in the name of the universe.
Surely the safest and ‘broadest’ way is the one which was
established by the Companions and followed by those who follow
them. Their conviction was that each thing has a definite,
objective reality, and nothing resembles God in any way, as
declared by the Qur'an, like Him there is nothing.
(42:11)
God is absolutely free
from dividing and being included in space. He is the Creator,
Who created everything, and existence is not, as asserted
by the followers of the doctrine of the ‘transcendent Unity
of Being’, an illusion; everything is a work of the Creator:
existents are not God Himself, but they are all from God.
All natural phenomena or the whole of existence, as they are
all created in the course of time and accordingly are contained
in time and space, cannot be eternal. I would like to make
this matter easier to understand by way of two comparisons.
- Let us suppose that
there is a monarch. He is a just ruler, and his role of
dispensing justice is manifested in his government’s department
of justice. He is also a caliph, so his function of administering
the religious affairs is manifested in the department of
religious affairs and sciences. And the department of military
affairs represents him as the supreme commander of the imperial
armies. If someone claims that he is only a just ruler and
accordingly has no function other than dispensing justice,
it would entail denying the actual existence of other departments
of the government. The departments of religious and military
affairs would then be regarded as ‘ideally’ or ‘nominally’,
but not ‘actually’, existing in the department of justice,
or being nominally represented by some officials therein.
This assertion would
also entail that the monarch has only the name of ‘the just’
with his rule restricted to the department of justice, and
his other names such as ‘the caliph’ and ‘the supreme commander’
are only ‘nominally’ or ‘ideally’ or ‘theoretically’ given
to him. Whereas, the nature of monarchy requires to have
real names, and the real names should manifest themselves
in the departments that really exist. It is as in this parable
that the kingdom of divinity (the Divine kingdom) should
really have such holy Names as the Most Gracious, the Provider,
the Bestower, the Creator, the Active, the Munificent and
the All-Merciful. These Names, in turn, require real mirrors,
in which they are reflected. Such being the case, the doctrine
of the ‘Unity of Being’, which is based on the assertion
that ‘Nothing exists except He’, reduces things into mere
illusions. It does not, however, mean much to assert that
the mirrors where such Names of God Almighty as the Necessarily-Existent
Being, the One, and the Unique Being have only an illusory,
not real, existence, since these Names have actual manifestations
and since ‘the mirror’ where the Real Existence is reflected
is brighter without the added color of another kind of existence.
But, according to the assertion of the ‘Unity of Being’,
the manifestations of such Names as the All-Merciful, All-Provider,
All-Omnipotent, All-Compeller or the Creator are also illusory,
not real, whereas they have substantial reality and, accordingly,
must manifest themselves through their actual operations
in the universe. Because of this, their manifestations are
also actual, not illusory.
The Companions of
the Prophet, the pure jurists and the Imams descending from
the family of the Prophet were therefore convinced that
‘things have definite, objective reality’. This means that
God really manifests Himself through all His Names, and
everything has an accidental existence as the result of
His creation. This existence, no matter how weak, unstable
and temporary when compared with the existence of the Necessarily-Existent
Being, is not an illusion. The Almighty confers existence
by making His Name, the All-Creator, manifested, and causes
His creation to subsist.
- Let us suppose that
there is a four-walled room with a full-length mirror on
each wall. The room is separately reflected in each of the
mirrors and, accordingly, puts on the quality and color
of the mirror. Two men enter this room. One of them looks
in a mirror and says that everything is in it. Although
the other explains to him that there are some other reflections
in other, different mirrors, the first insists that there
is only one mirror and one reflection. Further, in his view,
the other reflections could only be, if they really exist,
insignificant and secondary ones visible in a corner of
the mirror into which he himself is looking. He adds: ‘This
is how I see it, so this is the reality.’ The other responds:
‘I admit what you see, but what you see is only an aspect
of the reality. There are, however, some other mirrors like
the one into which you are looking, none of which is so
small and insignificant as you claim’.
Likewise, each of
the Divine Names demands a special mirror in which it will
be reflected. The Names, the All-Merciful and the All-Provider,
being essential to God, require the existence of creatures
that need mercy and provision. As the All-Merciful demands
the existence of really existent creatures that need mercy
and provision, so too Paradise is required to exist by the
Name, the All-Compassionate. If, therefore, one regards
the Names, the Necessarily-Existent Being, the One, and
the Unique Being, as the only essential and really existent
ones, and the other Names as ‘nominal’ or ‘theoretical’,
one must hold these Names in a very low esteem.
It is because of this truth that the way of the Companions
and their followers, and of the pure scholars, the Imams
descending from the family of the Prophet, upon him be peace
and blessings, and the leading jurists, is the safest and
the most perfect. They are the most prominent students of
the Qur’an, and have attained the greatest rank of sainthood.
Glory be to You!
We know not save what You have taught us. Surely You are the
All-Knowing, the All-Wise.
Our Lord, do not
cause our hearts to swerve after You have guided us; and give
us the gift of mercy from You; You are the Giver of Gifts.
My God, bestow blessings on him whom You sent as a mercy for
all the worlds, and on all of his family and Companions.
Another
article on the doctrine of the Unity of Being in Muslim Sufism
Among the important
schools of tariqa, the school of ‘the Unity of Being’, which
almost denies the essential existence of the universe in the
name of the Necessarily-Existent Being, goes so far as to
regard the apparently existing creatures as imagined mirrors
reflecting the manifestations of the Divine Names.
There is, however, an important truth which provides a basis
for this school, that the existence of contingent beings becomes,
due to the strength of his belief in, and the firmness of
his conviction of, the existence of the Necessarily-Existent
Being, so insignificant in the sight of a saint of a very
high rank and ecstasies, that he denies in the name of God,
the existence of all creatures, which seem to him as no more
than mere illusions.
Nevertheless, there
are risks in this school, the foremost of which is this:
The fundamentals of
belief are six. Belief in God is only one of these fundamentals;
a Muslim also believes in the Day of Judgment, the Angels,
the Prophets, the Divine Scriptures and Divine Destiny, each
of which requires the actual existence of contingencies. These
fundamentals of faith are substantial and therefore cannot
be based on illusions or imaginations. For this reason, a
saint belonging to this school should not act according to
the requirements of his school when he turns back to the world
of realities from the state of spiritual intoxication. Being
based on the experiences of the heart and on spiritual pleasures
and ecstasies, this school should not be regarded as rational
or scientific, and those experiences and pleasures should
not be put into words in this world of realities. For this
school is not in accordance with the intellectual principles,
the scientific laws and theological rules coming from the
Qur’an and the Sunna. Because of this, neither the Four Rightly-Guided
Caliphs, nor the greatest jurists, nor the righteous scholars
of the first centuries of Islam are reported to have made
any reference to, or suggestion of, this school. So, this
is not the most exalted of the schools of tariqa; although
considerably exalted, it has defects: important but risky;
difficult but very pleasant. Those who enter it on account
of the pleasures it gives, do not like to leave it but, because
of haughtiness, they suppose it to be of the highest rank.
Referring the reader, concerning its real nature and essentials,
to certain other Words and Letters, I would like to explain
here an important risk of this school, namely:
The way of this school
(the Unity of Being it envisions) is sound, based on direct
experience in the state of absolute spiritual intoxication
by the most distinguished of saints who, going beyond the
sphere of causality, renounce all else besides God and have
nothing left to do with contingencies. But to offer it as
a way to those who are immersed in causality and fond of this
world, and cling to the material and natural philosophy, would
be to drown them in the swamp of matter and nature and deviate
them from the truth of Islam. For the one who loves the world
and is enveloped within causality, wishes to give a kind of
permanence to this world of transience. Unwilling to renounce
his beloved (the world), he fancies for it, by way of the
Unity of Being, unimagined eternity, going so far as – God
forbid! – to deny God in the name of the world.
Materialism is so widespread
in this century that some people ascribe everything to matter.
Now the people of belief may assert, in such a century, the
Unity of Being in order to deny matter and material existence
because of its insignificance. It is, therefore, highly probable
that materialists may adopt the concept, on behalf of matter,
in the form of monism or naturalism or pantheism – though
the school furthest removed from materialism, naturalism,
monism and pantheism is the school of the Unity of Being.
Whereas, the followers of this school are so deeply absorbed
in the Divine Existence through strength of belief, that on
Its behalf, they deny the essential existence of the universe,
materialists attribute existence exclusively to matter and
deny God in the name of the universe. How far, then, are the
latter from the former!
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