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A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts
Toshihiko Izutsu
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"Professor Izutsu's work is a pioneering attempt to bring into focus the
shareable philosophical concerns of two seemingly unrelated landmarks
in religious thought. His method is suggestive, interpretation new and
bold, and material used important for further research. His book is
useful to students of comparative religion, philosophy of religion, cul-
tural anthropology, Asian thought and religion, and Islamic and Taoist
studies." — Tu Wei-ming
"[This book] carries out a comparison in depth between Islamic and
Chinese thought for the first time in modern scholarship. . . .Since this
book appeared it has influenced every work on Ibn Arab! and meta-
physical Sufism . . . [and] any cursory study of Sufism during the last
fifteen years will reveal the extent of Izutsu's influence.
— Seyyed Hossein Nasr
University of California Press
Berkeley 94720
ISBN 0-S2D-CISabM-l
■1H
SUFISM AND TAOISM
A Comparative Study of y v 5
Key Philosophical Concepts .
Toshihiko Izutsu
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley — Los Angeles — London
3 7001 01726025 0
SUFISM AND TAOISM:
A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts
by Toshihiko Izutsu
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
Copyright ©1983 by Toshihiko Izutsu
First published 1983 by Iwanami Shoten, Publishers, Tokyo
This edition is published by The University of California Press, 1984,
by arrangement with Iwanami Shoten, Publishers
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Izutsu, Toshihiko, 1914—
Sufism and Taoism.
Rev. ed. of: A comparative study of the key philo-
sophical concepts in Sufism and Taoism. 1966-67.
1 . Sufism. 2. Taoism. 3. Ibn al- Arabi, 1165-1240.
4. Lao-tzu. 5. Chuang-tzu. I. Title.
BP 189.1% 1984 181 '.074 84-78
ISBN 0-520-05264-1
Printed in the United States of America
23456789
Contents
Preface by T. Izutsu
Introduction 1
Notes 4
Part I - Ibn ‘Arab!
I Dream and Reality 7
Notes 21
II The Absolute in its Absoluteness 23
Notes 36
III The Self-knowledge of Man 39
Notes 46
IV Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal
Dispersion 48
Notes 65
V Metaphysical Perplexity 68
Notes 86
VI The Shadow of the Absolute 89
Notes 96
VII The Divine Names 99
Notes 107
VIII Allah and the Lord 110
Notes 115
IX Ontological Mercy 116
Notes 138
X The Water of Life 141
Notes 150
XI The Self-manifestation of the Absolute 152
Notes 157
XII Permanent Archetypes 159
Notes 192
XIII Creation 197
Notes 215
XIV Man as Microcosm 218
Notes 243
XV The Perfect Man as an Individual 247
Notes 261
XVI Apostle, Prophet, and Saint 263
Notes 272
XVII The Magical Power of the Perfect Man 275
Notes 282
Part II - Lao-Tzu & Chuang-Tzu
I Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu 287
Notes 297
II From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 300
Notes 308
III Dream and Reality 310
Notes 317
IV Beyond This and That 319
Notes 329
V The Birth of a New Ego 332
Notes 350
VI Against Essentialism 354
Notes 373
VII The Way 375
Notes 393
VIII The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 398
Notes 413
IX Determinism and Freedom 418
Notes 427
X Absolute Reversal of Values 430
Notes 442
XI The Perfect Man 444
Notes 454
XII Homo Politicus 457
Notes 465
Part III - A Comparative Reflection
I Methodological Preliminaries 469
Note 473
II The Inner Transformation of Man 474
Note 478
III The Multi stratified Structure of Reality 479
IV Essence and Existence 482
V The Self-evolvement of Existence 486
Preface
This is originally a book which I wrote more than fifteen years ago,
when I was teaching Islamic philosophy at the Institute of Islamic
Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
At that time I was becoming conscious of myself gradually getting
into a new phase of my intellectual life, groping my way towards a
new type of Oriental philosophy based on a series of rigorously
philological, comparative studies of the key terms of various
philosophical traditions in the Near, Middle, and Far East. The
present work was the very first product of my endeavour in this
direction.
The book was subsequently published in Japan in two separate
volumes in 1966—1967, under the title A Comparative Study of Key
Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism (with the subtitle ‘Ibn
‘Arab! and Lao-tzu - Chuang-tzu’) as a publication of the Institute
of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, Keio University, Tokyo, under
the directorship of the late Professor Nobuhiro Matsumoto.
A growing demand for a new, revised edition made me decide to
republish the book while I was in Iran. Printed in England, it had
been scheduled to come out in Tehran towards the end of the year
1978, when the sudden outbreak of the Khomeini ‘revolution’
rendered its publication impossible. Thus it was that, by a strange
working of fate, the book - completely revised, but still in the form
of galley proofs - came back with its author once again to Japan, the
place where it had first seen the light of day.
In the process of revising the book in its entirety, I did my best to
eliminate all the defects and imperfections that had come to my
notice in the meantime. But, of course, there are natural limits to
such work of correction and amendment.
I only hope that this old book of mine in a new form, despite many
mistakes and shortcomings that must still be there, might at least
make a modest contribution towards the development of ‘meta-
historical dialogues’ among representatives of the various
4m,
philosophical traditions in the East and West, a special kind of
philosophical dialogue of which the world today seems to be in
urgent need.
It is my pleasant duty to express my deep gratitude to the Iwanami
Shoten, Publishers, for having undertaken the publication of this
book. My thanks go in particular to Mr Atsushi Aiba (of the same
publishing house) who has spared no effort in smoothing the way for
the realization of this project. I take this occasion to thank also the
authorities of my alma mater, Keio University, from whom, as I
recall now, I derived inestimable encouragement while I was
engaged in writing this book in its original form.
T.Izutsu
October 4, 1981
Kamakura, Japan
Introduction
As indicated by the title and the subtitle, the main purpose of the
present work in its entirety is to attempt a structural comparison
between the world-view of Sufism as represented by Ibn ‘ Arabi and
the world-view of Taoism as represented by Lao-tzu and Chuang-
tzu. I am aware of the fact that this kind of study has a number of
pitfalls. A comparison made in a casual way between two thought-
systems which have no historical connection may become superfi-
cial observations of resemblances and differences lacking in
scientific rigor. In order to avoid falling into this error, an effort will
be made to lay bare the fundamental structure of each of the two
world-views independently and as rigorously as possible before
proceeding to any comparative considerations.
With this in view, the First Part will be entirely devoted to an
attempt at isolating and analyzing the major ontological concepts
which underlie the philosophical world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi, while in
the second part exactly the same kind of analytic study will be made
concerning the world-view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, in such a way
that both parts may constitute two entirely independent studies, one
of Ibn ‘Arabi and the other of ancient Taoism. Only in the third part
will an attempt be made to compare, and co-ordinate, the key-
concepts of these two world-views which have been previously
analyzed without any regard to similarities and differences between
them.
However this may be, the dominant motive running through the
entire work is the desire to open a new vista in the domain of
comparative philosophy and mysticism. A good starting point for
such a comparison is provided by the fact that both world-views are
based on two pivots, the Absolute and the Perfect Man, 1 a whole
system of ontological thought being developed in each case between
these two poles.
It is to be noted that as an ontological structure this is nothing
peculiar to Sufism and Taoism. The opposition of the Absolute and
the Perfect Man in various forms as the two pivots of a world-view is
a basic pattern common to many types of mysticism that have
2
Sufism and Taoism
developed in the world in widely different places and ages. And a
comparative consideration of a number of systems sharing the same
broad pattern and differing from each other in details both of origin
and historical circumstance would seem to prove very fruitful in
preparing the ground for that which Professor Henry Corbin has
aptly called ‘un dialogue dans la metahistoire’ , meta-historical or
transhistorical dialogue, and which is so urgently needed in the
present situation of the world.
Referring to the fact that Ibn ‘Arab! has evoked so much discus-
sion and controversy, unprecedented in the history of Islamic
thought, and attributing this fact to the nature of Islam itself which
combines two Truths: haqiqah ‘the truth based on Intellection’ and
shari'ah ‘the truth based on Revelation’, Dr Osman Yahya makes
the following interesting remark 2 : le cas d’Ibn ‘ Arabi ne se poserait
pas avec autant d’acuite dans une tradition de pure metaphysique
comme le taoism ou le vedanta ou la personality du Maitre . . . eut
pu s’epanouir librement, ni non plus dans une tradition de pure loi
positive ou son cas n’eut meme pas pu etre pose puisqu’il eut ete
refuse par la communaute tout entiere, irremediablement. Mais le
destin a voulu placer Ibn ‘Arabi a la croisee des chemins pour
degager, en sa personne, la veritable vocation de l’lslam.
There can be no denying that Lao-tzu’s metaphysics of Tao
presents in its abysmal depth of thought a number of striking
similarities to Ibn ‘ArabFs conception of Being. This is the more
interesting because, as I shall indicate in the Second Part, Lao-tzu
and Chuang-tzu represent a culmination point of a spiritual tradi-
tion which is historically quite different from Sufism.
We must, as I have remarked above, guard ourselves against
making too easy comparisons, but we must also admit, I believe,
that a comparative study of this kind, if conducted carefully, will at
least furnish us with a common ground upon which an intercultural
dialogue may fruitfully be opened.
In accordance with the general plan above outlined, the first half
of the present book will be concerned exclusively with an analytic
study of the key-concepts which constitute the ontological basis of
Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view. This world-view, as I have said, turns
round two pivots, the Absolute and the Perfect Man, in the form of
an ontological Descent and Ascent. In describing this cosmic pro-
cess Ibn ‘Arabi develops at every stage a number of concepts of
decisive importance. It is these concepts that the present work
intends to analyze. It purports to analyze methodically the ontologi-
cal aspect of Ibn ‘ArabFs mystical philosophy regarding it as a
system of key-concepts that relate to ‘being’ and existence’.
Ontology, we must admit, is but one aspect of the thought of this
extraordinary man. It has other no less important aspects such as
Introduction
3
psychology, epistemology, symbolism, etc., which, together, consti-
tute an original and profound world-view. But the concept of Being,
as we shall see, is the very basis of his philosophical thinking, and his
theory of Being is doubtless of such originality and of such a far-
reaching historical importance that it calls for separate treatment.
At the very outset I would like to make it clear that this is not a
philologically exhaustive study of Ibn ‘Arabi. On the contrary, the
present study is based, as far as concerns Ibn ‘Arabi himself, almost
exclusively on only one of his works: ‘The Bezels of Wisdom’ or
Fu$ii$ al-Hikam. It is essentially an analysis of the major ontological
concepts which Ibn ‘Arabi develops in this celebrated book that has
often been described as his opus magnum, and has been studied and
commented upon by so many people throughout the centuries. 3 So
on the material side, the present work does not claim to offer
anything new.
From the beginning it was not my intention to be exhaustive. My
intention was rather to penetrate the ‘life-breath’ itself, the vivify-
ing spirit and the very existential source of the philosophizing drive
of this great thinker, and to pursue from that depth the formation of
the whole ontological system step by step as he himself develops it.
In order to understand the thought of a man like Ibn ‘Arab!, one
must grasp the very spirit which pervades and vivifies the whole
structure; otherwise everything will be lost. All considerations from
outside are sure to go wide of the mark. Even on an intellectual and
philosophical level, one must try to understand the thought from
inside and reconstruct it in one’s self by what might be called an
existential empathy. For such a purpose, to be exhaustive, though of
course desirable, is not the first requirement.
Ibn ‘Arab! was not merely a profound thinker; he was an unusu-
ally prolific writer, too. The authorities differ among themselves on
the exact number. Al-Sha‘rani, to give an example, notes that the
Master wrote about 400 works. 4 The repertoire general of the
above-mentioned bibliographical work by Dr Osman Yahya lists as
many as 856 works, although the number includes doubtful works
and those that are evidently spurious.
In a situation like this, and for purposes like ours, it is not only
irrelevant but, even more, positively dangerous to try to note every-
thing the author has said and written on each subject over a period
of many years, For one might easily drown oneself in the vast ocean
of concepts, images and symbols that are scattered about in utter
disorder throughout the hundreds of his works, and lose sight of the
main line or lines of thought and the guiding spirit that underlies
the whole structure. For the purpose of isolating the latter from the
disorderly (as it looks at first sight) mass of symbols and images, it
4
Sufism and Taoism
will be more wise and perhaps, more profitable to concentrate on a
work in which he presents his thought in its maturest form . 5
In any case, the present work consists exclusively of an analysis of
the ‘Bezels of Wisdom’ except in a few places where I shall refer to
one of his smaller works for elucidation of some of the important
points . 6 As remarked above, Fu$us al-Hikam has been studied in
the past by many people in many different forms. And yet I hope
that my own analysis of the same book has something to contribute
toward a better understanding of the great Master who has been
considered by many people one of the profoundest, but at the same
time, obscurest thinkers Islam has ever produced.
Notes
1. In Ibn ‘ArabFs system, the Absolute is called haqq (Truth or Reality) and the
Perfect Man is called insan kamil meaning literally ‘perfect man’. In Taoism, the
Absolute is tao and the Perfect Man is sheng jen (Sacred Man or Saint), chert jen
(True Man), etc. I have dealt with the relationship between the Absolute and the
Perfect Man in Taoism in particular in my Eranos lecture for 1967: ‘The Absolute
and the Perfect Man in Taoism’, Eranos- Jahrbuch , XXXVI, Zurich, 1968.
2. Histoire et classification de I’ceuvre d’Ibn ' Arab f, 2 vols. 1964, Damas, avant-
propos, pp. 18-19.
3. Dr Osman Yahya lists more than 100 commentaries on Fkjzzj al-Hikam, cf. op.
cit., I, p. 17, pp. 241-257.
4. al-Sha‘rani, al-Yawaqit wa-al-Jawahir, Cairo, 1305 A.H., vol. I., p. 10.
5. Ibn ‘Arabi (born in Spain in 1165 A.D.) died in Damascus in 1240/ Fujiis
al-Hikam was written in 1229, ten years before his death. As regards his life anahis
works the best introduction, to my knowledge, is found in Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s
Three Muslim Sages, Cambridge, Mass., 1964, pp. 84-121.
6. As a concrete illustration of the oft-repeated attempt at bringing philosophical
coherence and order into the world-view of the Master, I shall in most cases give
al-QashanFs comments side by side with Ibn ‘ArabFs words. ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-
Qashani (d. 1330) is one of the greatest figures in the school of Ibn ‘Arabi. The
edition used in the present book is Sharh al-Qashani ‘ala Fu$u$ al-Hikam, Cairo,
1321 A.H. For the interpretation of difficult passages of the text I have also used
Qayjari and Jami.
I Dream and Reality
So-called ‘reality’ , the sensible world which surrounds us and which
we are accustomed to regard as ‘reality’, is, for Ibn ‘Arab!, but a
dream. We perceive by the senses a large number of things, distin-
guish them one from another, put them in order by our reason, and
thus end up by establishing something solid around us. We call that
construct ‘reality’ and do not doubt that it is real.
According to Ibn ‘Arabi, however, that kind of ‘reality’ is not
reality in the true sense of the word. In other terms, such a thing is
not Being ( wujiid ) as it really is. Living as we do in this phenomenal
world, Being in its metaphysical reality is no less imperceptible to us
than phenomenal things are in their phenomenal reality to a man
who is asleep and dreaming of them.
Quoting the famous Tradition, ‘All men are asleep (in this
world); only when they die, do they wake up,’ he remarks:
The world is an illusion; it has no real existence. And this is what is
meant by ‘imagination’ ( khayal ). For you just imagine that it (i.e ., the
world) is an autonomous reality quite different from and indepen-
dent of the absolute Reality, while in truth it is nothing of the sort 1 .
. . . Know that you yourself are an imagination. And everything that
you perceive and say to yourself, ‘this is not me’, is also an imagina-
tion. So that the whole world of existence is imagination within
imagination . 2
What, then, should we do, if what we have taken for ‘reality’ is but a
dream, not the real form of Being, but something illusory? Should
we abandon once for all this illusory world and go out of it in search
of an entirely different world, a really real world? Ibn ‘Arab! does
not take such a position, because, in his view, ‘dream’, ‘illusion’ or
‘imagination’ does not mean something valueless or false; it simply
means ‘being a symbolic reflection of something truly real’.
The so-called ‘reality’ certainly is not the true Reality, but this
must not be taken to mean that it is merely a vain and groundless
thing. The so-called ‘reality’, though it is not the Reality itself,
vaguely and indistinctively reflects the latter on the level of imagina-
tion. It is, in other words, a symbolic representation of the Reality.
8
Sufism and Taoism
Dream and Reality
9
All it needs is that we should interpret it in a proper way just as we
usually interpret our dreams in order to get to the real state of affairs
beyond the dream-symbols.
Referring to the above-quoted Tradition, ‘All men are asleep;
only when they die, do they wake up’, Ibn ‘Arab! says that ‘the
Prophet called attention by these words to the fact that whatever
man perceives in this present world is to him as a dream is to a man
who dreams, and that it must be interpreted’ . 3
What is seen in a dream is an ‘imaginal’ form of the Reality, not
the Reality itself. All we have to do is take it back to its original and
true status. This is what is meant by ‘interpretation’ ( ta’wil ). The
expression: ‘to die and wake up’ appearing in the Tradition is for
Ibn ‘ Arabi nothing other than a metaphorical reference to the act of
interpretation understood in this sense. Thus ‘death’ does not mean
here death as a biological event. It means a spiritual event consisting
in a man’s throwing off the shackles of the sense and reason,
stepping over the confines of the phenomenal, and seeing through
the web of phenomenal things what lies beyond. It means, in short,
the mystical experience of ‘self-annihilation’ (Jana).
What does a man see when he wakes up from his phenomenal
sleep, opens his real eyes, and looks around? What kind of world
does he observe then - that is, in the self-illuminating state of
‘subsistence’ ( baqa’)l To describe that extraordinary world and
elucidate its metaphysical-ontological make-up, that is the main
task of Ibn ‘Arabi. The description of the world as he observes it in
the light of his mystical experiences constitutes his philosophical
world-view.
What, then, is that Something which hides itself behind the veil of
the phenomenal, making the so-called ‘reality’ a grand-scale net-
work of symbols vaguely and obscurely pointing to that which lies
beyond them? The answer is given immediately. It is the Absolute,
the real or absolute Reality which Ibn ‘Arab! calls al-haqq . Thus the
so-called/ reality’ is but a dream, but it is not a sheer illusion. It is a
particular appearance of the absolute Reality, a particular form of
its self-manifestation (tajalli). It is a dream having a metaphysical
basis. ‘The world of being and becoming ( kawn ) is an imagination’ ,
he says, ‘but it is, in truth, Reality itself’. 4
Thus the world of being and becoming, the so-called ‘reality’,
consisting of various forms, properties and states, is in itself a
colorful fabric of fantasy and imagination, but it indicates at the
same time nothing other than Reality - if only one knows how to
take these forms and properties, not in themselves, but as so many
manifestations of the Reality. One who can do this is a man who has
attained the deepest mysteries of the Way (tariqah).
Prophets are visionaries. By nature they tend to see strange
visions which do not fall within the capacity of an ordinary man.
These extraordinary visions are known as ‘veridical dreams’ ( ru’ya
§adiqah ) and we readily recognize their symbolic nature. We ordi-
narily admit without hesitation that a prophet perceives through
and beyond his visions something ineffable, something of the true
figure of the Absolute. In truth, however, not only such uncommon
visions are symbolic ‘dreams’ for a prophet. To his mind everything
he sees, everything with which he is in contact even in daily life is
liable to assume a symbolic character. ‘Everything he perceives in
the state of wakefulness is of such a nature, though there is, cer-
tainly, a difference in the states’. 5 The formal difference between
the state of sleep (in which he sees things by his faculty of imagina-
tion) and the state of wakefulness (in which he perceives things by
his senses) is kept intact, yet in both states the things perceived are
equally symbols. 6
Thus, a prophet who lives his life in such an unusual spiritual state
may be said to be in a dream within a dream all through his life. ‘The
whole of his life is nothing but a dream within a dream’. 7 What Ibn
‘Arabi means by this proposition is this: since the phenomenal
world itself is in truth a ‘dream’ 8 (although ordinary people are not
aware of its being a ‘dream’), the prophet who perceives unusual
symbols in the midst of that general ‘dream’ -context may be com-
pared to a man who is dreaming in a dream.
This, however, is the deepest understanding of the situation, to
which most people have no access, for they are ordinarily convinced
that the phenomenal world is something materially solid; they do
not notice its symbolic nature. Not even prophets themselves - not
all of them - have a clear understanding of this matter. It is a deep
mystery of Being accessible only to a perfect prophet like
Muhammad. Ibn ‘Arabi explains this point taking as an illus-
tration the contrast between the prophet Yusuf (Joseph) and the
Prophet Muhammad regarding their respective depth of
understanding.
It is related in the Qoran (XII, 4) that Joseph as a small boy once
saw in a dream eleven stars, and the sun and the moon bowing down
before him. This, Ibn ‘Arab! observes, was an event which occurred
only in Joseph’s imagination {khayal). Joseph saw in his imagina-
tion his brothers in the form of stars, his father in the form of the
sun, and his mother in the form of the moon. Many years later,
before Joseph, who was now a ‘mighty prince’ in Egypt, his brothers
fell down prostrate At that moment Joseph said to himself, ‘This is
the interpreted meaning ( ta’wil ) of my dream of long ago. My Lord
has made it true!’ (XII, 99).
The pivotal point, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, lies in the last phrase:
10
Sufism and Taoism
‘has made it true’. 9 It means: ‘God has made to appear in the
sensible world what was in the past in the form of imagination’. 10
This implies that the realization or materialization in a sensible form
of what he had seen in a dream was, in the understanding of Joseph,
the final and ultimate realization. He thought that the things left the
domain of ‘dream’ and came out to the level of ‘reality’.
Against this Ibn ‘Arab! remarks that, as regards being sensible,
there is fundamentally no difference at all between ‘dream’ and
‘reality’; what Joseph saw in his dream was from the beginning
sensible, for ‘it is the function of imagination to produce sensible
things ( mahsusat ), nothing else’. 11
The position of Muhammad goes deeper than this. Viewed from
the standpoint of the prophet Muhammad, the following is the right
interpretation of what happened to Joseph concerning his dream.
One has to start from the recognition that life itself is a dream. In
this big dream which is his life and of which Joseph himself is not
conscious, he sees a particular dream (the eleven stars, etc.). From
this particular dream he wakes up. That is to say, he dreams in his
big dream that he wakes up. Then he interprets his own (particular)
dream (the stars = his brothers, etc.). In truth, this is still a continua-
tion of his big dream. He dreams himself interpreting his own
dream. Then the event which he thus interprets comes true as a
sensible fact. Thereupon Joseph thinks that his interpretation has
materialized and that his dream has definitely come to an end. He
thinks that he stands now completely outside of his dream, while, in
reality, he is still dreaming. He is not aware of the fact that he is
dreaming. 12
The contrast between Muhammad and Joseph is conclusively
summed up by al-Qashani in the following way:
The difference between Muhammad and Joseph in regard to the
depth of understanding consists in this. Joseph regarded the sensible
forms existing in the outer world as ‘reality’ whereas, in truth, all
forms that exist in imagination are (also) sensible without exception,
for imagination ( khayal ) is a treasury of the sensible things. Every-
thing that exists in imagination is a sensible form although it actually
is not perceived by the senses. As for Muhammad, he regarded the
sensible forms existing in the outer world also as products of imagina-
tion (khayaliyah), nay even as imagination within imagination. This
because he regarded the present world of ours as a dream while the
only ‘reality’ (in the true sense of the word) was, in his view, the
Absolute revealing itself as it really is in the sensible forms which are
nothing but so many different loci of its self-manifestation. This point
is understood only when one wakes up from the present life - which is
a sleep of forgetfulness - after one dies to this world through self-
annihilation in God.
Dream and Reality
11
The basic idea which, as we have just observed, constitutes the very
starting-point of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontological thinking, namely, that
so-called ‘reality’ is but a dream, suggests on the one hand that the
world as we experience it under normal conditions is not in itself
Reality, that it is an illusion, an appearance, an unreality. But
neither does it mean, on the other hand, that the world of sensible
things and events is nothing but sheer fantasy, a purely subjective
projection of the mind. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, if ‘reality’ is an illusion,
it is not a subjective illusion, but an ‘objective’ illusion; that is, an
unreality standing on a firm ontological basis. And this is tan-
tamount to saying that it is not an illusion at all, at least in the sense
in which the word is commonly taken.
In order that this point become clear, reference must be made to
the ontological conception peculiar to Ibn ‘Arab! and his school of
the ‘five planes of Being’ . The structure of these ‘planes’ (/ hadarat ) 13
is succinctly explained by Al-Qashani as follows. 14 In the Sufi
world-view, five ‘worlds’ fawalim) or five basic planes of Being are
distinguished, each one of them representing a Presence or an
ontological mode of the absolute Reality in its self-manifestation.
(1) The plane of the Essence ( dhat ), the world of the absolute
non-manifestation ( al-ghayb al-mutlaq) or the Mystery of
Mysteries. 15
(2) The plane of the Attributes and the Names, the Presence of
Divinity ( uliihiyah ). 16
(3) The plane of the Actions, the Presence of Lordship
(rubiibiyah) .
(4) The plane of Images (amthal) and Imagination (khayal). 11
(5) The plane of the senses and sensible experience
(mushahadah) .
These five planes constitute among themselves an organic whole,
the things of a lower plane serving as symbols or images for the
things of the higher planes. Thus, according to al-Qashani, what-
ever exists in the plane of ordinary reality (which is the lowest of all
Divine Presences) is a symbol-exemplification (mithal) for a thing
existing in the plane of Images, and everything that exists in the
world of Images is a form reflecting a state of affairs in the plane of
the Divine Names and Divine Attributes, while every Attribute is
an aspect of the Divine Essence in the act of self-manifestation.
Details about the five planes will be given in the following chap-
ters. Suffice it here to note that the whole world of Being, in Ibn
‘Arabf s view, consists basically of these five levels of Divine self-
manifestation, and that there exists between the higher and lower
levels such an organic relation as has just been mentioned. With this
in mind, let us return to the problem of our immediate concern.
12
Sufism and Taoism
Anything that is found at the lowest level of Being, i.e., the
sensible world, or any event that occurs there, is a ‘phenomenon’ in
the etymological meaning of the term; it is a form {§urah) in which a
state of affairs in the higher plane of Images directly reveals itself,
and indirectly and ultimately, the absolute Mystery itself. To look at
things in the sensible world and not to stop there, but to see beyond
them the ultimate ground of all Being, that precisely is what is called
by Ibn ‘ArabTunveiling’ ( kashf ) or mystical intuition . 18 ‘Unveiling’
means, in short, taking each of the sensible things as a locus in which
Reality discloses itself to us. And a man who does so encounters
everywhere a ‘phenomenon’ of Reality, whatever he sees and hears
in this world. Whatever he experiences is for him a form manifesting
an aspect of Divine Existence, a symbol for an aspect of Divine
Reality. And in this particular respect, his sensory experiences are
of the same symbolic nature as visions he experiences in his sleep . 19
In the eyes of a man possessed of this kind of spiritual capacity,
the whole world of ‘reality’ ceases to be something solidly self-
sufficient and turns into a deep mysterious foret de symboles, a
system of ontological correspondences. And dreams which arise in
the ‘imaginal’ plane of Being turn out to be the same as the things
and events of the world of sensory experience. Both the world of
sensible things and the world of dreams are, in this view, the same
domain of symbols. As al-Qashani says, ‘Everything which comes
manifesting itself from the world of the Unseen into the world of
sensible experience - whether it manifests itself in the senses or
imagination, or again in an image-similitude - is a revelation, an
instruction or communication from God’ . 20
The symbolic structure of the world here depicted, however, is
accessible only to the consciousness of an extremely limited number
of persons. The majority of people live attached and confined to the
lowest level of Being, that of sensible things. That is the sole world
of existence for their opaque consciousness. This lowest level of
Being only, being tangible and graspable through the senses, is real
for them. And even on this level, it never occurs to them to ‘inter-
pret’ the forms of the things around them. They are asleep.
But since, on the other hand, the common people, too, are
possessed of the faculty of imagination, something unusual may -
and does - occur in their minds on rare occasions. An invitation
from above visits them and flashes across their consciousness like
lightning when it is least expected. This happens when they have
visions and dreams.
Ordinarily, imagination or fantasy means the faculty of producing
in the mind a deceptive impression of the presence of a thing which
is not actually there in the external world or which is totally non-
existent. With Ibn ‘Arab!, it has a different meaning. Of course in
Dream and Reality
13
his theory, too, imagination is the faculty of evoking in the mind
those things that are not externally present, i.e., things that are not
immediately present in the plane of sensible experience. But it is not
a wild fantasy or hallucination which induces the mind to see things
that are nowhere existent. What it produces is not a groundless
reverie. It makes visible, albeit in an obscure and veiled way, a state
of affairs in the higher planes of Being. It is a function of the mind
directly connected with the ‘world of Images’.
The ‘world of Images’ (‘ alam al-mithal ) is ontologically an inter-
mediate domain of contact between the purely sensible world and
the purely spiritual, i.e., non-material world. It is, as Affifi defines it,
‘a really existent world in which are found the forms of the things in
a manner that stands between “fineness” and “coarseness”, that is,
between pure spirituality and pure materiality ’. 21
All things that exist on this level of Being have, on the one hand,
something in common with things existing in the sensible world, and
resemble, on the other, the abstract intelligibles existing in the
world of pure intellect. They are special things half-sensible and
half-intelligible. They are sensible, but of an extremely fine and
rarefied sensible-ness. They are intelligible, too, but not of such a
pure intelligibility as that of the Platonic Ideas.
What is commonly called imagination is nothing but this world as
it is reflected in the human consciousness, not in its proper forms,
but obliquely, dimly, and utterly deformed. Images obtained in such
a way naturally lack an ontological basis and are rightly to be
disposed of as hallucinations.
Sometimes, however, the ‘world of Images’ appears as it really is,
without deformation, in the consciousness even of an ordinary man.
The most conspicuous case of this is seen in the veridical dream. The
‘world of Images’ is eternally existent and it is at every moment
acting upon human consciousness. But man, on his part, is not
usually aware of it while he is awake, because his mind in that state is
impeded and distracted by the material forces of the external world.
Only when he is asleep, the physical faculties of his mind being in
abeyance, can the faculty of imagination operate in the proper way.
And veridical dreams are produced.
However, even if a man sees in his sleep a veridical dream, it is
always presented in a series of sensible images. And it remains
devoid of significance unless it be ‘interpreted’. Ibn ‘Arabi sees a
typical example of this in the Biblical- Qoranic anecdote of
Abraham sacrificing his son.
Abraham once saw in a dream a sacrificial ram appearing in the
image of his son Isaac (Ishaq). In reality, this was a symbol. It was a
symbol for the first institution of an important religious ritual;
14
Sufism and Taoism
namely, that of immolation of a sacrificial animal on the altar. And
since this ritual itself was ultimately a symbol of man’s offering up
his own soul in sacrifice, Abraham’s vision was to be interpreted as a
sensible phenomenal form of this spiritual event. But Abraham did
not ‘interpret’ it. And he was going to sacrifice his son. Here is the
explanation of this event by Ibn ‘Arabi . 22
Abraham, the Friend (of God), said to his son, ‘Lo, I have seen
myself in my dream sacrificing thee’. (Qoran XXXVII, 102). Dream,
in truth, is a matter, pertaining to the plane of Imagination. 23 He,
however, did not interpret (his dream). What he saw in the dream
was a ram assuming the form of the son of Abraham. And Abraham
supposed his vision to be literally true (and was about to sacrifice
Isaac). But the Lord redeemed him from the illusion of Abraham
with the Great Sacrifice (i.e. the sacrifice of a ram). This was God’s
‘interpretation’ of the dream of Abraham, but the latter did not know
it. He did not know it because all theophany in a sensible form in the
plane of Imagination needs a different kind of knowledge which
alone makes it possible for man to understand what is meant by God
through that particular form. . . .
Thus God said to Abraham, calling out to him, ‘O Abraham, thou
hast taken the vision for truth’ (XXXVII, 104-105). Mark that God
did not say, ‘Thou has grasped the truth in imagining that it is thy
son’. (The mistake pointed out here) arose from the fact that
Abraham did not ‘interpret’ the dream but took what he had seen as
literally true, when all dreams must of necessity be ‘inter-
preted’ ... If what he imagined had been true, he would have
sacrificed his son. 24 He merely took his vision for truth and thought
that (Isaac, whom he had seen in the dream) was literally his own son.
In reality, God meant by the form of his son nothing more than the
Great Sacrifice.
Thus He ‘redeemed’ him (i.e., Isaac) simply because of what occurred in
Abraham’s mind, whereas in itself and in the eye of God it was not at all a
question of redeeming. 25
Thus (when Isuac was ‘redeemed’) his visual sense perceived a
sacrificial animal (i.e., a ram) while his imagination evoked in his
mind the image of his son . (Because of this symbolic correspondence)
he would have interpreted his vision as signifying his son or some
other thing if he had seen a ram in imagination (i.e., in his dream,
instead of seeing his son as he actually did). Then says God, ‘Verily
this is a manifest trial’ (XXXVII, 106), meaning thereby the trial (of
Abraham by God) concerning his knowledge; namely, whether or
not he knows that the very nature of a vision properly requires an
‘interpretation’. Of course Abraham did know that things of Im-
agination properly require ‘interpretation’. But (in this particular
case) he carelessly neglected to do that. Thus he did not fulfil what
was properly required of him and simply assumed that his vision was
a literal truth.
Abraham was a prophet. And a man who stands in the high spiritual
15
Dream and Reality
position of prophethood must know (theoretically) that a veridical
dream is a symbol for an event belonging to the plane of higher
realities. And yet Abraham actually forgot to ‘interpret’ his dream.
If prophets are like that, how could it be expected that ordinary men
‘interpret’ rightly their dreams and visions? It is but natural, then,
that an ordinary man cannot see that an event occurring in so-called
‘reality’ is a symbol for an event corresponding to it in the higher
plane of the Images.
How can man cultivate such an ability for seeing things symboli-
cally? What should he do in order that the material veil covering
things be removed to reveal the realities that lie beyond?
Regarding this question, Ibn ‘ Arab! in a passage of the Fusu$ points to
a very interesting method. It is a way of discipline, a way of practice for
cultivating what he calls the ‘spiritual eyesight’ (‘ayn al-basirah). It is a
way that renders possible the inner transformation of man.
This inner transformation of man is explained by Ibn ‘Arab! in
terms of transition from the ‘worldly state of being {al-nash’ah
al-dunyawiyah) to the ‘otherworldly state of being’ {al-nash’ah
al-ukhrawiyah ). 26 The ‘worldly state of being’ is the way the major-
ity of men naturally are. It is characterized by the fact that man, in
his natural state, is completely under the sway of his body, and the
activity of his mind impeded by the physical constitution of the
bodily organs. Under such conditions, even if he tries to understand
something and grasp its reality, the object cannot appear to his mind
except in utter deformation. It is a state in which man stands
completely veiled from the essential realities of things.
In order to escape from this state, Ibn ‘Arab! says, man must
personally re-live the experiences of Elias-Enoch and re-enact in
himself the spiritual drama of the inner transformation symbolized
by these two names.
Elias (Ilyas) and Enoch (Idris) were two names assumed by one
and the same person. They were two names given to one person in
two different states. Enoch was a prophet before the time of Noah.
He was raised high by God and was placed in the sphere of the sun.
His name was Enoch in that supreme position. Later he was sent
down as an apostle to the Syrian town of Baalbek. In that second
state he was named Elias . 27
Elias who was sent down in this manner to the earth from the high
sphere of heaven did not stop halfway but became totally ‘earthly’.
He pushed the ‘elemental if unhurt) state of being’ on the earth to its
extreme limit. This symbolizes a man who, instead of exercising his
human reason in a lukewarm way as most people do, abandons
himself thoroughly and completely to the elemental life of nature to
the degree of being less than human.
16
Sufism and Taoism
While he was in that state, he had once a strange vision, in which
he saw a mountain called Lubnan split up and a horse of fire coming
out of it with a harness made entirely of fire. When the prophet
noticed it, he immediately rode the horse, bodily desires fell from
him and he turned into a pure intellect without desire. He was now
completely free from all that was connected with the physical self . 28
And only in this purified state could Elias see Reality as it really is.
However, Ibn ‘Arab! observes, even this supreme ‘knowledge of
God’ ( ma'rifah bi-Allah) attained by Elias was not a perfect one.
‘For in this (knowledge). Reality was in pure transcendence
(munazzah), and it was merely half of the (perfect) knowledge of
God ’. 29 This means that the pure intellect that has freed itself
completely from everything physical and material cannot by nature
see God except in His transcendence ( tanzih ). But transcendence is
only one of the two basic aspects of the Absolute. Its other half is
immanence (tashbih). All knowledge of God is necessarily one-
sided if it does not unite transcendence and immanence, because
God is transcendent and immanent at the same time. Who, how-
ever, can actually unite these two aspects in this knowledge of God?
It is, as we shall see in Chapter III, the prophet Muhammad, no one
else, not even Elias.
Keeping what has just been said in mind, let us try to follow the
footsteps of Enoch-Elias in more concrete, i.e., less mythopoeic,
terms.
As a necessary first step, one has to go down to the most elemen-
tal level of existence in imitation of the heavenly Enoch who went
down to the earth and began by living at the lowest level of earthly
life. As suggested above, one must not stop halfway. Then abandon-
ing all activity of Reason and not exercising any longer the thinking
faculty, one fully realizes the ‘animality’ ( hayawaniyah ) which lies
hidden at the bottom of every human being. One is, at this stage, a
pure animal with no mixture of shallow humanity. Such a man ‘is
freed from the sway of Reason and abandons himself to his natural
desires. He is an animal pure and simple ’. 30
In this state of unmixed animality, the man is given a certain kind
of mystical intuition, a particular sort of ‘unveiling’ ( kashf ). This
‘unveiling’ is the kind of ‘unveiling’ which is naturally possessed by
wild animals. They experience this kind of ‘unveiling’ because, by
nature, they do not exercise, and are therefore not bothered by, the
faculty of Reason.
In any case, the man who seriously intends to re-experience what
was once experienced by Enoch-Elias must, as a first step,
thoroughly actualize his animality; so thoroughly, indeed, that ‘in
the end is “unveiled” to him what is (naturally) ’’unveiled” to all
Dream and Reality
17
animals except mankind and jinn. Only then can he be sure that he
has completely actualized his animality ’. 31
Whether a man has attained to this degree of animality may be
known from outside by two symptoms: one is that he is actually
experiencing the animal ‘unveiling’, and the other is that he is
unable to speak. The explanation by Ibn ‘ Arabi of these two symp-
toms, particularly of the first one, is quite unusual and bizarre, at
least to our common sense. But it is difficult to deny the extraordi-
nary weight of reality it evokes in our minds. It strikes as real
because it is a description of his own personal experience as an
unusual visionary.
The first symptom, he says, of a man actually experiencing the
animal kashf , is that ‘he sees those who are being chastised (by the
angels) in the graves, and those who are enjoying a heavenly felicity,
that he sees the dead living, the dumb speaking, and the crippled
walking’. To the eye of such a man there appear strange scenes
which our ‘sane and healthy’ Reason would unhesitatingly consider
sheer insanity. Whether such a vision is rightly to be regarded as
animal experience is a question about which the ordinary mind is
not in a position to pass any judgment. For here Ibn ‘Arab! is talking
out of his personal experience . 32 But we can easily see at least that,
in the mind of a man who has completely liberated himself from the
domination of natural Reason, all those petty distinctions and dif-
ferentiations that have been established by the latter crumble away
in utter confusion, and things and events take on entirely different
and new forms. What Ibn ‘Arab! wants to say by all this is that all the
seemingly watertight compartments into which Reality is divided by
human Reason lose their ontological validity in such an ‘animal’
experience.
The second symptom is that such a man becomes dumb and is
unable to express himself ‘even if he wants and tries to describe in
words what he sees. And this is a decisive sign that he has actualized
his animality ’ 33 Here he gives an interesting description of his own
experience concerning this point:
Once I had a disciple who attained to this kind of ‘unveiling’. How-
ever, he did not keep silent about his (experience). This shows that he
did not realize his animality (in perfect manner.) When God made
me stand at that stage, I realized my animality completely. I had
visions and wanted to talk about what I witnessed, but I could not do
so. There was no actual difference between me and those who were
by nature speechless.
A man who has thus gone all the way to the furthest limit of
animality, if he still continues his spiritual exercise, may rise to the state
of pure Intellect . 34 The Reason (‘ aql ) which has been abandoned
18
Sufism and Taoism
before in order to go down to the lowest level of animality is an
‘aql attached to and fettered by his body. And now at this second
stage, he acquires a new ‘aql, or rather recovers possession of his
once-abandoned ‘aql in a totally different form . The new ‘aql , which
Ibn ‘Arabi calls ‘pure Intellect’ (‘aql mujarrad ), 35 functions on a
level where its activity cannot be impeded by anything bodily and
physical. The pure Intellect has nothing at all to do with the body.
And when a man acquires this kind of Intellect and sees things with
the eye of the pure Intellect itself, even ordinary things around him
begin to disclose to him their true ontological structure.
This last statement means, in terms of Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view,
that the things around us lose their independence in the eye of such
a man and reveal their true nature as so many ‘phenomena’ of things
belonging to the ontological stage above them.
(Such a man) has transformed himself into a pure Intellect away from
all natural material elements. He witnesses things that are the very
sources of what appears in the natural forms. And he comes to know
by a sort of intuitive knowledge why and how the things of nature are
just as they are . 36
In still more concrete terms, such a man is already in the ontological
stage above that of the things of nature. He is in the stage of the
Divine Names and Attributes. In the language of ontology peculiar
to Ibn ‘Arabi, he is in the stage of the ‘permanent archetypes’ (a‘yan
thabitah ), 37 and is looking down from that height on the infinitely
variegated things of the sensible world and understanding them in
terms of the realities (haqaiq) that lie beyond them.
He who has attained to this spiritual height is an ‘arif or ‘one who
knows (the transcendental truth)’, and his cognition is rightly to be
regarded as an authentic case oidhawq or ‘immediate tasting’. Such
a man is already ‘complete’ (tamm).
As we have remarked before, however, the cognition of Enoch
was only ‘half’ of the cognition of the Absolute reality. A man of
this kind is certainly tamm, but not yet ‘perfect’ (kamil). In order that
he might be kamil, he has to go a step further and raise himself to a
point where he sees that all, whether the ‘permanent archetypes’ or
the things of nature or again he himself who is actually perceiving
them, are after all, nothing but so many phenomenal forms of
the Divine Essence on different levels of being; that through all the
ontological planes, there runs an incessant and infinite flew of the
Divine Being . 38 Only when a man is in such a position is he a ‘Perfect
Man’ ( insan kamil).
The above must be taken as an introduction to the major prob-
lems of Ibn ‘Arabi and a summary exposition of the experiential
basis on which he develops his philosophical thinking. It has, I think,
Dream and Reality
19
made clear that Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s philosophy is, in brief, a theoretic
description of the entire world of Being as it is reflected in the eye of
the Perfect Man. It is, indeed, an extraordinary world-view because
it is a product of the extraordinary experience of an extraordinary
man. How, then, does the Perfect Man, that is, a man who has been
completely awakened, see the world? That will be the main theme
of the following chapters.
Before we close this chapter, however, it will not be out of place
to look back and re-examine the major concepts that have been
touched upon, and consider the relations that are recognizable
among them. In so doing we have to keep in mind that we are still at
a preliminary stage of our research, and that all we have done is
simply to adumbrate the structure of the whole system.
First and foremost, I would like to draw attention to a fact of
capital importance which has been suggested in the course of the
present chapter but not explicitly stated; namely, that the
philosophical thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, with all its perplexing complex-
ity and profundity, is dominated by the concept of Being. In this
sense, his thought is, in essence, through and through ontological.
The concept of Being in the double meaning of ens and esse is the
highest key-concept that dominates his entire thought. His philoso-
phy is theological, but it is more ontological than theological. That is
why even the concept of God (Allah) itself which in Islam generally
maintains its uncontested position is given here only a secondary
place . 39 As we shall see presently, God is a ‘phenomenal’, i.e.,
self-manifesting, form assumed by Something still more primordial,
the Absolute Being. Indeed, the concept of Being is the very found-
ation of this world-view.
However, it is by no means a common-sense notion of Being.
Unlike Aristotle for whom also Being had an overwhelming fascina-
tion, Ibn ‘Arab! does not start his philosophizing from the concept
of Being on the concrete level of ordinary reality. For him, the
things of the physical world are but a dream. His ontology begins -
and ends - with an existential grasp of Being at its abysmal depth,
the absolute Being which infinitely transcends the level of common
sense and which is an insoluble enigma to the minds of ordinary
men. It is, in short, an ontology based on mysticism, motivated by
what is disclosed only by the mystical experience of ‘unveiling’
(kashf).
The absolute Being intuitively grasped in such an extraordinary
experience reveals itself in an infinite number of degrees. These
degrees or stages of Being are classified into five major ones which
were introduced in this chapter as ‘five planes of Being’. Ibn ‘Arabi
himself designates each of these planes of Being hadrah or ‘pres-
ence’ . Each hadrah is a particular ontological dimension in which
20
Sufism and Taoism
the absolute Being (al-wujud al-mufiaq) manifests itself. And the
absolute Being in all the forms of self-manifestation is referred to by
the term haqq
The first of these five planes of Being, which is going to be our
topic in the next chapter, is Reality in its first and primordial
absoluteness or the absolute Being itself. It is the Absolute before 40
it begins to manifest itself, i.e., the Absolute in a state in which it
does not yet show even the slightest foreboding of self-
manifestation. The four remaining stages are the essential forms in
which the Absolute ‘descends’ from its absoluteness and manifests
itself on levels that are to us more real and concrete. This self-
manifesting activity of the Absolute is called by Ibn ‘Arab! tajalli, a
word which literally means disclosing something hidden behind a
veil.
the first hadrah (the Absolute in its
absoluteness)
the second hadrah (the Absolute mani-
festing itself as God)
the third hadrah (the Absolute mani-
festing itself as Lord)
the fourth hadrah (the Absolute mani-
festing itself as half-spiritual and
half-material things)
the fifth hadrah (the Absolute mani-
festing itself as the sensible world)
As this diagram shows, everything in Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view,
whether spiritual of material, invisible or visible, is a tajalli of the
Absolute except the Absolute in its absoluteness, which is, needless
to say, not a tajalli but the very source of all tajalliyat.
Another point to note is that these five planes constitute an
organic system of correspondences. Thus anything found in the
second hadrah, for example, besides being itself a ‘phenomenon’ of
some aspect of the first hadrah , finds its ontological repercussions in
all the three remaining hadarat each in a form peculiar to each
hadrah.
It is also important to remember that the first three planes are
purely spiritual in contrast with the fifth which is material, while the
fourth represents a border-line between the two.
With these preliminary notions in mind we shall turn immediately
to the first hadrah.
Dream and Reality
Notes
21
1. Fujiis al-Hikam , p. 117/103. In quoting from the Fuju$ al-Hikam (. Fw> .), I shall
always give two paginations: (1) that of the Cairo edition of 1321 A.H., containing
al-Qashani’s commentary, and (2) that of Affifi’s critical edition, Cairo, 1946 (1365
A.H.).
2. Fus., p. 199/104. ‘Imagination within imagination’ here means that the world as
we perceive it is a product of our personal faculty of imagination which is active
within the larger domain of the ‘objective’ Imagination. For a lucid and most
illuminating exposition of the concept of Imagination in this latter sense, see Henry
Corbin L’ imagination creatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn ‘Arabi, Paris, 1958.
3. Fus., p. 200/159.
4. Fu$., p. 200/159
5. Fuj., p. 110/99.
6. Fu$., p. 111/99.
7. ibid.
8. i.e., a system of symbols pointing to the Absolute.
9. ja'ala-ha haqqa.
10. Fuj., p. 112/101.
11. Fuj., p. 113/101.
12. Fus., pp. 112-113/101. The following words of al-Qashani are found in his
commentary, p. 113.
13. literally, (Divine) Presences. They are the five fundamental modes or dimen-
sions of the self-manifestation of the Absolute.
14. p. 110. It is to be remembered that this is not the only form in which the ‘planes
of Being’ are presented. Al-Qashani himself gives in another place a slightly different
explanation (see later, Chapter XI).
15. to be explained in the following chapter.
16. to be discussed in Chapter VII together with the next plane, the plane of the
Actions.
17. This is an intermediary plane which lies between the properly Divine domain of
Being (1,2, 3) and the material world of senses, the so-called ‘reality’ (5). It is a world
sui generis of eternal Archetypes or Images, in which the originally formless Ideas
assume ‘imaginal’ forms and in which the material things of our empirical world
appear as ‘subtle ( latif ) bodies’ having been divested of their grossly material forms.
18. p. 111/99.
19. ibid.
22
Sufism and Taoism
20. p. 110.
21. Commentary on the Fu$u$, p. 74. This commentary is found in the above-
mentioned Cairo edition by Affifi. Throughout the present work, this commentary
will be referred to as Affifi, Fu$., Com.
22. Fu$., pp. 84-86/85-86.
23. i.e., it is a symbol, and needs ‘interpretation’.
24. i.e., God would not have stopped him.
25. The last sentence means: God redeemed Isaac with a sacrificial ram. But the
truth is that the whole matter merely looked to Abraham as ‘redeeming’ . There was,
in fact, no ‘redeeming’ because from the beginning it was not God’s intention to
make Abraham sacrifice his son. Since, however, Abraham had misunderstood
God’s intention, what God did to his son was in his eyes an act of redemption.
26. Fu$., pp. 234—235/186.
27. Fus., p. 227/181.
28. Fw>., p. 228/181.
29. ibid.
30. Fus., p. 235/186.
31. ibid.
32. Besides, all his statements are, in general, based on his personal experience,
whether he explicitly says so or not. And this is one of the reasons why his description
(of anything) is so powerful and persuasive.
33. These words, together with the following quotation, are from Fuj., p. 235/186-
187.
34. i.e., a spiritual state in which the intellect (‘ aql ) is free from all physical fetters
(al-Qashanl).
35. The Arabic here is a bit confusing because the same word ‘aql is used for both
forms: the ‘physical’ or ‘natural’ ‘aql which a mystic must abandon and the pure
‘spiritual’ ‘aql which he acquires afterwards.
36. Fu$., p. 236/187.
37. About the ‘permanent archetypes’ details will be given later.
38. Fuf., p. 236/187.
39. unless, of course, we use, as Ibn ‘Arab! himself often does, the word Allah in a
non- technical sense as a synonym of the Absolute ( haqq ).
40. Strictly speaking, the word ‘before’ is improper here because the ‘absoluteness’
is beyond all temporal relations: there can be neither ‘before nor after in the
temporal sense.
II The Absolute in its Absoluteness
In religious non-philosophical discourse the Absolute is normally
indicated by the word God ox Allah. But in the technical terminol-
ogy of Ibn ‘Arabi, the word Allah designates the Absolute not in its
absoluteness but in a state of determination. The truly Absolute is
Something which cannot be called even God. Since, however, one
cannot talk about anything at all without linguistic designation, Ibn
‘Arabi uses the word haqq (which literally means Truth or Reality)
in referring to the Absolute.
The Absolute in such an absoluteness or, to use a peculiarly
monotheistic expression, God per se is absolutely inconceivable and
inapproachable. The Absolute in this sense is unknowable to us
because it transcends all qualifications and relations that are
humanly conceivable. Man can neither think of anything nor talk
about anything without first giving it some qualification and thereby
limiting it in some form or another. Therefore, the Absolute in its
unconditional transcendence and essential isolation cannot be an
object of human knowledge and cognition. In other words, as far as
it remains in its absoluteness it is Something unknown and unknow-
able. It is forever a mystery, the Mystery of mysteries.
The Absolute in this sense is said to be ankar al-nakirat, i.e., ‘the
most indeterminate of all indeterminates’, 1 because it has no qual-
ities and bears no relation to anything beside itself. Since it is
absolutely indeterminate and undetermined it is totally unknow-
able. Thus the phrase ankar-nakirat means ‘the most unknown of all
the unknown’.
From the particular viewpoint of the Divine self-manifestation
(tajalli) which will be one of our major topics in what follows, the
Absolute in the state of unconditional transcendence is said to be at
the level of ‘unity’ ( ahadiyah ). There is as yet no tajalli. Tajalli is
only expected of it in the sense that it is to be the very source of
tajalli which has not yet begun. And since there is actually no
occurrence of tajalli , there is absolutely nothing recognizable here.
In this respect the Absolute at this stage is the One ( al-ahad ). The
L
24 Sufism and Taoism
word ‘one’ in this particular context is not the ‘one which is a
whole of ‘many’. Nor is it even ‘one’ in opposition to ‘many . It
means the essential, primordial and absolutely unconditional sim-
plicity of Being where the concept of opposition is meaningless.
The stage of Unity is an eternal stillness. Not the slightest move-
ment is there observable. The self- manifestation of the Absolute
does not yet occur. Properly speaking we cannot speak even nega-
tively of any self-manifestation of the Absolute except when we
look back at this stage from the later stages of Being. The tajalli of
the Absolute begins to occur only at the next stage, that of the
‘oneness’ ( wahidiyah ) which means the Unity of the Many.
It is impossible that the Absolute manifest itself in its absolute-
ness. ‘Those who know God in the true sense assert that there can
never be self-manifestation in the state of Unity , 2 because, not
only in the normal forms of cognitive experience in the phenomenal
world but also even in the highest state of mystical experience, there
is, according to Ibn ‘Arab!, kept intact the distinction between the
one who sees ( nazir ) and the object seen ( manzur ). Mystics often
speak of ‘becoming one with God’, which is the so-called unio
mystica. In the view of Ibn ‘ Arabi, however, a complete unification
is but a fallacy on their part or on the part of those who misconstrue
their expressions. If a mystic, for example, describes his experience
of unio mystica by saying, ‘I have seen God through Him’
( Nazartu-hu bi-hi) meaning ‘I have transcended my own existence
into God Himself and have seen Him there with his own eyes’, and
supposing that the expression is true to what he has really experi-
enced, yet there remains here a distinction between himself who
sees and himself who is seen as an object.
If, instead of saying ‘I have seen Him through Him , he said, I
have seen Him through myself’, ( Nazartu-hu bi), does the expres-
sion describe the experience of the Unity? No, by the very fact that
there intervenes ‘I’ (ana) the absolute Unity is lost. What about,
then, if he said ‘ I have seen Him through Him and myself’ ( Nazartu-
hu bi-hi wa-bi )? Even in that case - supposing again that the
expression is a faithful description of the mystic s experience — the
pronominal suffix -tu (in nazartu ) meaning ‘I (did such-and-such a
thing)’ suggests a split. That is to say, the original Unity is no longer
there. Thus in every case ‘there is necessarily a certain relation
which requires two elements: the subject and object of seeing. And
this cannot but eliminate the Unity, even if (the mystic in such an
experience) only sees himself through himself’. 3
Thus even in the highest degree of mystical experience, that of
unio, the prime Unity must of necessity break up and turn into
duality. The Absolute on the level of Unity, in other words, remains
for ever unknowable. It is the inescapable destiny of the human act
The Absolute in its Absoluteness
25
of cognition that, whenever man tries to know something, there
comes in a particular relation, a particular condition which impedes
an immediate grasp of the object. Man is unable to know anything
without taking up some position, without looking at it from some
definite point. The Absolute, in its absoluteness, however, is pre-
cisely Something which transcends all such relations and aspects.
Is it impossible, then, for man to say even a word about the Abso-
?■ lute? Can we not predicate anything at all of the absolute Absolute?
| As is clear from what has just been said, strictly speaking no predi-
cation is possible. Philosophically, however, there is one single thing
which we predicate of the Absolute on this level. It is ‘being’. As
long as it is a word with a meaning, it also delimits and specifies the
Absolute. But within the boundaries of philosophical thinking,
‘being’ is the most colorless - and therefore the least specifying
predication thinkable. It describes the Absolute with the highest
degree of unconditionality.
The Absolute viewed from this standpoint is called by Ibn ‘Arab!
dhat 4 or ‘essence’. The world dhat in this context means absolute
Being (wujud mu(laq), Being qua Being, or absolute Existence, that
is, Existence viewed in its unconditional simplicity. As the epithet
‘absolute’ indicates, it should not be taken in the sense of a limited
and determined existent or existence; it means Something beyond
all existents that exist in a limited way, Something lying at the very
source of all such existents existentiating them. It is Existence as the
ultimate ground of everything.
The ontological conception of the Absolute is a basic thesis that
runs through the whole of the Fu$us. But Ibn ‘Arabi in this book
does not deal with it as a specifically philosophic subject. On behalf
of the Master, al-QashanT explains the concept of dhat scholastic-
ally. He considers it one of the three major ideas that concern the
very foundation of Ibn ‘ ArabF s thought. The whole passage which is
reproduced here is entitled ‘an elucidation of the true nature of the
Essence at the level of Unity’. 5
The Reality called the ‘Essence at the level of Unity’ ( al-dhat al-
ahadiyah) in its true nature is nothing other than Being (wujud) pure
and simple in so far as it is Being. It is conditioned neither by
non-determination nor by determination, for in itself it is too sacred
(muqaddas) to be qualified by any property and any name. It has no
quality, no delimitation; there is not even a shadow of multiplicity in
it.
It is neither a substance nor an accident, for a substance must have a
quiddity other than existence, a quiddity by which it is a substance as
differentiated from all other existents, and so does an accident which,
furthermore, needs a place (i.e., substratum) which exists and in
which it inheres.
26
Sufism and Taoism
And since everything other than the Necessary Being ( wajib ) is either
a substance or an accident, the Being qua Being cannot be anything
other than the Necessary Being. Every determined (i.e., non-
necessary) being is existentiated by the Necessary Being. Nay, it is
essentially [no other than the Necessary Being] 6 ; it is entitled to be
regarded as ‘other’ than the Necessary Being only in respect of its
determination. (Properly speaking) nothing can be ‘other’ than it in
respect to its essence.
Such being the case (it must be admitted that in the Necessary Being)
existence is identical with essence itself, for anything which is not
Being qua Being is sheer non-Being (‘ adam ). And since non-Being is
‘nothing’ pure and simple, we do not have to have recourse, in order
to distinguish Being qua Being from non-Being, to a particular act of
negation, namely, the negation of the possibility of both being com-
prehended under a third term . 7 Nor does Being ever accept non-
Being; otherwise it would, after accepting non-Being, be existence
which is non-existent. Likewise, pure non-Being, on its part, does not
accept Being. Besides, if either one of them (e.g., Being) accepted its
contradictory (e.g., non-Being) it would turn into its own contradic-
tory (i .e., non-Being) while being still actually itself (i.e., Being). But
this is absurd.
Moreover, in order that anything may ‘accept’ something else there
must necessarily be multiplicity in it. Being qua Being, however, does
not include any multiplicity at all. That which does accept Being and
non-Being is (not Being qua Being but) the ‘archetypes’ ( a'yan ) and
their permanent states in the intelligible world, becoming visible with
Being and disappearing with non-Being.
Now everything (in the concrete world of ‘reality’) is existent through
Being. So in itself such an existent is not Being. Otherwise when it
comes into existence, we would have to admit that its existence had
already existence even before its own (factual) existence. But Being
qua Being is from the beginning existent, and its existence is its own
essence. Otherwise, its quiddity would be something different from
existence, and it would not be Being. If it were not so, then (we would
have to admit that) when it came into existence, its existence had an
existence (i.e., as its own quiddity) even before its own existence.
This is absurd.
Thus Being itself must necessarily exist by its own essence, and not
through existence of some other thing. Nay, it is that which makes
every other existent exist. This because all other things exist only
through Being, without which they would simply be nothing at all.
It is important to notice that al-Qashani in this passage refers to
three categories of Being; (1) Being qua Being, that is, absolute
Being, (2) the archetypes, and (3) the concrete beings or existents of
the sensible world. This triple division is a faithful reflection of the
main conception of Ibn ‘Arabi himself. In the Fu$u$, he does not
present a well-organized ontological discussion of this problem
from this particular point of view. It is nonetheless one of the
The Absolute in its Absoluteness
27
cardinal points of his philosophy. A concise systematic presentation
is ound in his short treatise, Kitab Insha’ al-Dawa’ir . 8 There he
mentions the three categories, or, as he calls them, three ‘degrees’
or ‘strata’ (maratib), of Being, and asserts that there can be no other
ontological category. These three are: (1) the absolute Being (2) the
limited and determined Being, and (3) something of which neither
Being nor non-Being can be predicated. The second of the three is
the world of the sensible things while the third, which he says can
neither be said to exist nor not to exist, is the world of the
archetypes.
As for the ontological nature of the archetypes and the sensible
things we shall have occasions to discuss it in detail later on. The first
degree of Being alone is what interests us in the present context.
Know that the things that exist constitute three degrees, there being
no other degree of Being. Only these three can be the objects of our
knowledge, for anything other than these is sheer non-Being which
can neither be known nor be unknown and which has nothing at all to
do with anything whatsoever.
With this understanding I would assert that of these three
(categories) of things the first is that which possesses existence by
itself, i.e., that which is existent per se in its very essence. The
existence of this thing cannot come from non-Being; on the contrary,
it is the absolute Being having no other source than itself. Otherwise,
that thing (i.e., the source) would have preceded it in existence’
Indeed, it is the very source of Being to all the things that exist; it is
their Creator who determines them, divides them and disposes them.
It is, in brief, the absolute Being with no limitations and conditions.
Praise be to Him! He is Allah, the Living, the Everlasting, the
Omniscient, the One, who wills whatever He likes, the Omnipotent . 9
It is remarkable that Ibn ‘Arabi, in the concluding sentence of the
passage just quoted, explicitly identifies the absolute Being with
Allah, the Living, Omniscient, Ominpotent God of the Qoran. It
indicates that he has moved from the ontological level of discourse
with which he began to the religious level of discourse peculiar to
the living faith of the believer.
As we have remarked before, the Reality in its absoluteness is, in
Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysical-ontological system, an absolutely
unknowable Mystery that lies far beyond the reach of human cogni-
tion. Properly speaking, in the name of Allah we should see the
self-manifestation ( tajalli ) of this Mystery already at work,
although, to be sure, it is the very first beginning of the process and
is, in comparison with the remaining levels of tajalli, the highest and
the most perfect form assumed by the Mystery as it steps out of its
abysmal darkness. However, from the viewpoint of a believer who
talks about it on the level of discourse directly connected with his
28
Sufism and Taoism
living faith, the absolute Being cannot but take the form of
Allah. Existence per se cannot in itself be an object of religious
belief.
This fact makes it also clear that whatever we want to say about
the absolute Being and however hard we try to describe it as it really
is, we are willy-nilly forced to talk about it in one aspect or another
of its self-manifestation, for the Absolute in the state of non-
manifestation never comes into human language. The absolute
Reality in itself remains for ever a ‘hidden treasure , hidden in its
own divine isolation.
It will be natural, then, that, from whatever point of view we may
approach the problem, we see ourselves ultimately brought back to
the very simple proposition from which we started*, namely , that the
Absolute in its absoluteness is essentially unknown and unknow-
able. In other words, the inward aspect of the Absolute defies every
attempt at definition. One cannot, therefore, ask, What is the
Absolute?’ And this is tantamount to saying that the Absolute has
no ‘quiddity’ ( mahiyah ).'°
This, however, does not exclude the possibility of a believer
justifiably asking what is the mahiyah of God. But the right answer
to this question can take only one form. And that sole answer is,
according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, represented by the answer given by Moses
in the Qoran.
The reference is to XXVI (23-24) where Moses, asked by
Pharaoh, ‘And what is the Lord of the worlds?’ ( Ma rabbu al-
‘alamina?), answers, ‘The Lord of the heavens and earth and what is
between them’. Ibn ‘Arab! considers the question hurled at Moses
by Pharaoh (‘ What is ...?’) as a philosophical one asking about the
mahiyah of God, asking for a definition of God. And he gives the
situation of this dialogue quite an original interpretation.
He argues: this question was asked by Pharaoh not because he
was ignorant, but simply because he wanted to try Moses. Knowing
as he did to what degree a true apostle of God must know about
God, Pharaoh wanted to try Moses as to whether the latter was truly
an apostle as he claimed to be. Moreover, he was sly enough to
attempt cheating those who were present, that is, he designed the
question in such a way that, even if Moses were a genuine apostle,
those present would get the impression of Moses being far inferior
to Pharaoh, for it was to be expected from the very beginning that
Moses - or anybody else for that matter - could not in any case give
a satisfactory answer to the question. However, Ibn Arabi does not
clarify the point. On his behalf, al-Qashani gives the following
explanation. 12
By asking, ‘What is God?’, Pharaoh gave those who were there
the impression that God had somehow a mahiyah in addition to His
The Absolute in its Absoluteness
29
existence. The onlookers were thereby led to the idea that, since
God had a mahiyah , a true apostle must know it and must, there-
fore, be able to give a satisfactory answer to the question. Since,
however, there can be no ‘definition’ ( hadd ) of God in the logical
sense, a true apostle - if he is a true apostle, and not a fraud - can
never give a ‘satisfactory’ answer in the form of a definition. But in
the eyes of those who are not conversant with the real nature of the
problem, a vague non-definitive answer is a sign indicating that the
man who gives such an answer is not a real ‘knower’.
Now the actual answer given by Moses runs: ‘the Lord of the
heavens and earth and what is between them”. This is just the right
answer and the only possible and the most perfect answer in this
case. It is, as Ibn ‘Arabi puts it, ‘the answer of those who truly know
the matter’. Thus Moses in his answer said what there was really to
be said . And Pharaoh, too, knew perfectly well that the right answer
could not be anything other than this. Superficially, however, the
answer looks as if it were not a real answer. So Pharaoh achieved his
aim of producing the impression in the minds of the onlookers that
Moses was ignorant of God, while he, Pharaoh, knew the truth
about God.
Is it wrong, then, philosophically to ask, ‘What is God?’ as
Pharaoh did? No, Ibn ‘Arabi says, 13 the question in this form is not
at all wrong in itself. To ask about the mahiyah of something is
nothing other than asking about its reality or real essence. And
God does possess reality. Strictly speaking, asking about the
mahiyah of something is not exactly the same as asking for its logical
definition. To ask about the mahiyah of a thing, as understood by
Ibn ‘Arabi, is to ask about the reality ( haqiqah ) of that object, which
is unique and not shared by anything else. 14 ‘Definition’ in the
logical sense is different from this. It consists of a combination of a
genus and a specific difference, and such a combination is thinkable
only in regard to things (i.e., universal) that allow of common
participation.
Anything, therefore, that has no logical genus in which to belong
cannot be ‘defined’ , but this does not in any way prevent such a thing
having its own unique reality which is not common to other things.
More generally speaking, ‘there is nothing’, as al-Qashani
observes, 15 ‘that has not its own reality ( haqiqah ) by which it is just
as it is to the exclusion of all other things. Thus the question (what is
God?) is a perfectly justifiable one in the view of those who know
the truth. Only those who do not possess real knowledge assert that
anything that does not admit of definition cannot be asked as to
“what” (ma) it is’.
Moses, in reply to the question: ‘What is God?’, says that He is
‘the Lord of the heavens and earth and what is between them, if you
30
Sufism and Taoism
have a firm faith’. Ibn ‘Arabi sees here ‘a great secret’ ( sirr kabir)
that is to say, a profound and precious truth hidden under a seem-
ingly commonplace phrase.
Here is a great secret. Observe that Moses, when asked to give an
essential definition ( hadd dhatl ), answered by mentioning the ‘act’
(fi'l )' 6 of God.
Moses, in other words, identified 17 the essential definition (of God)
with the (essential) relation of God to the forms of the things by
which He manifests Himself in the world or the forms of the things
which make their appearance in Him. Thus it is as though he said, in
reply to the question: ‘What is the Lord of the worlds?’, ‘It is He in
whom appear all the forms of the worlds ranging from the highest -
which is the heaven - to the lowest - which is the earth, or rather the
forms in which He appears ’. 18
Pharaoh, as the Qoran relates, sets out to show that such an answer
can come only from a man who is ignorant of God or who has but a
superficial knowledge of God. He tries thereby to prove in the
presence of his subjects his superiority over Moses. The latter,
against this, emphasizes that God is ‘the Lord of the East and West
and what is between them, if you but have understanding’ (XXVI,
28 ).
This second statement of Moses is interpreted by Ibn ‘Arabi in
such a way that it turns out to be a symbolic expression of his own
ontology. The East, he says, is the place from which the sun makes
its appearance. It symbolizes the visible and material aspect of
theophany. The West is the place into which the sun goes down to
conceal itself from our eyes. It symbolizes the invisible aspect (i.e.,
ghayb) of the self-manifestation of the Absolute. And these two
forms of theophany, visible and invisible, correspond to the two
great Names of God: the Outward (al-zahir) and the Inward ( al -
batin). The visible theopany constitutes the world of concrete mat-
erial things (‘ alam al-ajsam ), while the invisible theophany results in
the rise of the non-material spiritual world (‘alam al-arwah). Natu-
rally ‘what lies between the East and West’ would refer to those
forms that are neither purely material nor purely spiritual, that
is, what Ibn ‘Arabi calls amthal or Images on the level of
Imagination . 19
Here Ibn ‘Arabi draws attention to a fact which seems to him to
be of decisive importance; namely that, of the two answers given by
Moses, the first is qualified by a conditional clause: ‘if you have a
firm faith’ . 20 This indicates that the answer is addressed to those who
have yaqin, i.e., the ‘people of unveiling’ (kashf) and immediate
unitative knowledge ( wujud ). 21 Thus in the first answer Moses
simply confirms what the true ‘knowers’ have yaqin about. What,
then, is the content of this yaqin which Moses is said simply to be
The Absolute in its Absoluteness
31
confirming here? The answer is given by al-Qashani in the following
way . 22
The truth of the matter is that it is an impossibility to give a direct
answer to the question about the reality of God without any refer-
ence to any relation. Thus Moses, instead of anwering directly to the
question asked concerning the mahlyah (of God), mentions the act
(of theophany). He thereby indicates that the Absolute is above all
limitation and definition, and that it does not come under any genus
nor can it be distinguished by any specific difference because it
comprehends the whole in itself.
So (instead of trying to define the Absolute) Moses has recourse to an
explication of the reality of the Lordship ( rububiyah ). In this way
(instead of explaining God) he is content with explaining what is
attributed to Him, namely with stating that He is the One to whom
belongs the Lordship of the world of the higher spirits, the world of
the lower objects and all the determinations, relations and attribu-
tions that lie between the two worlds. He states that God is the
Outward by his Lordship over all and the Inward by his inmost nature
(huwiyah, lit. ‘He-ness’) which resides in all, because He is the very
essence of everything that is perceived in any form of experience.
Moses makes it clear that the definition of God is impossible except in
this way, that is, except by putting Him in relation to all without
limitation or to some (particular things). This latter case occurs when
he says (for example): ‘(He is) your Lord and the Lord of your
ancient ancestors' .
In contrast to the first answer which is of such a nature, the second
one is qualified by a different conditional clause: ‘if you have
understanding’ , or more precisely ‘if you know how to exercise your
reason ’. 23 This clause indicates that the second answer is addressed
to those who understand everything by Reason (‘ aql ), those, in
other words, who ‘bind and delimit’ things 24 in their understanding.
These people are those whom Ibn ‘Arab! calls ‘the people of
binding, limiting and restricting’ (ahl ‘aql wa-taqyid wa-hasr ).
These are the people who grasp any truth only through arguments
created by their own reason, i.e., the faculty of setting formal
limitations.
The gist of both the first and the second answer consists in
identifying the object asked about (i.e., the Absolute) with the very
essence of the world of Being. Moses, to put it in another way, tried
to explain the Absolute in its self-revealing aspect, instead of mak-
ing the futile effort to explain it in its absoluteness. Pharaoh who
asked that question - apart from his bad intention - and Moses who
replied as he did, were right each in his own way. When Pharaoh
asked him ‘What is God?’ Moses knew that what Pharaoh was
asking for was not a ‘definition’ of God in the philosophical or
logical sense. Therefore he did give the above-mentioned answers.
32 Sufism and Taoism
If he had thought that Pharaoh’s intention was to ask for a
definition, he would not have answered at all to the question,
but would have pointed out to Pharaoh the absurdity of such a
question . 25
All this has, I think, made it clear that for Ibn ‘ ArabI the Absolute in
its absoluteness is an ‘absolute mystery’ ( ghayb mutlaq), and that
the only way to approach the Absolute is to look at it in its self-
revealing aspect. Is it then possible for us to see the Absolute itself
at least in this latter aspect? Will the Unknown-Unknowable trans-
form itself into Something known and knowable? The answer, it
would seem, must be in the affirmative. Since, according to a Tradi-
tion, the ‘hidden treasure’ unveils itself because it ‘desires to be
known’ , self- manifestation must mean nothing other than the Abso-
lute becoming knowable and known.
But, on the other hand, the Absolute in this aspect is no longer the
Absolute in itself, for it is the Absolute in so far as it reveals itself. In
Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view, the world of Being consists of material
objects ( ajsam , sg. jism) and non-material or spiritual beings
( arwah , sg. ruh). Both these categories are the forms of self-
manifestation assumed by the Absolute. In this sense everything,
whether material or spiritual, reveals and discloses the Absolute in
its own way. However, there is a certain respect in which these
things cover up the Absolute as thick impenetrable veils in such a
way that the Absolute hides itself behind them and is invisible in
itself. As a famous Tradition says: ‘God hides Himself behind
seventy thousand veils of light and darkness. If He took away these
veils, the fulgurating lights of His face would at once destroy the
sight of any creature who dared to look at it.’
In referring to this Tradition, Ibn ‘Arabi makes the following
remark : 26
Here God describes Himself (as being concealed) by veils of dark-
ness, which are the physical things, and by (veils) of light, which are
fine spiritual things, for the world consists of ‘coarse’ things and ‘fine’
things, so that the world in itself constitutes a veil over itself. Thus the
world does not see the Absolute as directly as it sees its own self . 27
The world, in this way, is forever covered by a veil which is never
removed. Besides (it is covered by) its knowledge (or consciousness)
that it is something different and distinct from its Creator by the fact
that it stands in need of the latter . 28 But (in spite of this inner need) it
cannot participate in the essential necessity which is peculiar to the
existence of the Absolute and can never attain it.
Thus the Absolute remains for this reason forever unknowable by an
intimate knowledge, because no contingent being has access to it
(i.e., the essential necessity of the Absolute).
The Absolute in its Absoluteness 33
Here again we come across the eternal paradox: the things of the
world, both material and non-material, are, on the one hand, so
many forms of the Divine self-manifestation, but on the other, they
act exactly as veils hindering a (complete) self-manifestation of
God. They cover up God and do not allow man to see Him directly.
In this latter sense, the created world in relation to the absolute
Absolute is referred to in the Qoran by the pronoun ‘they’ (hum).
Hum is grammatically a ‘pronoun of absence’ . It is a word designat-
ing something which is not actually present. The creatures, in other
words, are not there in the presence of the Absolute. And this
‘absence’ precisely is the ‘curtain’.
The recurring Qoranic phrase hum alladhina kafaru ‘they are
those who cover up’ means, according to the interpretation of Ibn
‘Arabi, nothing other than this situation of ‘absence’. The verb
kafara in the Qoran stands in opposition to amana ‘to believe in’,
and signifies ‘infidelity’ or ‘disbelief’. But etymologically the verb
means ‘to cover up’. And for Ibn ‘Arabi, who takes the word in this
etymological meaning, alladhina kafaru does not mean ‘those who
disbelieve (in God)’ but ‘those who cover and veil’. Thus it is an
expression referring to people who, by their ‘absence’, conceal the
Absolute behind the curtain of their own selves . 29
The whole world, in this view, turns out to be a ‘veil’ (hijab)
concealing the Absolute behind it. So those who attribute Being to
the world enclose the Absolute within the bounds of a number of
determinate forms and thereby place it beyond a thick veil. When,
for example, the Christians assert that ‘God is Messiah, Son of
Mary’ (V, 72), they confine the Absolute in an individual form and
lose sight of the absoluteness of the Absolute. This makes them
absent from the Absolute, and they veil it by the personal form of
Messiah. It is in the sense that such people are Kafirs, i.e., ‘those
who cover up (-Hhose who disbelieve )’. 30
The same thing is also explained by Itj>n ‘Arabi in another interest-
ing way. The key-concept here is the Divine self-manifestation
(tajalli). And the key-symbol he uses is that of a mirror, which
incidentally, is one of his most favorite images.
The Absolute, ‘in order that it be known’, discloses itself in the
world. But it discloses itself strictly in accordance with the require-
ment of each individual thing, in the form appropriate to and
required by the nature of ‘preparedness’ ( isti‘dad ) of each indi-
vidual existent. There can absolutely be no other form of self-
manifestation. And when the locus, i.e., the individual thing in
which the Absolute discloses itself happens to be a human being
endowed with consciousness, he sees by intuition the self-revealing
34 Sufism and Taoism
Absolute in himself. Yet, since it is after all the Absolute in a
particular form determined by his own ‘preparedness’ , what he sees
in himself is nothing other than his own image or form (surah ) l as
mirrored in the Absolute. He never sees the Absolute itself. His
Reason may tell him that his own image is visible there reflected in
the Divine mirror, but, in spite of this consciousness based on
reasoning, he cannot actually see the mirror itself; he sees only
himself.
The Divine Essence (dhat) discloses itself only in a form required by
the very ‘preparedness’ of the locus in which occurs the self-
manifestation. There can be no other way.
Thus the locus of the Divine self-manifestation does not see any-
thing, other than its own form as reflected in the mirror of the
Absolute It does not see the Absolute itself. Nor is it at all possible
for it to do so, although it is fully aware of the fact that it sees its own
form only in the Absolute. .
This is similar to what happens to a man looking into a mirror in the
empirical world. When you are looking at forms or your own form in
a mirror you do not see the mirror itself, although you know well that
you see these forms or your own form only in the mirror.
Thus we are faced with a curious fact that the forms or images of
things in a mirror, precisely because they are visible, intervene
between our eyesight and the mirror and act as a veil concealing t e
mirror from our eyes.
This symbol (of mirror) has been put forward by God as a particularly
appropriate one for His essential self-manifestation so that the per-
son who happens to be the locus of this Divine self-manifestation
might know what exactly is the thing he is seeing. Nor can there be a
symbol closer than this to (the relation between) contemplation (on
the part of man) and self-manifestation (on the part of God).
(If you have some doubt of this) try to see the body of the mirror
while looking at an image in it. You will not be able to do so, nevei.
So much so that some people who have experienced this with regard
to images reflected in the mirror maintain that the form seen in the
mirror stands between the eyesight of the person who is looking and
the mirror itself. This is the furthest limit which (an ordinary intel-
lect) can reach . 31
Thus the view that the image in the mirror behaves as a ‘veil
concealing the mirror itself is the highest knowledge attainable by
ordinary people; that is, by those who understand things through
their intellect. But Ibn ‘ Arabi does not forget to suggest in the same
breath that for those who are above the common level of under-
standing there is a view which goes one step further than this. The
deepest truth of the matter, he says, is represented by a view which
he already expounded in his al-Futuhdt al-Makkiyah.
The Absolute in its Absoluteness
35
The ‘deepest truth’ here referred to is explained by al-Qashani as
follows: 32
That which is seen in the mirror of the Absolute is the form of the
man who is looking; it is not the form of the Absolute. To be sure, it is
no other than the very Essence of the Absolute that discloses itself to
his eye, but this self-manifestation is done in his (i.e., the man’s)
form, not in its (i.e., the Essence’s) form.
However, the form seen in (the mirror of) His Essence is far from
constituting a veil between Him and the man who is looking. On the
contrary, it is the Essence at the level of Unity ( ahadiyah ) disclosing
itself to the man in his form. And shallow indeed is the view of those
who assert in connection with the (symbol of the) mirror that the
form (seen) works as a veil between it and the man who sees (the
form therein).
And al-Qashani adds that a deep understanding of this nature is
only obtainable in the experience of immediate vision and ‘unveil-
ing’. This may be explained somewhat more theoretically and
briefly in the following manner.
The image reflected in the mirror of the Absolute has two differ-
ent aspects. It is, in the first place, a self-manifestation of the
Absolute in a particular form in accordance with the demand of the
‘preparedness’ of the locus. But in the second place, it is the Form of
the Divine self-manifestation, however much it may be particular-
ized by the demand of the locus. The reflected image behaves as a
concealing veil because the spiritual eye of an ordinary man is
riveted to the first of these aspects. And as the second aspect looms
in the consciousness of the man through the profound experience of
‘unveiling’ the reflected image ceases to be a veil, and the man
begins to see not only his own image but the Form of the Absolute
assuming the form of his own.
This, Ibn ‘Arabi asserts, is the highest limit beyond which the
human mind is never allowed to go. 33
Once you have tasted this, you have tasted the utmost limit beyond
which there is no further stage as far as concerns the creatures. So do
not covet more than this. Do not make yourself weary by trying to go
up further than this stage, for there is no higher stage than this.
Beyond this there is sheer nothing.
We may remark that the ‘highest limit’ here spoken of is the stage
peculiar to the Perfect Man. Even for the Perfect Man there can be
no spiritual stage realizable at which he is able to know the Absolute
as it really is, i.e., in its absoluteness. Yet, such a man is in a position
to intuit the Absolute as it reveals itself in himself and in all other
things. This is the final answer given to the question: To what extent
and in what form can man know the Absolute?
36
Sufism and Taoism
And this will be the only and necessary conclusion to be reached
concerning the metaphysical capability of the Perfect Man if we are
to start from the basic assumption that Divine Essence ( dhat ) and
Unity ( ahadiyah ) are completely identical with each other in indi-
cating one and the same thing, namely, the Absolute in its absolute-
ness as the highest metaphysical stage of Reality. There is, however,
another theoretical possibility. If, following some of the outstanding
philosophers of the school of Ibn ‘ Arabi, we are to divide the highest
level of Reality into two metaphysical strata and distinguish be-
tween them as (1) dhat, the absolute Absolute and (2) ahadiyah
which, although it is still the same absolute Absolute, is a stage
lower than dhat in the sense that it represents the Absolute as it is
turning toward self-manifestation - then, we should say that the
Perfect Man in his ecstatic experience is capable of knowing the
Absolute qua Absolute just before it reveals itself in eidetic and
sensible forms, that is, the Absolute at the stage of ahadiyah, though
to be sure the Absolute at the stage of dhat still remains unknown
and unknowable.
Notes
1. Fuj., p. 238/188. We may remark in this connection that in another passage (p.
188) Ibn ‘Arabi uses the same phrase, ankar al-nakirat , in reference to the word shay ’
‘thing’. He means thereby that the concept of ‘thing’ is so indeterminate that it is
comprehensive of anything whatsoever.
2. Fuy., p. 95/91.
3. ibid.
4. Here and elsewhere in this book in the conceptual analysis of the Absolute at the
stage of absoluteness I follow the tradition of those who completely identify the
metaphysical stage of dhat with that of ahadiyah, like Qashani and Qaysari. It is to be
remarked that there are others (like Jill) who distinguish between dhat and ahadiyah .
For them, dhat is the absolute Absolute while ahadiyah is the next metaphysical stage
at which the Absolute discloses itself as the ultimate source of tajalti.
5. Fu$., Com., p. 3.
6. The printed text is here obviously defective. I read: bal huwa bi-i‘tibdr al-haqiqah
[‘ aynu-hu , wa-ghayru-hu ] bi-itibar al-ta‘ayyun.
7. because there cannot be a wider concept that would comprehend within itself
both Being and non-Being.
8. K.S., H.S. Nyberg, ed., Leiden, 1919, p. 15 et. sqq.
9. ibid.
The Absolute in its Absoluteness
37
10. Mahiyah from Ma hiya? meaning ‘what is it?’ corresponding to the Greek
expression to ti en einai.
11. Fuy., p. 259/207-208.
12. p. 259.
13. Fu$., pp. 259-260/208.
14. It is to be noted that in Islamic philosophy in general the mahiyah ‘what-is-it-
ness’ is of two kinds: (1) mahiyah ‘in the particular sense’ and (2) mahiyah ‘in a
general sense’ . The former means ‘quiddity’ to be designated by the definition, while
the latter means ontological ‘reality’, that which makes a thing what it is.
15. p. 260.
16. i.e., the act of ‘Lordship’ which in the philosophy of Ibn ‘Arabi means the act of
self-manifestation in the concrete phenomena of the world.
17. i.e., replaced the definition of God by the mentioning of the relation of God to
His phenomenal forms.
18. Fuy., pp. 260/208.
19. Fuy., p. 260/208-209. Concerning ‘what lies between the East and West’,
however, Ibn ‘ Arabi in this passage simply says that it is intended to mean that God is
Omniscient (bi kull shay’ ‘alim).
20. in kuntum muqinin, the last word being a derivative of the same root YQN from
which is derived the word yaqin. Yaqin means a firm conviction in its final form.
21. ahl al-kashfwa-al- wujud . The word wujud here does not mean ‘existence’, but a
particular stage in myscal experience which follows that of wajd. In wajd, the mystic is
in the spiritual state of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ), a state in which he has lost his
individual consciousness of the self, while in wujud he is in the state of ‘subsistence’
(baqa’) in the Absolute. Only in this latter state does the mystic ‘finds’ ( wajada ) God
in the true sense, cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 310.
22. p. 260.
23. in kuntum ta qilun ', the last word comes from the root from which is derived the
word ‘aql ‘reason’.
24. The verb aqala meaning ‘to understand by reason or intellect’ etymologically
means to bind the folded legs of a camel to his thighs (in order to prevent him from
moving freely’.
25. Fuj., p. 260/208-209.
26. Fuy., p. 22/54-55.
27. i.e., the only possible way in which we can see the Absolute is through the
things , yet, on the other hand, since what we actually and directly see are the
‘things’, they intervene between our sight and the Absolute. Thus indirectly we see
the Absolute, but directly we see only the things which prevent our direct vision of the
Absolute.
38
Sufism and Taoism
28. We feel at every moment that we are in need of our Creator for our existence.
This very feeling produces in us the consciousness of separation or distinction
between us and the Absolute.
29. Fus ., p. 188/148-149.
30. Cf. Qashani, p. 189.
31. Fus., p. 33/61-62.
32. p. 33.
33. Fu$., p. 33/62.
Ill The Self-knowledge of Man
It has been made clear by the preceding that the Absolute perse is
unknowable and that it remains a dark mystery even in the mystical
experience of ‘unveiling’ ( kashf ) and ‘immediate tasting’ ( dhawq ).
Under normal conditions the Absolute is knowable solely in its
forms of self-manifestation. The same thing may be expressed
somewhat differently by saying that man is allowed to know the
Absolute only when the latter descends to the stage of ‘God’. In
what follows the structure of this cognition will be analyzed. The
m central question will be: How and where does the absolutely
I unknowable appear as ‘God’?
i Answering this question Ibn ‘ Arabi emphatically asserts that the
only right way of knowing the Absolute is for us to know ourselves.
And he bases this view on the very famous Tradition which runs:
‘He who knows himself knows his Lord ’. 1 What is suggested is, for
Ibn ‘Arabi, that we should abandon the futile effort to know the
| Absolute per se in its absolute non-manifestation, that we must go
f back into the depth of ourselves, and perceive the Absolute as it
■ manifests itself in particular forms.
I In Ibn ‘ Arabi’s world-view, everything, not only ourselves but all
l the things that surround us, are so many forms of the Divine
self-manifestation. And in that capacity, there is objectively no
essential difference between them. Subjectively, however, there is a
remarkable difference. All the exterior things surrounding us are
I for us ‘things’ which we look at only from outside. We cannot
penetrate into their interior and experience from inside the Divine
life pulsating within them . Only into the interior of ourselves are we
able to penetrate by our self-consciousness and experience from
inside the Divine activity of self-manifestation which is going on
there. It is in this sense that to ‘know ourselves’ can be the first step
toward our ‘knowing the Lord’ . Only he who had become conscious
of himself as a form of the Divine self-manifestation is in a position
to go further and delve deep into the very secret of the Divine life as
it pulsates in every part of the universe.
However, not all self-knowledge of man leads to the utmost limit
40
Sufism and Taoism
of knowledge of the Absolute. Ibn ‘Arab! in this respect roughly
divides into two types the way of knowing the Absolute through
man’s self-knowledge. The first is ‘knowledge of the Absolute
(obtainable) in so far as (“thou” art) “thou” ’ (ma‘rifah bi-hi min
hayth anta ), while the second is ‘knowledge of the Absolute
(obtainable) through “thee” in so far as (“thou” art) “He , and not
in so far as (“thou” art) “thou” ’ (ma‘rifah bi-hi min hayth huwa la
min hayth anta). n ,
The first type is the way of reasoning by which one inters uoa
from ‘thee’, i.e., the creature. More concretely it consists in one s
becoming first conscious of the properties peculiar to the creatural
nature of ‘thou’ , and then attaining to knowledge of the Absolute by
the reasoning process'of casting away all these imperfections from
the image of the Absolute and attributing to it all the opposite
properties. One sees, for example, ontological possibility in oneself,
and attributes to the Absolute ontological necessity which is its
opposite; one sees in oneself ‘poverty’ ( iftiqar ), i.e., the basic need
in which one stands of things other than oneself, and attributes to
the Absolute its opposite, that is, ‘richness’ (, ghina ) or absolute
self-sufficiency; one sees in oneself incessant ‘change’, and attri-
butes to the Absolute eternal constancy, etc. This type of know-
ledge, Ibn ‘Arab! says, is characteristic of philosophers and
theologians, and represents but an extremely low level of the know-
ledge of God, though, to be sure, it is a kind of ‘knowing one s Lord
by knowing oneself’ . . . , D .
The second type, too, is knowledge of ‘Him’ through thee . But
in this case the emphasis is not on ‘thee’ but definitely on Him . it
consists in one’s knowing the Absolute - albeit in a particularize
form - by knowing the ‘self’ as a form of the direct self-
manifestation of the Absolute. It is the cognitive process by which
one comes to know God by becoming conscious of oneself as God
manifesting Himself in that particular form. Let us analyze this
process in accordance with Ibn ‘Arabi’s own description. Three
basic stages are distinguished here.
The first is the stage at which man becomes conscious of the Abso-
lute as his God.
If from the Divine Essence were abstracted all the relations (i.e., the
Names and Attributes), it would not be a God (ilah). But what
actualizes these (possible) relations (which are recognizable in the
Essence) are ourselves. In this sense it is we who, with our own inner
dependence upon the Absolute as God, turn it into a ‘God .bo the
Absolute cannot be known until we ourselves become known. To this
refer the words of the Prophet: ‘He who knows himself knows his
Lord’ . This is a saying of one who of all men knows best about God.
The Self-knowledge of Man
41
What is meant by this passage is as follows. The nature of the
Absolute perse being as it is, the Absolute would remain for ever an
unknown and unknowable Something if there were no possibility of
its manifesting itself in infinitely variegated forms. What are gener-
ally known as ‘Names’ and ‘Attributes’ are nothing but theological
expressions for this infinite variety of the possible forms of self-
manifestation of the Absolute. The Names and Attributes are, in
oth^r words, a classification of the unlimited number of relations in
which the Absolute stands to the world.
These relations, as long as they stay in the Absolute itself, remain
in potential they are not in actu. Only when they are realized as
concrete forms in us, creatures, do they become ‘actual’. The
Names, however, do not become realized immediately in individual
material things, but first within the Divine Consciousness itself in
the form of permanent archetypes. Viewed from the reverse side, it
would mean that it is our individual essences (i.e., archetypes) that
actualize the Absolute. And the Absolute actualized in this way is
God. So ‘we (i.e., our permanent archetypes), turn the Absolute
into God’ by becoming the primal objects or loci of the Divine
self-manifestation. This is the philosophical meaning of the dictum:
‘Unless we know ourselves, God never becomes known.’
Some of the sages - Abu Hamid 4 is one of them - claim that God can
be known without any reference to the world. But this is a mistake.
Surely, the eternal and everlasting Essence can (conceptually) be
known (without reference to the world), but the same Essence can
never be known as God unless the object to which it is God (i.e., the
world) is known, for the latter is the indicator of the former . 5
The commentary of al-Qashani makes this point quite explicit. He
says : 6
What is meant by Ibn ‘Arabi is that the essence in so far as it is
qualified by the attribute of ‘divinity’ ( uluhiyah ) cannot be known
except when there is the object to which it appears as God . . . Surely,
our Reason can know (by inference) from the very idea of Being itself
the existence of the Necessary Being which is an Essence eternal and
everlasting, for God in His essence is absolutely self-sufficient. But
not so when it is considered as the subject of the Names. In the latter
case the object to which He is God is the only indicator of His being
God.
The knowledge that the whole created world is no other than a
self-manifestation of the Absolute belongs to the second stage,
which is described by Ibn ‘Arabi in the following terms : 7
After the first stage comes the second in which the experience of
‘unveiling’ makes you realize that it is the Absolute itself (and not the
42
Sufism and Taoism
world) that is the indicator of itself and of its being God (to the
world). (You realize also at this stage) that the world is nothing but a
self-manifestation of the Absolute in the forms of the permanent
archetypes of the things of the world. The existence of the archetypes
would be impossible if it were not for the (constant) self-
manifestation of the Absolute, while the Absolute, on its part, goes
on assuming various forms in accordance with the realities of the
archetypes and their states.
This comes after (the first stage at which) we know that the Absolute
is God.
Already at the first stage the Absolute was no longer Something
unknown and unknowable, but it was ‘our God . Yet, there was an
essential breach between the Absolute as God and the world as the
object to which it appeared as God. The only real tie between the
two was the consciousness that we, the world, are not self-subsistent
but essentially dependent upon God and that we, as correlatives of
the Absolute qua God, are indicators of the Names and Attributes
and are thereby indirectly indicators of the Absolute.
At the second stage, such an essential breach between God and
the world disappears. We are now aware of ourselves as self-
manifestations of the Absolute itself. And looking back from this
point we find that what was (as the first stage) thought to be an
indicator-indicated relation between God and the object to which
the Absolute appeared as God is nothing but an indicator-indicated
relation between the Absolute in its self-manifesting aspect and the
Absolute in its hidden aspect. Here I give a more philosophical
formulation of this situation by al-Qashani. 8
When by Divine guidance Reason is led to the conclusion that there
must exist the Necessary Being existing by itself away from all others,
it may, if aided by good chance, attain the intuition that it is nothing
but this real Necessary Being that is manifesting itself in the form of
the essence of the world itself. Then it realizes that the very first
appearance of this Necessary Being is its self-manifestation in the
One Substance or the One Entity 9 in which are prefigured all the
forms of the permanent archetypes in the Divine Consciousness, and
that they (i.e., the archetypes) have no existence independently of
the Necessary Being , 10 but have an eternal, everlasting existence in
the latter. And to these archetypes are attributed all the Attributes of
the Necessary Being as so many Names of the latter, or rather as so
many particularizing determinations of it. Thus only through the
archetypes do the Names become (actually) distinguishable and
through their appearance does Divinity (i.e., the Necessary Being s
being God) make its appearance. And all this occurs in the forms of
the world. The Absolute in this way is the Outward (appearing
explicitly) in the form of the world and the Inward (appearing invis-
The Self-knowledge of Man
43
ibly) in the forms of the individual essences of the world. But it is
always the same Entity making its appearance (in diverse forms). The
Absolute here behaves as its own indicator. Thus after having known
| (at the first stage) that the Absolute is our God, we now know (at the
| second stage) that it diversifies into many kinds and takes on various
I I forms according to the realities of the archetypes and their various
I states, for, after all, all these things are nothing else than the Absolute
I itself (in its diverse forms.)
In this interesting passage al-Qashani uses the phrase ‘the first
appearance’ (al-zuhur al-awwal), i.e., the first self-manifestation of
the Absolute, and says that it means the Absolute being manifested
in the ‘ One Substance’ . This, in fact, refers to a very important point
in Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics, namely, the basic distinction between
two kinds of self-manifestation ( tajalliyyan ): (1) self-manifestation
in the invisible (tajalli ghayb ) and (2) self-manifestation in the
l visible (tajalli shahadah). 11
| The first of these two is the self-manifestation of the Essence
within itself. Here the Absolute reveals itself to itself. It is, in other
}
words, the first appearance of the self-consciousness of the Abso-
| lute. And the content of this consciousness is constituted by the
I permanent archetypes of things before they are actualized in the
outward world, the eternal forms of things as they exist in the Divine
Consciousness. As we shall see later in detail, Ibn ‘ArabI calls this
type of the self-manifestation of the Absolute ‘the most holy ema-
nation’ ( al-fayd al-aqdas ), the term ‘emanation’ {fayd) being for
Ibn ‘ArabI always synonymous with ‘self-manifestation’ ( tajalli ). 14
This is a (direct) self-manifestation of the Essence ( tajalli dhatiy ) of
which invisibility is the reality. And through this self-manifestation
I the ‘He-ness’ is actualized . 13 One is justified in attributing ‘He-ness’
to it on the ground that (in the Qoran) the Absolute designates itself
by the pronoun ‘He’. The Absolute (at this stage) is eternally and
everlastingly ‘He’ for itself . 14
: It is to be remarked that the word ‘He’ is, as Ibn ‘ArabI observes, a
; pronoun of ‘absence’. This naturally implies that, although there
| has already been self-manifestation, the subject of this act still
remains ‘absent’, i.e., invisible to others. It also implies that, since it
is ‘He’, the third person, the Absolute here has already split itself
; into two and has established the second ‘itself’ as something other
than the first ‘itself’. However, all this is occurring only within the
Consciousness of the Absolute itself. It is, at this stage, ‘He’ only to
' itself; it is not ‘He’ to anybody or anything else. The Consciousness
of the Absolute is still the world of the invisible ( ‘alam al-ghayb ).
The second type of self-manifestation, the tajalli shahadah, is
44
Sufism and Taoism
45
different from this. It refers to the phenomenon of the permanent
archetypes which form the content of the Divine Consciousness
coming out of the stage of potentiality into the outward world of
‘reality’. It means the actualization of the archetypes in concrete
forms. In distinction from the first type, this second type of self-
manifestation is called by Ibn ‘Arab! ‘the holy emanation’ (al-fayd
al-muqaddas ). And the world of Being thus realized constitutes the
world of sensible experience (‘alam al-shahadah).
So much for the second stage of man’s ‘knowing his Lord by
knowing himself’ . Now we turn to the third and the last of the three
stages distinguished above.
Let us begin by quoting a short description of the third stage by Ibn
‘Arab! himself . 15
Following these two stages there comes the final ‘unveiling’. There
our own forms will be seen in it (i.e., the Absolute) in such a way that
all of us are disclosed to each other in the Absolute. All of us will
recognize each other and at the same time be distinguished from one
another.
The meaning of this somewhat enigmatic statement may be
rendered perfectly understandable in the following way. To the eye
of a man who has attained this spiritual stage there arises a scene of
extraordinary beauty. He sees all the existent things as they appear
in the mirror of the Absolute and as they appear one in the other.
All these things interflow and interpenetrate in such a way that they
become transparent to one another while keeping at the same time
each its own individuality. This is the experience of ‘unveiling’
(kashf).
We may remark in this connection that al-Qashani divides the
‘unveiling’ into two stages . 16
The first ‘unveiling’ occurs in the state of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’) in
the Absolute. In this state, the man who sees and the object seen are
nothing other than the Absolute alone. This is called unification’
{jam). The second ‘unveiling’ is ‘subsistence’ ( baqa ) after ‘self-
annihilation’. In this spiritual state, the forms of the created world
make their appearance; they make their appearance one to the other
in the Absolute itself. Thus the Reality here plays the role of a mirror
for the creatures. And the One Being diversifies itself into many
through the innumerable forms of the things. The reality (of the
mirror) is the Absolute and the forms (appearing in it) are creatures.
The creatures in this experience know one another and yet each is
distinguished from others.
Al-QashanI goes on to say that of those whose eyes have been
opened by the second- 4 unveiling’, some attain the state of perfec-
The Self-knowledge of Man
tion’ ( kamal ). These are men ‘who are not veiled by the sight of the
creatures from the Absolute and who recognize the creaturely
Many in the very bosom of the real Unity of the Absolute’. These
are the ‘people of perfection’ (ahl al- kamal) whose eyes are not
veiled by the Divine Majesty (i.e., the aspect of the phenomenal
Many) from the Divine Beauty (i.e., the aspect of the metaphysical
One), nor by the Divine Beauty from the Divine Majesty. The last
point is mentioned with particular emphasis in view of the fact that,
according to al-Qashani’s interpretation, the first ‘unveiling’ con-
sists exclusively in an experience of Beauty ( jamal ), while the
second is mainly an experience of Majesty ( jalal ), so that in either
case there is a certain danger of mystics emphasizing exclusively
either the one or the other.
The first ‘unveiling’ brings out Beauty alone. The subject who
experiences it does not witness except Beauty . . . Thus he is nat-
urally veiled by Beauty and cannot see Majesty.
But among those who experience the second ‘unveiling’ there are
some who are veiled by Majesty and cannot see Beauty. They tend to
imagine and represent the (state of affairs) on this level in terms of
the creatures as distinguished from the Absolute, and thus they are
veiled by the sight of the creatures from seeing the Absolute.
The same situation is described in a different way by Ibn ‘Arabi
himself by a terse expression as follows : 17
Some of us (i.e., the ‘people of perfection’) are aware that this
(supreme) knowledge about us 18 (i.e., about the phenomenal Many)
occurs in no other than the Absolute. But some of us (i.e., mystics
who are not so perfect) are unaware of the (true nature of this)
Presence (i.e., the ontological level which is disclosed in the baqa-
experience) in which this knowledge about us (i.e., the phenomenal
Many) occurs to us . 19 I take refuge in God from being one of the
ignorant!
By way of conclusion let us summarize at this point the interpreta-
tion given by Ibn ‘Arabi to the Tradition: ‘He who knows himself
knows his Lord’.
He begins by emphasizing that the self-knowledge of man is the
absolutely necessary premise for his knowing his Lord, that man’s
knowledge of the Lord can only result from his knowledge of
himself.
What is important here is that the word ‘Lord’ ( rabb ) in Ibn
‘ Arabi’ s terminology means the Absolute as it manifests itself
through some definite Name. It does not refer to the Essence which
surpasses all determinations and transcends all relations. Thus the
dictum: ‘He who knows himself knows his Lord’ does not in any way
suggest that the self-knowledge of man will allow man to know the
46
Sufism and Taoism
Absolute in its pure Essence. Whatever one may do, and however
deep one’s experience of ‘unveiling’ may be, one is forced to stop at
the stage of the ‘Lord’. Herein lies the limitation set to human
cognition. . .
In the opposite direction, however, the same human cognition is
able to cover an amazingly wide field in its endeavor to know the
Absolute. For, after all, the self-revealing Absolute is, at the last
and ultimate stage of its activity, nothing but the world in which we
live And ‘every part of the world’ is a pointer to its own ontologica
ground, which is its Lord .’ 20 Moreover, man is the most perfect of all
the parts of the world. If this most perfect part of the world comes to
know itself through self-knowledge or self-consciousness, it wi
naturally be able to know the Absolute to the utmost limit of
possibility, in so far as the latter manifests itself in the world . 21
There still seems to remain a vital question: Is man really capable of
knowing himself with such profundity? This, however, is a relative
question. If one takes the phrase ‘know himself’ in the most rigor-
ous sense, the answer will be in the negative, but if one takes it in a
loose sense, one should answer in the affirmative. As Ibn ‘Arabi
says, ‘You are right if you say Yes, and you are right if you say No.
Notes
1. Man ‘arafa nafsa-hu ‘arafa rabba-hu.
2. i.e., all the attributes peculiar to the created things as ‘possible’ and ‘contingent
existents.
3. Fus-, p. 73/81.
4. al-Ghazall.
5. Fu$., p. 74/81.
6. p. 74.
7. Fus-, p. 74/81—82.
8. p. 74.
9 This does not mean the absolute One at the level of primordial Unity which has
already been explained above. The ‘One’ referred to here is the One containing in a
unified form all the Names before they become actually differentiated. It is, in brief,
the unity of Divine Consciousness in which exist all the archetypes of the things of the
world in the form of the objects of Divine Knowledge.
The Self-knowledge of Man
47
10. Since the archetypes are no other than the very content of the Divine Con-
sciousness as prefigurations of the things of the world, they cannot exist outside the
Divine Consciousness.
11. Fus., pp. 145-146/120-121.
12. That is to say, the term ‘emanation’ should not be taken in the usual neo-
Platonic sense.
13. Asa result of the ‘most holy emanation’ the Absolute establishes itself as ‘He’.
And as the Divine ‘He’ is established, the permanent archetypes of all things are also
established as the invisible content of the ‘He’ -consciousness of God.
14. Fus., p. 146/120.
15. Fus., p. 74/82.
16. pp. 74-75.
17. Fus., P- 74/82.
18. The ‘(supreme) knowledge about us’ refers back to what has been mentioned
above; namely, the extraordinary scene of all the existent things penetrating each
other while each keeping its unique individuality.
19. This means that the phenomenal Many, being as it is Divine Majesty, is no less
an aspect of the Absolute than the metaphysical One appearing as Divine Beauty.
The knowledge of the phenomal Many through baqa’ is no less a knowledge of the
Absolute than the knowledge of the metaphysical One through fana’.
20. Fus., p- 267/215.
21. Cf. Affifi, Fus., Com., p. 325.
Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion
49
IV Metaphysical Unification and
Phenomenal Dispersion
What the preceding chapters have made clear may briefly be sum-
marized by saying (1) that the Absolute has two aspects opposed to
each other: the hidden and the self- revealing aspect; (2) that the
Absolute in the former sense remains for ever a Mystery and
Darkness whose secret cannot be unveiled even by the highest
degree of fo*s/t/-experience; (3) that the Absolute comes fully into
the sphere of ordinary human cognition only in its self-revealing
aspect in the form of ‘God’ and ‘Lord’; and (4) that between these
two is situated a particular region in which things ‘may rightly be
said to exist and not to exist’, i.e., the world of the permanent
archetypes, which is totally inaccessible to the mind of an ordinary
man but perfectly accessible to the ecstatic mind of a mystic. This
summary gives the most basic structure of Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view
from the ontological standpoint.
Since the hidden aspect of the Absolute can neither be known nor
described, the whole of the rest of the book will naturally be
concerned with the self-revealing aspect and the intermediate re
gion. But before we proceed to explore these two domains which are
more or less accessible to human understanding, we must consider
the radical opposition between the hidden and the self-revealing
aspect of the Absolute from a new perspective. The analysis will
disclose an important phase of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought.
From this new perspective Ibn ‘Arab! calls the hidden and the
self-revealing aspect tanzih and tazhbih, respectively. These are two
key-terms taken from the terminology of the traditional Islamic
theology. Both terms played an exceedingly important role m
theology from the earliest times of its historical formulation. Tanzih
(from the verb nazzaha meaning literally ‘to keep something away
from anything contaminating, anything impure ) is used in theology
in the sense of ‘declaring or considering God absolutely free from all
imperfections’. And by ‘imperfections’ is meant in this context all
qualities that resemble those of creatures even in the slightest
degree.
Tanzih in this sense is an assertion of God’s essential and absolute
incomparability with any created thing, His being above all crea-
turely attributes. It is, in short, an assertion of Divine transcen-
dence. And since the Absolute per se, as we have seen, is an
Unknowable which rejects all human effort to approach it and
frustrates all human understanding in any form whatsoever, the
sound reason naturally inclines toward tanzih . It is a natural attitude
of the Reason in the presence of the unknown and unknowable
Absolute.
In contrast to this, tashbih (from the verb shabbaha meaning ‘to
make or consider something similar to some other thing’) means in
theology ‘to liken God to created things’. More concretely, it is a
theological assertion posited by those who, on the basis of the
Qoranic expressions suggesting that ‘God has hands, feet, etc.’,
attribute corporeal and human properties to God. Quite naturally it
tends to turn toward crude anthropomorphism.
In traditional theology, these two positions are, in their radical
forms, diametrically opposed and cannot exist together in harmony.
One is either a ‘transcendentalist’ ( munazzih , i.e., one who exer-
cises tanzih) or an ‘anthropomorphist’ ( mushabbih , i.e., one who
chooses the position of tashbih, and holds that God ‘sees with His
eyes’, for example, and ‘hears with His ears’, ‘speaks with His
tongue’ etc.).
Ibn ‘Arabi understands these terms in quite an original manner,
though of course there still remains a reminiscence of the meanings
they have in theological contexts. Briefly, tanzih in his terminology
indicates the aspect of ‘absoluteness’ ( iflaq ) in the Absolute, while
tashbih refers to its aspect of ‘determination’ (taqayyud). 1 Both are
in this sense compatible with each other and complementary, and
the only right attitude is for us to assert both at the same time and
with equal emphasis.
Of all the prophets who preceded Muhammad in time, Ibn ‘Arabi
mentions Noah as representative of the attitude of tanzih. Quite
significantly, Ibn ‘Arabi entitles the chapter in his Fu$ii$ , in which he
deals with Noah, ‘the transcendentalist wisdom ( hikmah sub-
buhiyyah) as embodied in the prophet Noah’. 2 )
According to the Qoran, Noah in the midst of an age in which
obstinate and unbridled idol-worship was in full sway, denied the
value of the idols, openly exhorted the worship of the One God, and
advocated monotheism. In other words, he emphasized throughout
his life the principle of tanzih. This attitude of Noah, in the view of
Ibn ‘Arabi, was an historical necessity and was therefore quite
justifiable. For in his age, among his people, polytheism was so
rampant that only a relentless exhortation to a pure and extreme
51
50
Sufism and Taoism
Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion
tanzih could have any chance of bringing the people back to the
right form of religious belief.
Apart from these historical considerations, however, tanzih as a
human attitude toward God is definitely one-sided. Any religious
belief based exclusively on tanzih is essentially imperfect and
incomplete. For to ‘purify’ God to such an extent and to reduce Him
to something having nothing at all to do with the creatures is
another way of delimiting Divine Existence which is actually
infinitely vast and infinitely profound. ‘Tanzih' , as Ibn ‘Arab! says , 3
‘in the opinion of the people who know the truth, is nothing less than
delimiting and restricting God’. This sentence is explained by al-
Qashanl as follows : 4
Tanzih is distinguishing the Absolute from all contingent and physi-
cal things, that is, from all material things that do not allow of tanzih.
But everything that is distinguished from some other thing can only
be distinguished from it through an attribute which is incompatible
with the attribute of the latter. Thus such a thing (i.e., anything that is
distinguished from others) must necessarily be determined by an
attribute and delimited by a limitation. All tanzih is in this sense
delimitation.
The gist of what is asserted here is the following. He who ‘purifies’
God purifies Him from all bodily attributes, but by that very act he is
(unconsciously) ‘assimilating’ ( tashbih ) Him with non-material,
spiritual beings. What about, then, if one ‘purifies’ Him from ‘limit-
ing’ ( taqyid ) itself? Even in that case he will be ‘limiting’ Him with
‘non-limitation’ ( i(laq ), while in truth God is ‘purified’ from (i.e.,
transcends) the fetters of both ‘limitation’ and ‘non-limitation’. He is
absolutely absolute; He is not delimited by either of them, nor does
He even exclude either of them.
Ibn ‘ Arabi makes a challenging statement that ‘anybody who exer-
cises and upholds tanzih in its extreme form is either an ignorant
man or one who does not know how to behave properly toward
God’.
As regards the ‘ignorant’, Ibn ‘Arabi gives no concrete example.
Some of the commentators, e.g., Bali Efendi , 5 are of the opinion
that the word refers to the Muslim Philosophers and their blind
followers. These are people, Bali Effendi says, who ‘do not believe
in the Divine Law, and who dare to ‘purify’ God, in accordance with
what is required by their theory, from all the attributes which God
Himself has attributed to Himself’ .
As to ‘those who do not know how to behave properly’, we have
Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s own remark. They are ‘those of the people who believe
in the Divine Law (i.e., Muslims) who “purify” God and do not go
beyond tanzih ’ . They are said to be behaving improperly because
‘they give the lie to God and the apostles without being conscious of
it’. Most probably this refers to the Mu‘tazilite theologians 6 who are
notorious for denying the existence of Attributes in the Essence of
God. They are believers, but they recklessly go to this extreme
driven by the force of their own reasoning, and end by completely
ignoring the aspect of tashbih which is so explicit in the Qoran and
Traditions.
Now to go back to the story of Noah which has been interrupted.
The kind of tanzih symbolized by Noah is an attitude peculiar to,
and characteristic of, Reason. Al-Qashani calls it ‘ tanzih by Reason’
(al- tanzih al-‘aqliy). Reason, by nature, refuses to admit that the
Absolute appears in a sensible form. But by doing so it overlooks a
very important point, namely, that ‘purifying’ the Absolute from all
sensible forms is, as we have seen a few lines back, not only tan-
tamount to delimiting it but is liable to fall into a kind of tashbih
which it detests so violently.
Commenting upon a verse by Ibn ‘Arab! which runs: ‘Every time
(the Absolute) appears to the eye (in a sensible form), Reason
expels (the image) by logical reasoning in applying which it is always
so assiduous’, al-Qashanl makes the following remark : 7
The meaning of the verse is this: Whenever (the Absolute) manifests
itself ( tajalli ) in a sensible form, Reason rejects it by logical reason-
ing, although in truth it (i.e., the sensible phenomenon) is a reality (in
its own way) on the level of the sensible world as well as in itself (i.e.,
not merely qua a sensible phenomenon but in its reality as an authen-
tic form of the self-manifestation of the Absolute). Reason ‘purifies’
it from being a sensible object because otherwise (the Absolute)
would be in a certain definite place and a certain definite direction.
Reason judges (the Absolute) to be above such (determinations).
And yet, the Absolute transcends what (Reason) ‘purifies’ it from, as
it transcends such a ‘purifying’ itself. For to ‘purify’ it in this way is to
assimilate it to spiritual beings and thereby delimit its absoluteness. It
makes the Absolute something determinate.
The truth of the matter is that the Absolute transcends both being in a
direction and not being in a direction, having a position and not
having a position; it transcends also all determinations originating
from the senses, reason, imagination, representation and thinking.
Besides this kind of tanzih symbolized by Noah, which is ‘ tanzih by
Reason’ , Ibn ‘Arab! recognizes another type of tanzih. This latter is
Tanzih of immediate tasting’ (al-tanzih al-dhawqiy), and is symbol-
ized by the above-mentioned prophet Enoch.
The two types of tanzih correspond to two Names: the one is
subbuh which has been mentioned at the beginning of this chapter,
and the other is quddus, the ‘Most Holy ’. 8 Both are tanzih , but the
one symbolized by Noah is ‘purifying’ the Absolute from any partners
52
Sufism and Taoism
and from all attributes implying imperfection, while the sec-
ond, in addition to this kind of tanzih , removes from the Absolute all
properties of the ‘possible’ beings (including even the highest per-
fections attained by ‘possible’ things) and all connections with mat-
eriality as well as any definite quality that may be imaginable and
thinkable about the Absolute . 9
The second type of tanzih represents the furthest limit of ‘subtrac-
tion’ ( tajrid ) which attributes to the Absolute the highest degree of
transcendence. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, the prophet Enoch was
literally an embodiment of such tanzih. Depicting the mythological
figure of Enoch as a symbol of this kind of tanzih, al-Qashani
says : 10
Enoch went to the extreme of ‘subtracting’ himself (i.e., not only did
he ‘subtract’ everything possible and material from the Absolute, but
he ‘subtracted’ all such elements from himself) and ‘spiritualization’
(tarawwuh), so much so that in the end he himself was turned into a
pure spirit. Thus he cast off his body, mixed with the angels, became
united with the spiritual beings of the heavenly spheres, and
ascended to the world of Sanctity. Thereby he completely went
beyond the ordinary course of nature.
In contrast to this, al-Qashani goes on to say, Noah lived on the
earth as a simple ordinary man with ordinary human desires, got
married and had children. But Enoch became himself a pure spirit.
All the desires fell off from him, his nature became spiritualized, the
natural bodily properties were replaced by spiritual properties. The
assiduous spiritual discipline completely changed his nature, and he
was transformed into a pure unmixed Intellect {‘aql mujarrad). And
thus he was raised to a high place in the fourth Heaven.
In less mythological terminology this would seem to imply that the
tanzih of Noah is that exercised by the Reason of an ordinary man
living with all his bodily limitations, while that of Enoch is a tanzih
exercised by the pure Intellect or mystical Awareness existing apart
from bodily conditions.
Intellect, being completely released from the bondage of body,
works, not as the natural human faculty of logical thinking, but as a
kind of mystical intuition. This is why its activity is called ‘ tanzih of
immediate tasting’. In either of the two forms, however, tanzih, in
Ibn ArabFs view, is one-sided and imperfect. Only when combined
with tashbih does it become the right attitude of man toward the
Absolute. The reason for this is, as has often been remarked above,
that the Absolute itself is not only an absolute Transcendent but
also Self-revealer to the world in the world.
The Absolute has an aspect in which it appears in each creature. Thus
it is the Outward making itself manifest in everything intelligible.
53
Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion
while being, at the same time, an Inward concealing itself from every
intelligence except in the mind of those who hold that the world is its
Form and its He-ness as (a concrete manifestation of) the Name ‘the
Outward’."
This passage is reproduced by al-Qashani in a more explicitly articu-
late form as follows : 12
The Absolute appears in every creature in accordance with the
‘preparedness’ (i.e., natural capacity) of that particular creature. It is
in this sense the Outward appearing in everything intelligible in
accordance with the ‘preparedness’ of the individual intelligence.
And that (i.e., the particular ‘preparedness’) is the limit of each
intelligence. . . .
But (the Absolute) is also the Inward, (and in that capacity it is) never
accessible to the intelligence beyond the limit set by the latter’s own
‘preparedness’. If the intelligence attempts to go beyond its natural
limit through thinking, that is, (if it tries to understand) what is
naturally concealed from its understanding, the heart goes off the
track, except in the case of the real sages whose understanding has no
limit. Those are they who understand the matter of God from God,
not by means of thinking. Nothing is ‘inward’ (i.e., concealed) from
their understanding. And they know that the world is the Form or
He-ness of the Absolute, that is, its inward reality, manifesting itself
outwardly under the Name ‘the Outward’. For the Divine Reality
(haqiqah) in its absoluteness can never be ‘ He-ness’ except in view of
a determination (or limitation), be it the determination of ‘absolute-
ness’ itself, as is exemplified by the Qoranic words: ‘He is God, the
One.’
As to the Divine Reality qua Divine Reality, it is completely free
from any determination, though (potentially) it is limited by all the
determinations of the Divine Names.
Not only does the Absolute manifest itself in everything in the world
in accordance with the ‘preparedness’ of each, but it is the ‘spirit’
(ruh) of everything, its ‘inward’ ( bafin ). This is the meaning of the
Name ‘the Inward’ . And in the ontological system of Ibn ‘Arabi, the
Absolute’s constituting the ‘spirit’ or ‘inward’ of anything means
nothing other than that the Absolute manifests itself in the
archetype (or the essence) of that thing. It is a kind of self-
manifestation ( tajalli ) in no less a degree than the outward tajalli.
Thus the Absolute, in this view, manifests itself both internally and
externally.
(The Absolute) is inwardly the ‘spirit’ of whatever appears outwardly
(in the phenomenal world). In this sense, it is the Inward. For the
relation it bears to the phenomenal forms of the world is like that of
the soul (of man) to his body which it governs . 13
The Absolute in this aspect does manifest itself in all things, and the
54
Sufism and Taoism
latter in this sense are but so many ‘determined (or limited)’ forms
of the Absolute. But if we, dazzled by this, exclusively emphasize
‘assimilation’ ( tashbih ), we would commit exactly the same mistake
of being one-sided as we would if we should resort to tanzih only.
‘He who “assimilates” the Absolute delimits and determines the
Absolute in no less a degree than he who “purifies” it, and is
ignorant of the Absolute’. 14 As al-Qashani says: 15
He who ‘assimilates’ the Absolute confines it in a determined form,
and anything that is confined within a fixing limit is in that very
respect a creature. From this we see that the whole of these fixing
limits (i.e., concrete things), though it is nothing other than the
Absolute, is not the Absolute itself. This because the One Reality
that manifests itself in all the individual determinations is something
different from these determinations put together.
Only when one combines tanzih and tashbih in one’s attitude, can
one be regarded as a ‘true knower’ (‘arif) of the Absolute. Ibn
‘Arabi, however, attaches to this statement a condition, namely,
that one must not try to make this combination except in a general,
unspecified way, because it is impossible to do otherwise. Thus
even the ‘true knower’ knows the Absolute only in a general
way, the concrete details of it being totally unknown to him. This
may be easily understood if one reflects upon the way man knows
himself. Even when he does have self-knowledge, he knows himself
only in a general way; he cannot possibly have a comprehensive
knowledge of himself in such a way that it would cover all the details
of himself without leaving anything at all. Likewise no one can
have a truly comprehensive knowledge of all the concrete details of
the world, but it is precisely in all these forms that the self-
manifestation of the Absolute is actualized. Thus tashbih must of
necessity take on a broad general form; it can never occur in a
concretely specified way. 16
As to the fact that the Absolute manifests itself in all, i.e., all that
exists outside us and inside us, Ibn ‘Arab! adduces a Qoranic verse
and adds the following remark: 17
God says (in the Qoran): ‘We will show them Our signs 18 in the
horizon as well as within themselves so that it be made clear to them
that it is Reality’ (XLI, 53). Here the expression ‘signs in the horizon’
refers to all that exists outside yourself, 19 while ‘within themselves’
refers to your inner essence. 20 And the phrase: ‘that it is Reality’
means that it is Reality in that you are its eternal form and it is your
inner spirit. Thus you are to the Absolute as your bodily form is to
yourself.
The upshot of all this is the view mentioned above, namely, that the
only right course for one to follow in this matter is to couple tanzih
9
Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 55
and tashbih. To have recourse exclusively to tashbih in one’s con-
ception of the Absolute is to fall into polytheism; to assert tanzih to
the exclusion of tashbih is to sever the divine from the whole
created world. The right attitude is to admit that, ‘thou art not He
(i.e., the phenomenal world is different from the Absolute), nay
thou art He, and thou seest Him in concretely existent things
absolutely undetermined and yet determined’ . 21 And once you have
attained this supreme intuitive knowledge, you have a complete
freedom of taking up the position either of ‘unification’ ( jam" , lit,
‘gathering’) or of ‘dispersion’ ( farq , lit. ‘separating’), 22 Concerning
these two terms, yam’, and farq, al-Qashani remarks: 23
Taking up the position of ‘unification’ means that you turn your
attention exclusively to the Absolute without taking into considera-
tion the creatures. This attitude is justified because Being belongs to
the Absolute alone, and any being is the Absolute itself.
(The position of ‘dispersion’ means that) you observe the creatures in
the Absolute in the sense that you observe how the essentially One is
diversified into the Many through its own Names and determinations.
The position of ‘dispersion’ is justified in view of the creaturely
determinations (of the Absolute) and the involvement of the ‘He-
ness’ of the Absolute in the ‘This-ness’ (i.e., concrete determina-
tions) of the created world.
I? The distinction between ‘unification’ and ‘dispersion’, thus
explained by al-Qashani, is an important one touching upon a
cardinal point of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontology. As we already know, the
distinction is more usually expressed by tanzih and tashbih . We shall
now examine the distinction and relation between the two in more
H detail and from a somewhat different angle.
Ibn ‘Arabi starts from a well-known and oft-quoted Qoranic verse:
Laysa ka-mithli-hi shay’un, wa-huwa al-samiu al-bafir meaning
‘there is nothing like unto Him, and He is All-hearing, All-seeing’
(XLII, 11), which he interprets in an original way. The interpreta-
tion makes it clear from every aspect that tanzih and tashbih should
be combined if we are to take the right attitude toward God.
Let us start by observing that the verse grammatically allows of
two different interpretations, the pivotal point being the second
term ka-mithli-hi, which literally is a complex of three words: ka
‘like’ mithli ‘similar to’, and hi ‘Him’.
The first of these three words, ka ‘like’, can syntactically be
interpreted as either (1) expletive, i.e., having no particular mean-
ing of its own in the combination with mithli which itself connotes
similarity or equality, or (2) non-expletive, i.e., keeping its own
independent meaning even in such a combination.
If we choose (1), the first half of the verse would mean, ‘there is
56
Sufism and Taoism
nothing like Him’ with an additional emphasis on the non-existence
of anything similar to Him. It is, in other words, the most emphatic
declaration of tanzih. And in this case, the second half of the verse:
‘and He is All-hearing, All-seeing’ is to be understood as a state-
ment of tashbih, because ‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’ are pre-eminently
human properties. Thus the whole verse would amount to a combi-
nation of tanzih and tashbih.
If we choose the second alternative, the first half of the verse
would mean the same thing as laysa mithla-mithli-hi shay’ meaning
‘there is nothing like anything similar to Him’. Here something
‘similar to Him’ is first mentally posited, then the existence of
anything ‘similar’ to that (which is similar to Him) is categorically
denied. Since something similar to Him is established at the outset,
it is a declaration of tashbih. And in this case, the second half of the
verse must be interpreted as a declaration of tanzih . This interpreta-
tion is based on the observation that the sentence structure - with
the pronominal subject, huwa ‘He, put at the head of the sentence,
and the following epithets, samV (hearing) and basir (seeing) being
determined by the article, al- (the) - implies that He is the only
sami’ and the only basir in the whole world of Being . 24 Thus, here
again we get a combination of tanzih and tashbih.
The following elliptic expression of Ibn ‘ Arabi will be quite easily
understood if we approach it with the preceding explanation in
mind . 25
God Himself ‘purifies’ (i.e., tanzih) by saying: laysa ka-mithli-hi shay ,
and ‘assimilates’ (i.e., tashbih) by saying: wa-huwa al-samV al-ba$ir.
God ‘assimilates’ or ‘declares Himself to be dual’ by saying: laysa
ka-mithli-hi shay, while he ‘purifies’ or ‘declares Himself to be uni-
que’ by saying: wa-huwa al-samV al-basir.
What is very important to remember in this connection is that, in
Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s conception, tanzih and tashbih are each a kind of
‘delimitation’ ( tahdid ). In both the Qoran and Tradition, he
observes , 26 we often find God describing Himself with ‘delimita-
tion’, whether the expression aims at tanzih or tashbih. Even God
cannot describe himself in words without delimiting Himself. He
describes Himself for example, as, ‘sitting firm on the throne’,
‘descending to the lowest heaven’, ‘being in heaven’, ‘being on the
earth’, ‘being with men wherever they may be’, etc.; none of these
expressions is free from delimiting and determining God. Even
when He says of Himself that ‘there is nothing like unto Him’ in the
sense of tanzih , 11 He is setting a limit to Himself, because that which
is distinguished from everything determined is, by this very act of
distinction, itself determined, i.e., as something totally different
from everything determined. For ‘a complete non-determination is
a kind of determination’.
57
Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion
Thus tanzih is a ‘delimitation’ no less than tashbih. It is evident
that neither of them alone can ever constitute a perfect description
of the Absolute. Strictly speaking, however, even the combination
of the two cannot be perfect in these respects, for delimitations will
remain delimitations in whatever way one combines them. But by
combining these two delimitations which of all the delimitations are
the most fundamental and most comprehensive in regard to the
Absolute, one approaches the latter to the utmost extent that is
humanly possible.
Of these two basic attitudes of man toward the Absolute, Noah, as
remarked above, represents tanzih. In order to fight idolatry which
was the prevalent tendency of the age, he exclusively emphasized
tanzih. Naturally this did nothing but arouse discontent and anger
among the idol- worshippers, and his appeal fell only upon unheed-
ing ears. ‘If, however, Noah had combined the two attitudes in
dealing with his people, they would have listened to his words’ . 28 On
this point al-Qashani makes the following observation:
In view of the fact that his people were indulging in an excessive
tashbih, paying attention only to the diversity of the Names and being
veiled by the Many from the One, Noah stressed tanzih exclusively.
If, instead of brandishing to them the stringent unification and
unmitigated tanzih, he had affirmed also the diversity of the Names
and invited them to accept the Many that are One and the Multiplic-
ity that is Unity, clothed the Unity with the form of Multiplicity, and
combined between the attitude of tashbih and that of tanzih as did
(our prophet) Muhammad, they would readily have responded to
him in so far as their outward familiarity with idolatry was agreeable
to tashbih and in so far as their inner nature was agreeable to tanzih.
As is clearly suggested by this passage, the idols that were worship-
ped by the people of Noah were, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s conception, prop-
erly ‘the diversity of the Names’; that is, so many concrete forms
assumed by the Divine Names. The idols in this sense are sacred in
themselves. The sin of idolatry committed by the people of Noah
consisted merely in the fact that they were not aware of the idols
being concrete forms of the self-manifestation of the One, and that
they worshipped them as independent divinities.
The kind of absolute tanzih which was advocated by Noah is called
by Ibn ‘Arabi furqan, a Qoranic term, to which he ascribes an
original meaning , 29 and which is to play the role of a key-term in his
system.
The word furqan, in Ibn ‘ArabFs interpretation derives from the
root FRQ meaning ‘separating’. One might expect him to use it to
designate the aspect of ‘dispersion’ ( farq ) referred to a few para-
58
Sufism and Taoism
graphs back, which is also derived from exactly the same root.
Actually, however, he means by furqan the contrary of ‘dispersion’.
‘Separating’ here means ‘separating’ in a radical manner the aspect
of Unity from that of the diversified self-manifestation of the Abso-
lute. Furqan thus means an absolute and radical tanzih , an intrans-
igent attitude of tanzih which does not allow even of a touch of
tashbih .
Noah exhorted his people to a radical tanzih, but they did not
listen to him. Thereupon Noah, according to the Qoran, laid a bitter
complaint before God against these faithless people saying, ‘I have
called upon my people day and night, but my admonition has done
nothing but increase their aversion’ (LXXI, 5-6).
This verse, on the face of it, depicts Noah complaining of the
stubborn faithlessness of his people and seriously accusing them of
this sinful attitude. However much he exhorts them to pure mono-
theism, he says, they only turn a deaf ear to his words. Such is the
normal understanding of the verse.
Ibn ‘ Arabi, however, gives it an extremely original interpretation,
so original, indeed, that it will surely shock or even scandalize
common sense. The following passage shows how he understands
this verse. 30
What Noah means to say is that his people turned a deaf ear to him
because they knew what would necessarily follow if they were to
respond favorably to his exhortation. (Superficially Noah’s words
might look like a bitter accusation) but the true ‘knowers of God’ are
well aware that Noah here is simply giving high praise to his people in
a language of accusation. As they (i.e. the true ‘knowers’ of God)
understand, the people of Noah did not listen to him because his
exhortation was ultimately an exhortation to furqan.
More simply stated, this would amount to saying that (1) Noah
reproaches his people outwardly but (2) in truth he is merely
praising them. And their attitude is worthy of high praise because
they know (by instinct) that that to which Noah was calling them
was no other than a pure and radical tanzih, and that such a tanzih
was not the right attitude of man toward God. Tanzih in its radical
form and at its extreme limit would inevitably lead man to the
Absolute per se, which is an absolutely Unknowable. How could
man worship something which is absolutely unknown and unknow-
able?
If Noah had been more practical and really wished to guide his
people to the right form of religious faith, he should have combined
tanzih and tashbih . A harmonious combination of tanzih and tashbih
is called by Ibn ‘Arab! qur’an . 31 The qur’an is the only right attitude
of man toward God.
Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 59
The right (religious) way is qur’an not furqan. And (it is but natural)
that he who stands in the position of qur’an should never listen to (an
exhortation to) furqan, even though the latter itself is contained in
the former. Qur’an implies furqan, but furqan does not imply
qur’an . 32
Thus we see that the relation of Noah with his people, as Ibn ‘Arabi
understands it, has a complex inner structure. On the one hand,
Noah, as we have just observed, outwardly reproaches his people
for their faithlessness, but inwardly he praises them because of the
right attitude they have taken on this crucial question. On the other
hand, the people, on their part, know, if not consciously, that pure
monotheism in its true and deep sense is not to reduce God to one of
his aspects such as is implied by the kind of tanzih advocated by
Noah, but to worship the One God in all the concrete forms of the
world as so many manifestations of God. Outwardly, however, they
give the impression of committing an outrageous mistake by refus-
ing to accept Noah’s admonition and exhorting each other to stick to
the traditional form of idol- worship.
Ibn Arabi terms this relation between Noah and his people
‘(reciprocal) makr , a word meaning ‘stratagem’, ‘artifice’ or ‘cun-
ning deceit’. This is based on a Qoranic verse: ‘And they tried to
deceive by a big artifice’ (LXXI, 22). This situation is explained by
Affifi in a very lucid way. He writes: 33
When Noah called upon his people to worship God by way of tanzih
he did try to deceive them. More generally speaking, whoever calls
upon others to worship God in such a way, does nothing other than
trying to exercise makr upon them to deceive them. This is a makr
because those who are admonished, whatever their religion and
whatever the object they worship, are in reality worshipping nothing
other than God. (Even an idolater) is worshipping the Absolute in
some of its forms of self-manifestation in the external world.
To call upon the idolaters who are actually worshipping God in this
form and tell them not to worship the idols but worship God alone, is
liable to produce a false impression as if the idolaters were worship-
ping (in the idols) something other than God, while in truth there is
no ‘other’ thing than God in the whole world.
The people of Noah, on their part, exercised makr when they, to fight
against Noah s admonition, called upon one another saying, ‘ Do not
abandon your gods! This is also a clear case of makr, because if they
had abandoned the worship of their idols, their worship of God
would have diminished by that amount. And this because the idols
are nothing other than so many self-manifestations of God
Affifi in this connection rightly calls attention to the fact that, for Ibn
‘Arabi, the Qoranic verse: ‘And thy Lord hath decreed that you
should worship none other than Him’ (XVII, 23) does not mean, as
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Sufism and Taoism
it does normally, ‘that you should not worship anything other than
God’, but rather ‘that whatever you worship, you are thereby not
(actually) worshipping anything other than God ’. 34
In explaining why Noah’s call to the worship of God is to be
understood as a makr, Ibn ‘Arabi uses the terms the ‘beginning’
(bidayah) and the ‘end’ (, ghayah ). 35 That is to say, he distinguishes
between the ‘beginning’ stage and the ‘end’ stage in idol-worship,
and asserts that these two stages are in this case exactly one and the
same thing. The ‘beginning’ is the stage at which the people of Noah
were indulging in idol-worship, and at which they were reproached
by Noah for faithlessness. They were strongly urged by him to leave
this stage and go over to the other end, i.e., the ‘end’ stage where
they would be worshipping God as they should. However, already
at the ‘beginning’ stage Noah’s people were worshipping none other
than God albeit only through their idols. So, properly speaking,
there was no meaning at all in Noah’s exhorting them to leave the
first stage and go over to the last stage. Indeed, it was even more
positively an act of makr on the part of Noah that he distinguished
between the ‘beginning’ and the ‘end’ when there was nothing at all
to be distinguished.
As al-Qashani puts it, ‘how can a man be advised to go to God
when he is already with God?’ To tell the idolaters to stop worship-
ping God and to worship God alone amounts exactly to the same
thing as telling those who are actually worshipping God to abandon
the worship of God and to resort to the worship of God! It is absurd,
or rather it is worse than absurd, because such an admonition is
liable to make people blind to the self-revealing aspect of the
Absolute.
The secret of idol-worship which we have just seen may be
understood in more theoretical terms as a problem of the compati-
bility of the One and the Many in regard to the Absolute. There is
no contradiction in the Absolute being the One and the Many at the
same time. Al-Qashani offers a good explanation of this fact, com-
paring it to the essential unity of a human being . 36
(Since there is nothing existent in the real sense of the word except
the Absolute itself, a true ‘knower of God’) does not see in the form
of the Many anything other than God’s face, for he knows that it is He
that manifests Himself in all these forms. Thus (whatever he may
worship) he worships only God.
This may be understood in the following way. The divergent forms of
the Many within the One are either spiritual, i.e., non-sensible, such
as angels, or outwardly visible and sensible such as the heavens and
earth and all the material things that exist between the two. The
former are comparable to the spiritual faculties in the bodily frame of
a man, while the latter are comparable to his bodily members. The
Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion
61
existence of multiplicity in man in no way prevents him from having a
unity. (Likewise, the existence of the Many in God does not deprive
Him of His essential Unity.)
The conclusion to be reached from all this is that there is nothing
wrong with idolatry, for whatever one worships one is worshipping
through it God Himself. Are all idol-worshippers, then, right in
indulging in idolatry? That is another question. Idolatry, though in
itself it has nothing blamable, is exposed to grave danger. Idolatry is
right in so far as the worshipper is aware that the object of his
worship is a manifested form of God and that, therefore, by wor-
shipping the idol he is worshipping God. Once, however, he forgets
this fundamental fact, he is liable to be deceived by his own imagina-
tion and ascribe real divinity to the idol (a piece of wood or a stone,
for example) and begin to worship it as a god existing independently
of, and side by side with, God. If he reaches this point, his attitude is
a pure tashbih which completely excludes tanzih.
Thus in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, there are two basic attitudes toward
idolatry that are opposed to each other: the one is an attitude
peculiar to the ‘higher’ (a‘la) people, while the other is characteris-
tic of the ‘lower’ ( adna ). He says : 37
The ‘knower’ knows who (really) is the object of his worship; he
knows also the particular form in which the object of his worship
appears (to him). He is aware that the ‘dispersion’ and ‘multiplicity’
Y . are comparable to the corporeal members in the sensible form (of
man’s body) and the non-corporeal faculties in the spiritual form (of
man), so that in every object of worship what is worshipped is no
f. other than God Himself.
In contrast to this, the ‘lower’ people are those who imagine a divine
nature in every object of their worship. If it were not for this (wrong)
Y, imagination, nobody would worship stones and other similar things.
This is why (God) said to men of this kind, ‘Name them (i.e., desig-
nate each object of your worship by its name)!’ (XIII, 23). If they
*!’ were really to name these objects they would have called them a
stone, a tree, or a star, (because their idols were in fact stones, trees
and stars). But if they had been asked, 1 Whom are you worshipping?’,
“ they would have replied, ‘a god!’ They would never have said, ‘God’
or even ‘the god’. 38
Y; The ‘higher’ people, on the contrary, are not victims of this kind of
deceitful imagination. (In the presence of each idol) they tell them-
W selves, ‘This is a concrete form of theophany, and, as such, it deserves
a veneration’. Thus they do not confine (theophany) to this single
instance (i.e., they look upon everything as a particular form of
theophany).
If we are to judge the attitude of Noah’s people who refused to
respond to his advice, we must say that it was right in one respect
and it was wrong in another. They were right in that they upheld
62
Sufism and Taoism
(though unconsciously) the truly divine nature of the outward forms
of theophany. This they did by resolutely refusing to throw away
their idols. But they were wrong in that they, deceived by their own
imagination, regarded each idol as an independently existing god,
and thus opposed in their minds ‘small goods ’ 39 to God as the ‘great
God’.
According to Ibn ‘Arabi, the ideal combination of tanzih and
tashbih was achieved only in Islam. The real qur’an came into being
for the first time in history in the belief of Muhammad and his
community. On this point Ibn ‘Arabi says : 40
The principle of qur’an was upheld in its purity only by Muhammad
and his community ‘which was the best of all communities that had
ever appeared among mankind’. 41 (Only he and his community real-
ized the two aspects of) the verse: laysa ka-mithli-hi shay ‘There is
nothing like unto Him’, for (their position) gathered everything into
a unity. 42
As we have seen above, the Qoran relates that Noah called upon his
people ‘by night and day’. Over against this, Muhammad, Ibn
‘Arabi says, ‘called upon his people, not “by night and day” but “by
night in the day and by day in the night” \ 43
Evidently, ‘day’ symbolizes tashbih and ‘night’ tanzih, because
the daylight brings out the distinctive features of the individual
things while the nocturnal darkness conceals these distinctions. The
position of Muhammad, in this interpretation, would seem to sug-
gest a complete fusion of tashbih and tanzih.
Was Noah, then, completely wrong in his attitude? Ibn ‘Arab!
answers to this question in both the affirmative and the negative.
Certainly, Noah preached outwardly tanzih alone. Such a pure
tanzih, if taken on the level of Reason, is, as we have already seen,
liable to lead ultimately to assimilating the Absolute with pure
spirits. And tanzih in this sense is a ‘ tanzih by Reason’, and is
something to be rejected. With Noah himself, however, tanzih was
not of this nature. Far from being a result of logical thinking, it was a
tanzih based on a deep prophetic experience 44 Only, the people of
Noah failed to notice that; for them the tanzih advocated by Noah
was nothing but a tanzih to be reached by the ordinary process of
reasoning.
Real tanzih is something quite different from this kind of logical
tanzih . And according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, the right kind of tanzih was first
advocated consciously by Islam. It does not consist in recognizing
the absolute Unknowable alone with a total rejection and denial of
the phenomenal world of things. The real tanzih is established on
the basis of the experience by which man becomes conscious of the
unification of all the Divine Attributes, each Attribute being actual-
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Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion
ized in a concrete thing or event in the world. In more plain terms,
the real tanzih consists in man’s peeping through the things and
events of this world into the grand figure of the One God beyond
them. It is ‘purifying’ {tanzih), no doubt, because it stands on the
consciousness of the essential ‘oneness’ of God, but it is not a purely
logical or intellectual ‘purifying’. It is a tanzih which comprises in
itself tashbih.
In Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, the tanzih practised by Muhammad was
inviting men not to the absolute Absolute which bears no relation at
all to the world, but to Allah the Merciful, that is, the Absolute as
the ultimate ground of the world, the creative source of all Being. It
is worthy of notice also that of all the Divine Names the ‘Merciful’
(al-Rahman) has been specially chosen in this context. The name
‘Merciful’ is for Ibn ‘Arabi the most comprehensive Name which
comprises and unifies all the Divine Names. In this capacity the
‘Merciful’ is synonymous with Allah. Al-Qashani is quite explicit on
this point . 45
It is remarkable that the ‘Merciful’ is a Name which comprises all the
Divine Names, so that the whole world is comprised therein, there
being no difference between this Name and the Name Allah. This is
evidenced by the Qoranic verse: ‘Say: Call upon (Him by the Name)
Allah or call upon (Him by the Name) Merciful. By whichever Name
you call upon Him (it will be the same) for all the most beautiful
Names are His’ (XVII, 110).
Now each group of people in the world stands under the Lordship of
one of His Names. And he who stands under the Lordship of a
particular Name is a servant of that Name. Thus the apostle of God
(Muhammad) called mankind from this state of divergence of the
Names unto the unifying plane of the Name Merciful or the Name
Allah.
To this Bali Efendi 46 adds the remark that, unlike in the case of
Noah, there is no relation of reciprocal ‘deceit’ ( makr ) between
Muhammad and his people, for there is no motive, neither on the
part of Muhammad nor on the part of the community, for having
recourse to makr. Muhammad, he goes on to say, certainly invited
men to the worship of the One God , 47 but he did not thereby call
men to the Absolute in its aspect of He-ness. In other words, he did
not unconditionally reject the idols which men had been worship-
ping; he simply taught men to worship the idols (or, indeed, any
other thing in the world) in the right way, that is, to worship them as
so many self-manifestations of God. In the Islamic tanzih there is
included the right form of tashbih.
If a man wants to know the Absolute by the power of his Reason
alone, he is inevitably led to the kind of tanzih which has no place for
64
Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion
65
Sufism and Taoism
tashbih. If, on the contrary, he exercises his Imagination (i.e., the
faculty of thinking through concrete imagery) alone, he falls into
pure tashbih. Both tanzih and tashbih of this sort are by themselves
imperfect and positively harmful. Only when man sees by the
experience of ‘unveiling’ the true reality of the matter, can tanzih
and tashbih assume a form of perfection.
If Reason functions by itself quite independently of anything else so
that it acquires knowledge by its own cognitive power, the knowledge
it obtains of God will surely be of the nature of tanzih, not tashbih.
But if God furnishes Reason with a (true) knowledge of the Divine
self-manifestation (pertaining to the tashbih aspect of the Absolute),
its knowledge of God attains perfection, and it will exercise tanzih
where it should, and exercise tashbih where it should. Reason in such
a state will witness the Absolute itself pervading all cognizable forms,
natural and elemental. And there will remain no form but that
Reason identifies its essence with the Absolute itself.
Such is the perfect and complete knowledge (of God) that has been
brought by the revealed religions. And the faculty of Imagination
exercises its own judgment (upon every thing) in the light of this
knowledge (i.e., Imagination collaborates with Reason by modifying
the tanzih-\ iew of Reason with its own tashbih-view).™
The gist of what Ibn ‘Arab! says in this passage may be summarized
as follows. Under normal conditions, tanzih is the product of
Reason, and tashbih is the product of Imagination ( wahm ). But
when the experience of ‘unveiling’ produces in the mind a perfect
knowledge, Reason and Imagination are brought into complete
harmony, and tanzih and tashbih become united in the perfect
knowledge of God. Of Reason and Imagination in such a state,
however, it is invariably the latter that holds regal sway {sultan).
Concerning the proper activity of Reason in this process and the
controlling function exercised by Imagination over Reason in such a
way that a perfect combination of tanzih and tashbih may be
obtained, Bali Efendi makes the following illuminating remark : 49
In just the same place where Reason passes the judgment of tanzih,
Imagination passes the judgment of tashbih. Imagination does this
because it witnesses how the Absolute pervades and permeates all
the forms, whether mental or physical. Imagination in this state
observes the Absolute in the (completely purified) form peculiar to
tanzih as established in Reason, and it realizes that to affirm tanzih
(exclusively, as is done by Reason) is nothing but delimiting the
Absolute, and that the delimitation of the Absolute is nothing but (a
kind of) tashbih (i.e., the completely purified Absolute is also a
particular ‘form’ assumed by the Absolute). But Reason is not aware
that the tanzih which it is exercising is precisely one of those forms
which it thinks must be rejected from the Absolute by tanzih.
These words of Bali Efendi makes the following argument of Ibn
‘Arab! easy to understand : 50
It is due to this situation that Imagination 51 has a greater sway in man
than Reason for man, even when his Reason has reached the utmost
limit of development, is not free from the control exercised over him
by Imagination and cannot do without relying upon representation
regarding what he has grasped by Reason.
Thus Imagination is the supreme authority ( sultan ) in the most
perfect form (of Being), namely, man. And this has been confirmed
by all the revealed religions, which have exercised tanzih and tashbih
at the same time; they have exercised tashbih by Imagination where
(Reason has established) tanzih, and exercised tanzih by Reason
where (Imagination has established) tashbih. Everything has in this
way, been brought into a close organic whole, wherefanziTz cannot be
separated from tashbih nor tashbih from tanzih . It is this situation that
is referred to in the Qoranic verse: ‘There is nothing like unto Him,
and He is All-hearing All-seeing’, in which God Himself describes
Him with tanzih and tashbih . . .
Then there is another verse in which He says, ‘exalted is thy Lord, the
Lord of majestic power standing far above that with which they
describe Him (XXXVII, 180). This is said because men tend to
describe Him with what is given by their Reason. So He ‘purifies’
Himself here from their very tanzih, because they are doing nothing
but delimit Him by their tanzih. All this is due to the fact that Reason
is by nature deficient in understanding this kind of thing.
Notes
1. Cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 33.
2. The epithet subbuhiyyah is a derivative of subbuh or sabbuh which is one of the
Divine Names meaning roughly ‘One who is glorified’ ‘the All-Glorious’. The verb
sabbaha {Allah) means to ‘glorify’ God by crying out Subhana Allah! (‘Far above
stands God beyond all imperfections and impurities!’)
3. Fus., p. 45/68.
4. p. 45.
5. Fu$., Com., p. 47. (The commentary of Bali Efendi is given in the same Cairo
edition of the Fuyizj which we are using in the present work.)
6. Cf. Affifi, Fuj., Com., p. 12.
7. p. 88.
8. Ibn ‘ Arab! calls the wisdom embodied by Noah ‘ wisdom of a subbuh nature’ , and
calls the wisdom symbolized by Enoch ‘wisdom of a quddus nature’ ( hikmah qud-
duslyah), Fus., p. 6 /75.
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Sufism and Taoism
9. Cf. Qashani, p. 60.
10. ibid.
11. Fus., p. 46/68.
12. pp. 46-47.
13. Fus., P- 47/68. Ibn'Arabi takes this occasion to point out that the Absolute does
not allow of definition not only in its absoluteness but also in its self-revealing aspect.
The impossibility of defining the Absolute perse has already been fully explained in
Chapter II. But even in its aspect of self-manifestation, the Absolute cannot be
defined because, as we have just seen, the Absolute in this aspect is everything,
external or internal, and if we are to define it, the definition must be formulated in
such a way that it covers all the definitions of all the things in the world. But since the
things are infinite in number, such a definition is never to be attained.
14. Fus., p. 47/69.
15. p. 47.
16. Fus., P- 47/69.
17. Fus -, p- 48/69.
18. ‘Our signs’, that is, ‘Our Attributes’ - al-Qashani.
19. ‘in so far as their determinations ( ta‘ayyunat , i.e., properties conceived as
‘determinations’ of the Absolute) are different from your determination’ - al-
Qashani. This means that, although essentially it is not necessary to distinguish the
things of the outer world and yourself, there is a certain respect in which ‘all that exist
outside of yourself’, i.e., the modes of determination peculiar to the things of the
outer world, are different from the mode of determination which is peculiar to
‘yourself’, i.e., the inner world.
20. ‘i.e., what is manifested in yourself by His Attributes. If it were not for this
manifestation, you would not exist in the world’. - al-Qashani.
21. Fus -, P- 49/70.
22. Fus., p. 98-99/93.
23. p. 99.
24. that is to say, whenever anybody sees or hears something, it is not the man who
really sees or hears, but God Himself who sees or hears in the form of that man.
25. Fus., P- 49/70.
26. Fus., P- 131/111.
27. taking ka as expletive.
28. Fus., P- 50/70.
Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion
67
29. The word furqan, whatever its etymology, denotes in the Qoran the Qoran itself.
For Ibn ‘Arab!, its meaning is totally different from this.
30. Fus., p. 51/70.
31. Qur’an as a technical term of Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy is not the name of the
Sacred Book Qur’an (or Qoran). He derives this word from the root QR’ meaning ‘to
gather together’ .
32. Fus ., p. 51/70.
33. Fus., Com., p. 39.
34. ibid. Cf. also Fus., p. 55/72.
35. Fus., p. 54/71-72.
36. p. 55. The problem of the One and the Many will form the specific topic of
Chapter VII.
37. Fus„ p. 55/72.
38. This implies that for these people each idol is ‘a god’, i.e., an independent
divinity; they are not aware that in the forms of the idols they are ultimately
worshipping the One God.
39. Cf. Qashani, p. 55.
40. Fus., p. 51/71.
41. Reference to III, 110 of the Qoran.
42. i.e., it affirmed ‘separating’ ( farq ) in ‘gathering’ ( jam ‘), and affirmed ‘gathering’
in ‘separating’, asserting thereby that the One is Many from a relative point of view
and that the Many are One in their reality - al-Qashani, p. 51.
43. Fus., p. 52/71.
44. Fus., P- 53/71.
45. p. 54.
46. ibid., footnote.
47. Outwardly this might be considered a pure tanzih.
48. Fus., P- 228/181.
49. p. 229, footnote.
50. Fus., P- 229/181-182.
51. The word Imagination ( wahm ) must be taken in this context in the sense of the
mental faculty of thinking through concrete imagery based on representation
{tasawwur).
Metaphysical Perplexity
69
V Metaphysical Perplexity
As the preceding chapter will have made clear, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s
conception, the only right attitude of man toward God is a harmoni-
ous unity composed of tanzih and tashbih , which is realizable solely
on the basis of the mystical intuition of ‘unveiling’.
If man follows the direction of Imagination which is not yet
illumined by the experience of ‘unveiling’, he is sure to fall into the
wrong type of idolatry in which each individual idol is worshipped as
a really independent and self-sufficient god. Such a god is nothing
but a groundless image produced in the mind of man. And the result
is a crude type of tashbih which can never rise to the level of tanzih.
If, on the other hand, man tries to approach God by following the
direction of Reason unaided by Imagination, man will inevitably
rush toward an exclusive tanzih, and lose sight of the Divine life
pulsating in all the phenomena of the world including himself.
The right attitude which combines in itself tanzih and tashbih is, in
short, to see the One in the Many and the Many in the One, or rather
to see the Many as One and the One as Many. The realization of this
kind of coincidentia oppositorum is called by Ibn ‘Arab! ‘perplexity’
(hay rah). As such, this is a metaphysical perplexity because here
man is impeded by the very nature of what he sees in the world from
definitely deciding as to whether Being is One or Many.
Ibn ‘Arabi explains the conception of ‘perplexity’ by an original
interpretation of a Qoranic verse. The verse in question is: ‘And
they (i.e., the idols) have caused many people to go astray’ (LXXI,
24). This is interpreted by Ibn ‘Arabi to mean that the existence of
many idols has put men into perplexity at the strange sight of the
absolute One being actually diversified into Many through its own
activity. 1
The idols in this context represent the multiplicity of forms that
are observable in the world. And, as al-Qashani remarks, anybody
who looks at them ‘with the eye of unification (tawhidf , i.e., with
the preconception of tanzih, is sure to become embarrassed and
perplexed at the sight of the One being diversified according to the
relations it bears to its loci of self-manifestation.
The Qoranic verse just quoted ends with another sentence: ‘and
(o God) increase Thou not the people of injustice (zalimin) except
in going astray’, and the whole verse is put in the mouth of Noah.
This second sentence, too, is interpreted by Ibn ‘Arabi in quite an
original way. The interpretation is, in fact, more than original, for it
squeezes out of the verse a conception of zalim which is exactly the
opposite of what is meant by the Qoran. He begins by saying that
the word zalim or ‘a man of injustice’ here is equivalent to a phrase
which occurs repeatedly in the Qoran , zalim li-nafsi-hi, meaning ‘he
who does injustice or wrong to himself’. Now according to the
actual usage of the Qoran, ‘he who wrongs himself’ designates a
stubborn unbeliever who disobeys God’s commands and by sticking
obstinately to polytheism, drives himself on to perdition. But, as
interpreted by Ibn ‘Arab! zalim li-nafsi-hi refers to a man who ‘does
wrong to himself’ by refusing himself all the pleasures of the present
world and devotes himself to seeking ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’) in
God. 2
This interpretation is based on another Qoranic verse, namely
XXXV, 32, which reads: ‘Some of them are doing injustice to
themselves and some of them are moderate, while some others vie
one with another in doing good works with the permission of God’ .
And quite opposite to the usual ranking, Ibn ‘Arabi considers ‘those
who do injustice to themselves’ the highest and best of all the three
classes of men. They are, he says, ‘the best of all people, the
specially chosen of God’. 3
Al-Qashani quotes, in this connection, a Tradition from al-
Tirmidhi’s $ahih which reads: ‘These men are all in one and the
same grade; all of them will be in the Garden’. He says that this
Tradition refers to the three classes of men mentioned in the verse
just quoted. These three classes are, as the Tradition explicitly
states, in the same grade in the sense that they all are destined to go
to the Garden, but al-Qashani thinks that this does not prevent
them from forming a hierarchy, the highest being ‘those who do
injustice to themselves’, the middle the ‘moderate’, and the lowest
‘those who vie with one another in the performance of good works’ .
The theoretical explanation he gives of this hierarchy, however,
does not seem to be convincing at all. It would seem to be better for
us to take, as Affifi does, ‘the man who does injustice to himself’ as
meaning a mystic who has had the experience of ‘unveiling’ in
self-annihilation, and ‘the moderate man’ as meaning ‘a man who
keeps to the middle course’. Then most naturally, ‘those who vie
one another’ would mean those who are still in the earlier stage of
the mystical training.
However this may be, what is important for Ibn ‘Arabi is the
conception that the ‘man who does injustice to himself’ occupies the
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highest rank precisely by being in metaphysical perplexity. As is
easy to see, this has a weighty bearing on the interpretation of the
latter half of the Qoranic verse, in which Noah implores God to
increase more and more the ‘going astray’ of the ‘people of injustice .
Noah, according to this understanding, implores God to increase
even more the metaphysical ‘perplexity’ of the highest class of men,
while the standard, i.e., common-sense, interpretation of the verse
sees Noah calling down Divine curses upon the worst class of men,
the stubborn idol-worshippers.
In exactly the same spirit, Ibn ‘Arab! finds a very picturesque
description of this ‘perplexity’ in a Qoranic verse (II, 20) which
depicts how God trifles with wicked people who are trying in vain to
beguile and delude Him and those who sincerely believe in Him. A
dead darkness settles down upon these people. From time to time
roars frightful thunder, and a flash of lightning ‘almost snatches
away their sight’. And ‘as often as they are illuminated they walk in
the light, but when it darkens again they stand still’ .
This verse in Ibn ‘Arabl’s interpretation, yields a new meaning
which is totally different from what we ordinarily understand.
Although he merely quotes the verse without any comment, what
he wants to convey thereby is evident from the very fact that he
adduces it in support of his theory of ‘perplexity’ . On behalf of his
Master, al-Qashani makes it explicit in the following way: 4
This verse describes the ‘perplexity’ of these people. Thus, when the
light of the Unity ( ahadiyah ) is manifested they ‘walk’, that is, they
move ahead with the very movement of God, while when it darkens
against them as God becomes hidden behind the veil and the Multi-
plicity appears instead (of Unity) obstructing their view, they just
stand still in ‘perplexity’.
This ‘perplexity’ necessarily assumes the form of a circular move-
ment. ‘The man in “perplexity” draws a circle’, as Ibn ‘ Arab! says. 5
This is necessarily so, because the ‘walking’ of such a man reflects
the very circle of the Divine self- manifestation. The Absolute itself
draws a circle in the sense that it starts from the primordial state of
Unity, ‘descends’ to the plane of concrete beings and diversifies
itself in myriads of things and events, and finally ‘ascends’ back into
the original non-differentiation. The man in ‘perplexity’ draws the
same circle, for he ‘walks with God, from God, to God, his onward
movement being identical with the movement of God Himself’. 6
This circular movement, Ibn ‘ Arab! observes, turns round a pivot
(qu(b) or center ( markaz ), which is God. And since the man is
merely going round and round the center, his distance from God
remains exactly the same whether he happens to be in the state of
Unity or in that of Multiplicity. Whether, in other words, he is
Metaphysical Perplexity
71
looking at the Absolute in its primordial Unity or as it is diversified
in an infinite number of concrete things, he stands at the same
distance from the Absolute per se.
On the contrary, a man who, his vision being veiled, is unable to
see the truth, is a ‘man who walks along a straight road’. He
imagines God to be far away from him, and looks for God afar off.
He is deceived by his own imagination and strives in vain to reach
his imagined God. In the case of such a man, there is a definite
distinction between the ‘from’ {min, i.e., the starting-point) and the
‘to’ ( ila , i.e., the ultimate goal), and there is naturally an infinite
distance between the two points. The starting-point is himself
imagined to be far away from himself, and the distance between is
an imaginary distance which he thinks separates him from God.
Such a man, in spite of his desire to approach Him, goes even farther
from God as he walks along the straight road stretching infinitely
ahead.
The thought itself, thus formulated and expressed with the image
of a man walking in a circle and another going ahead along a straight
line, is indeed of remarkable profundity. As an interpretation of the
above-cited Qoranic verse, however, it certainly does not do justice
to the meaning given directly by the actual context. The extraordi-
nary freedom in the interpretation of the Qoran comes out even
more conspicuously when Ibn ‘Arab! applies his exegesis to other
verses which he quotes as a conclusive evidence for his thesis. 7 The
first is LXXI, 25, which immediately follows the one relating to the
‘people who do injustice to themselves’. It reads: ‘Because of their
mistakes ( khafi’at ) they (i.e., the people of injustice), were
drowned, and then put into fire. And they found nobody to help
them in place of God’.
The word khafi’at meaning ‘mistakes’ or ‘sins’ comes from the
root KH-T which means ‘to err’ ‘to commit a mistake’. It is a
commonly used word with a definite meaning. Ibn ‘ Arabi, however,
completely disregards this etymology, and derives it from the root
KH-TT meaning ‘to draw lines’ ‘to mark out’. The phrase min
khan.’ ati-him ‘from their mistakes’ is thus made to mean something
like: ‘because of that which has been marked out for them as their
personal possessions’. And this, for Ibn ‘Arab!, means nothing
other than ‘their own individual determinations {ta ( ayyundt)' , that
is, ‘the ego of each person’.
‘Because of their egos’ , i.e., since they had their own egos already
established, they had to be ‘drowned’ once in the ocean before they
could be raised into the spiritual state of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’).
This ocean in which they were drowned, he says, symbolizes
‘knowledge of God’, and that is no other than the ‘perplexity’. And
al-Qashani: 8
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Sufism and Taoism
(This ‘ocean' -‘perplexity’) is the Unity pervading all and manifesting
itself in multiple forms. It is ‘perplexing’ because of the Unity appear-
ing in a determined form in every single thing and yet remaining
non-determined in the whole. (It is ‘perplexing’) because of its
(simultaneous) non-limitation and limitation.
As regards the sentence in the verse: ‘then (they) were put into fire’ ,
Ibn ‘Arabi remarks simply that this holocaust occurred in the very
water, that is, while they were in the ocean. The meaning is again
explicated by al-Qashani: 9
This ‘fire’ is the fire of love (‘ ishq ) for the light of the splendor of His
Face, which consumes all the determined forms and individual
essences in thd very midst of the ocean of ‘knowledge of God’ and
true Life. And this true Life is of such a nature that everything comes
to life with it and yet is destroyed by it at the same time. There can be
no perplexity greater than the ‘perplexity’ caused by the sight of
‘drowning’ and ‘burning’ with Life and Knowledge, that is, simul-
taneous self-annihilation and self-subsistence.
Thus ‘they found nobody to help them in place of God’, because
when God manifested Himself to these sages in His Essence, they
were all burned down, and there remained for them nothing else
than God who was the sole ‘helper’ for them, i.e., the sole vivifier of
them. God alone was there to ‘help’ them, and ‘they were destroyed
(i.e., annihilated) in Him for ever’. Their annihilation in God was
the very vivification of them in Him. And this is the meaning of
‘self-subsistence’ ( baqa ), of which fana\ ‘self-annihilation’, is but
the reverse side.
If God, instead of destroying them in the ocean, had rescued them
from drowning and brought them back to the shore of Nature (i.e.,
brought them back to the world of limitations and determinations)
they would not have attained to such a high grade (i.e., they would
have lived in the natural world of ‘reality’ and would have remained
veiled from God by their very individualities).
Ibn ‘Arab! adds that all this is true from a certain point of view, 10
‘although, to be more strict (there is no ‘drowning’, no ‘burning’,
and no ‘helping’ because) everything belongs (from beginning to
end) to God, and is with God; or rather, everything is God.
In a Qoranic verse following the one which has just been discussed,
Noah goes on to say to God: ‘Verily, if Thou shouldst leave them as
they are, they would surely lead Thy slaves astray and would beget
none but sinful disbelievers’.
The words: ‘they would surely lead Thy slaves astray’ mean,
according to Ibn ‘Arabi, 11 ‘they would put Thy slaves into perplexity
and lead them out of the state of being slaves and bring them to their
Metaphysical Perplexity 73
inner reality which is now hidden from their eyes, namely, the state
of being the Lord. (If this happens,) then those who think them-
selves to be slaves will regard themselves as Lords’ . The ‘perplexity’
here spoken of is considered by al-Qashani not the true metaphysi-
cal perplexity but a ‘Satanic perplexity’ (hay rah shay(aniyah). But
this is evidently an overstatement. Ibn ‘Arabi is still speaking of the
same kind of metaphysical ‘perplexity’ as before. The point he
makes here is that, if one permits those who know the Mystery of
Being to lead and teach the people, the latter will in the end realize
the paradoxical fact that they are not only slaves, as they have
thought themselves to be, but at the same time Lords.
The interpretation which Ibn ‘Arab! puts on the ending part of
the verse: ‘and would beget none but sinful disbelievers’, is even
more shocking to common sense than the preceding one. We must
remember, however, that this interpretation is something quite
natural and obvious to Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s mind.
The Arabic word which I have translated as ‘sinful’ is fajir , a
well-established Qoranic term which is derived from the root FJR
meaning ‘to commit unlawful, i.e., sinful, acts’ . Ibn ‘Arabi derives it
from another FJR meaning ‘to open and give an outlet for water’.
And in this paticular context it is taken in the sense of ‘making
manifest’ ( izh 'ar ). Thus the word fajir, instead of meaning ‘a man
who commits sinful acts’, means ‘a man who manifests or unveils
what is veiled’ . In a terminology which is more typical of Ibn ‘Arabi,
a fajir is a man who manifests the Absolute in the sense that he is a
locus of the Absolute’s self-manifestation.
As for the second term translated here as ‘disbeliever’ , the Arabic
is kaffar, an emphatic form of kafir meaning ‘one who is ungrateful
to, i.e., disbelieves in, God’. But, as we have observed before, Ibn
‘Arabi takes this word in its etymological sense; namely, that of
‘covering up’. So kaffar in this context is not an ‘ingrate’ or ‘disbe-
liever’, but a man who ‘covers up’ or hides the Absolute behind the
veil of his own concrete, determined form.
Moreover, it is important to remember, the fajir and kafir are not
two different persons but one and the same person. So that the
meaning of this part of the verse amounts to: ‘these people would do
nothing but unveil what is veiled and veil what is manifest at the
same time’. As a result, those who see this extraordinary view
naturally fall into ‘perplexity’.
But precisely the act of falling into this kind of ‘perplexity’ is the
very first step to attaining ultimately the real ‘knowledge’. And the
‘perplexity’ here in question has a metaphysical basis. We shall
consider in what follows this point in more theoretical terms,
remaining faithful to Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s own description.
* * *
74 Sufism and Taoism
What we must emphasize before everything else is that, in Ibn
‘Arabi’s world-view, the whole world is the locus of theophany or
the self-manifestation of the Absolute, and that, consequently, all
the things and events of the world are self-determinations of the
Absolute. Therefore, the world of Being cannot be grasped in its
true form except as a synthesis of contraditions. Only by a simul-
taneous affirmation of contradictories can we understand the real
nature of the world. And the ‘perplexity’ is nothing other than the
impression produced on our minds by the observation of the simul-
taneous existence of contradictories.
Ibn ‘ArabI describes in detail some of the basic forms of the
ontological contradiction. And the explanation he gives of the
coincidentia oppositorum is of great value and importance in that it
clarifies several cardinal points of his world-view. Here we shall
consider two most fundamental forms of contradiction.
The first 12 is the contradictory nature of the things of the world as
manifested in the relation between the ‘inward’ (bafin) and the
‘outward’ ( zahir ). When one wants to define ‘man’, for example,
one must combine the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’ of man in his
definition. The commonly accepted definition - ‘man is a rational
animal - is the result of the combination, for ‘animal’ represents the
‘outward’ of man, while ‘rational’ represents his ‘inward’, the
former being body and the latter the spirit governing the body. Take
away from a man his spirit, and he will no longer be a ‘man’ ; he will
merely be a figure resembling a man, something like a stone or a
piece of wood. Such a figure does not deserve the name ‘ man’ except
in a metaphorical sense.
Just as man is man only in so far as there is spirit within the body,
so also the ‘world’ is ‘world’ only in so far as there is the Reality or
Absolute within the exterior form of the world.
It is utterly impossible that the various forms of the world (i.e., the
things in the empirical world) should subsist apart from the Absolute.
Thus the basic attribute of divinity ( uluhiyah ) must necessarily per-
tain to the world in the real sense of the word, not metaphorically,
just as it (i.e., the complex of spirit, the ‘inward’, and body, the
‘outward’) constitutes the definition of man, so long as we understand
by ‘man’ a real, living man.
Furthermore, not only is the ‘inward’ of the world the Reality itself
but its ‘outward’ also is the Reality, because the ‘outward’ of the
world is, as we have seen, essentially the forms of theophany. In this
sense, both the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ of the world must be defined
in terms of divinity.
Having established this point, Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to describe the
strange nature of the praising ( thana ’) of the ‘inward’ by the ‘out-
Metaphysical Perplexity 7 5
ward’ . ‘Just as’ , he says, ‘the outward form of man constantly praises
with its own tongue the spirit within, so the various forms of the
world praise, by a special disposal of God, the inward spirit of the
world’. How does the bodily form of man ‘praise with its own
tongue’ the spirit within? This is explained by al-Qashani in the
following way: 13
The bodily form of man praises the spirit, i.e., the soul, by means of its
movements and by manifestation of its peculiar properties and per-
fections. (The reason why this is ‘praise’ is as follows.) The bodily
members of man are in themselves but (lifeless) objects which, were
it not for the spirit, would neither move nor perceive anything;
besides, the bodily members as such have no virtue at all such as
generosity, liberal giving, magnanimity, the sense of shame, courage,
truthfulness, honesty, etc. And since ‘to praise’ means nothing other
than mentioning the good points (of somebody or something), the
bodily members (praise the spirit) by expressing (through actions)
the virtues of the spirit.
Exactly in the same way, the various forms of the world ‘praise’ the
inner spirit of the universe (i.e., the Reality residing within the
universe) through their own properties, perfections, indeed, through
everything that comes out of them. Thus the world is praising its own
‘inward’ by its ‘outward’.
We, however, usually do not notice this fact, because we do not have
a comprehensive knowledge of all the forms of the world. The
language of this universal ‘praise’ remains incomprehensible to us
‘just as a Turk cannot understand the language of a Hindi!’. 14 The
contradictory nature of this phenomenon lies in the fact that if the
‘outward’ of the world praises its ‘inward’, properly speaking both
the ‘outward’ and ‘inward’ are absolutely nothing other than the
Absolute itself. Hence we reach the conclusion that the one who
praises and the one who is praised are in this case ultimately the
same.
The phenomenon just described, of the Absolute praising itself in
two forms opposed to each other, is merely a concrete case illustrat-
ing the more profound and more general fact that the Absolute,
from the point of view of man, cannot be grasped except in the form
of coincidentia oppositorum. Ibn ‘ArabI quotes in support of his
view a famous saying of Abu Said al-Kharraz, a great mystic of
Bagdad of the ninth century: ‘God cannot be known except as a
synthesis of opposites’. 15
Al-Kharraz, who was himself one of the many faces of the Absolute
and one of its many tongues, said that God cannot be known except
by attributing opposites to Him simultaneously. Thus the Absolute is
the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward. It is nothing
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Metaphysical Perplexity
77
Sufism and Taoism
other than what comes out outwardly (in concealing itself inwardly),
whereas in the very moment of coming out outwardly it is what
conceals itself inwardly.
There is no one who sees the Absolute except the Absolute itself, and
yet there is no one to whom the Absolute remains hidden. It is the
Outward (i.e., self-manifesting) to itself, and yet it is the Inward (i.e.,
self-concealing) to itself. The absolute is the one who is called by the
name of Abu SaTd al-Kharraz and by other names of other contin-
gent beings.
The Inward belies the Outward when the latter says ‘I’, and the
Outward belies the Inward when the latter says T. And this applies
to every other pair of opposites. (In every case) the one who says
something is one, and yet he is the very same one who hears. This is
based on the phrase said by the prophet (Muhammad): ‘and what
their own souls tell them’, indicating clearly that the soul is the
speaker and the hearer of what it says at the same time, the knower of
what itself has said. In all this (phenomenon), the essence itself is one
though it takes on different aspects. Nobody can ignore this, because
everybody is aware of this in himself in so far as he is a form of the
Absolute.
Al-Qashani reminds us concerning this fundamental thesis of his
Master that everything, in regard to its ontological source and
ground, is the Absolute, and that all the things of the world are but
different forms assumed by the same essence. The fact that the
phenomenal world is so variegated is simply due to the diversity of
the Divine Names, i.e., the basic or archetypal forms of the Divine
self-manifestation .
Nothing exists except the Absolute. Only it takes on divergent forms
and different aspects according to whether the Names appear out-
wardly or lie hidden inwardly as well as in accordance with the
relative preponderance of the properties of Necessity ( wujuh ) over
those of Possibility ( imkan ) or conversely: the preponderance of
spirituality, for instance, in some and the preponderance of material-
ity in others . 16
As regards Ibn ‘ArabFs words: ‘The Inward belies the Outward
when the latter says “I”, etc.’, al-Qashanl gives the following
explication:
Each one of the Divine Names affirms its own meaning, but what it
affirms is immediately negated by an opposite Name which affirms its
own. Thus each single part of the world affirms its own I-ness by the
very act of manifesting its property, but the opposite of that part
immediately denies what the former has affirmed and brings to
naught its self-assertion by manifesting in its turn a property which is
the opposite of the one manifested by the first.
Each of the two, in this way, declares what it has in its own nature,
and the other responds (negatively) to it. But (in essence) the one
which declares and the one which responds are one and the same
thing. As an illustration of this, Ibn ‘ Arabi refers to a (famous) saying
of the prophet (Muhammad) describing how God pardons the sins
committed by the people of this community, namely , ‘both what their
bodily members have done and what their souls have told them (to
do) even if they do not actually do it.’ This is right because it often
happens that the soul tells a man to do something (evil) and he
intends to do it, but is detained from it by another motive. In such a
case, the man himself is the hearer of what his own soul tells him, and
he becomes conscious of the conflicting properties at work in himself
when he hesitates to do the act.
The man at such a moment is the speaker and the hearer at the same
time, the commander and the forbidder at the same time. Morover,
he is the knower of all this. And (he manifests and gathers in himself
all these contradictory properties), notwithstanding his inner essence
being one and the same, by dint of the diversity of his faculties and
governing principles of his actions such as reason, imagination, repul-
sion, desire etc. Such a man is an image of the Absolute (which is
essentially one) in its divergent aspects and the properties coming
from the Names.
Close to the relation between the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ is the
contradictory relation between the One and the Many. The two
kinds of contradictory relations are, at bottom, one and the same
thing. For the dictum that the Absolute (or the world) is One and
yet Many, Many and yet One, arises precisely from the fact that the
infinitely various and divergent things of the world are but so many
phenomenal forms of one unique Being which is the Absolute. The
(apparent) difference is due to our taking a slightly different view-
point in each case.
Regarding the second relation which we will now consider, Ibn
‘Arab! offers two explanations, one mathematical and the other
ontological. We begin with the ‘mathematical’ aspect of the
problem.
The structure of the metaphysical fact that the One appears in the
multiplicity of things, and the things that are many are ultimately
reducible to the One or the Absolute, is identical with the structure
of the reciprocal relation between the mathematical ‘one’, which is
the very source of all numbers, and the numbers.
The numbers are produced in a serial form by the (repetition of)
‘one’. Thus the ‘one’ brings into existence the numbers, while the
numbers divide the ‘one’, (the only essential difference between
them being that) a ‘number’ subsists as a number by virtue of some-
thing which is counted . 17
Ontologically, as we have seen, the diversification of the unique
Essence by concrete delimitations and various degrees is the cause
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Sufism and Taoism
of things and events being observable related to one another in an
infinitely complicated manner. The basic structure of this
phenomenon, however, is quite simple. It is, Ibn ‘Arab! says, the
same as the proceeding of the infinite series of numbers out of ‘one’ .
In his view, the mathematical ‘one’ is the ultimate source of all
numbers, and the numbers are nothing but various forms in which
‘one’ manifests itself.
‘One’ itself is not a number; it is the source or ground of all
numbers. Every number is a phenomenal form of ‘one’ brought into
being by the repetition of the latter (just as all the things in the world
are products of the one Essence ‘repeating itself’, mutakarrir, in
various forms of self-determination). 18 The important point is that a
number thus constituted by repetition of ‘one’, is not a mere con-
glomeration of the units, but an independent reality (haqiqah). For
example, the number ‘two’ is explained by al-Qashani in the follow-
ing way: 19
When ‘one’ manifests itself ( tajalla ) 20 in a different form it is called
‘two’. But ‘two’ is nothing other than ‘one’ and ‘one’ put together,
while ‘one’ itself is not a number. It is to be remarked that the
structure of this putting together (of two ‘one’s) is one, and the
product of this putting together, which is called ‘two’, is also one
number. So that the essential form here is one, the matter is one, and
the two ‘one’s put together is also one, i.e., ‘one’ manifesting itself in
a form of the Many. Thus ‘one’ produces the number (‘two’) by
manifesting itself in two different forms. The same is true of ‘three’,
for example, which is ‘one’ and ‘one’ and ‘one’, and the nature and
structure of its one-ness is exactly the same as in the case of ‘two’.
Thus, all the numbers are each a particular form in which ‘one’
manifests itself according to its peculiar determination and the rank
it occupies in the numerical series.
It is very important to note that the numbers brought into being in
this way are all intelligibles ( haqaiq ma‘qulah, lit. ‘realities grasped
by Reason’), and have no existence in the external world; they exist
only in our mind. They exist in the external world merely in so far as
they are recognizable in the objects that are countable. This must be
what is meant by Ibn ‘Arab! when he says (in the above-quote
passage) that a ‘number’ is actualized only by something which is
counted. And this situation corresponds exactly to the ontological
structure of the world of Being.
‘Something which is counted’ ( ma‘dud ), in al-Qashani’s interpre-
tation, refers to the One Reality which manifests itself and
diversifies itself in the Many. But this is clearly a misinterpretation.
The ma‘dud in this context must denote a concrete object which
exists in the external world and which manifests the transcendental
‘one’ in a concrete form. In terms of the correspondence between
Metaphysical Perplexity 79
the mathematical and the ontological order of being, ‘one’ corres-
ponds to the One Reality, i.e., the Absolute, and the numbers that
are intelligibles correspond to permanent archetypes, and finally
the ‘countable things’ correspond to the things of the empirical
world. Bali Efendi brings out this system of correspondences with
an admirable lucidity: 21
You must notice that ‘one’ corresponds symbolically to the one inner
essence (‘ ayn ) which is the reality itself of the Absolute, while the
numbers correspond to the multiplicity of the Names arising from the
self-manifestation of that reality (i.e., of the Absolute) in various
forms in accordance with the requirement of its own aspects and
relations. (The multiplicity of the Names here spoken of) is the
multiplicity of the permanent archetypes in the Knowledge (i.e.,
within the Divine Consciousness). Finally, the ‘things counted’ cor-
respond to the concrete things of this world, that is, creaturely forms
of theophany, without which neither the properties of the Names nor
the states of the permanent archetypes can become manifest (in the
external world in a concrete way).
Only when we understand the word ‘things counted’ in this sense,
are we in a position to see correctly what is meant by the following
words of Ibn ‘Arabi: 22
The ‘thing counted’ partakes of both non-existence and existence, for
one and the same thing can be non-existent on the level of the senses
while being existent on the level of the intellect . 23 So there must be
both the ‘number’ and the ‘thing counted’.
But there must be, in addition, also ‘one’ which causes all this and is
caused by it . 24 (And the relation between ‘one’ and the numbers is to
be conceived as follows.) Every degree in the numerical series (i.e.,
every number) is in itself one reality. (Thus each number is a self-
subsistent unity and) not a mere conglomeration, and yet, on the
other hand, there certainly is a respect in which it must be regarded as
‘one’s put together. Thus ‘two’ is one reality (though it is a ‘gathering’
of ‘one’ and ‘one’), ‘three’ is also one reality (though it is a ‘gathering’
of ‘one’ and ‘one’ and ‘one’), and so on, however far we go up the
numerical series. Since each number is in this way one (i.e., an
independent reality), the essence of each number cannot be the same
as the essences of other numbers. And yet, the fact of ‘gathering’ (of
‘one’s) is common to all of them (i.e., as a genus, as it were, which
comprises all the species). Thus we admit the (existence of) various
degrees (i.e., different numbers, each being unique as an indepen-
dent number) in terms of the very essence of each one of them,
recognizing at the same time that they are all one . 25 Thus we inevi-
tably affirm the very thing which we think is to be negated in itself . 26
He who has understood what I have established regarding the nature
of the numbers, namely, that the negation of them is at the same time
the affirmation of them, must have thereby understood how the
Absolute in tanzih is at the same time the creatures in tashbih.
80 Sufism and Taoism
although there is a distinction between the Creator and the creatures.
The truth of the matter is that we see here the Creator who is the
creatures and the creatures who are the Creator. Moreover, all this
arises from one unique Essence; nay, there is nothing but one unique
Essence, and it is at the same time many essences.
In the eye of a man who has understood by experience the ontologi-
cal depth of this paradox the world appears in an extraordinary form
which an ordinary mind can never believe to be true. Such an
experience consists in penetrating into the ‘real situation’ ( amr )
beyond the veils of normal perception and thought. In illustration,
Ibn ‘Arab! gives two concrete examples from the Qoran. 27 The first
is the event of Abraham going to sacrifice his own son Isaac, and the
second is the marriage of Adam with Eve.
(Isaac said to his father Abraham): ‘My father, do what you have
been commanded to do!’ (XXXVII, 102). The child (Isaac) is essen-
tially the same as his father. So the father saw (when he saw himself in
his vision sacrificing his son) nothing other than himself sacrificing
himself. ‘And We ransomed him (i.e., Isaac) with a big sacrifice’
(XXXVII, 107). At that moment, the very thing which (earlier) had
appeared in the form of a human being (i.e., Isaac) appeared in the
form of a ram. And the very thing which was ‘father’ appeared in the
form of ‘son’, or more exactly in the capacity of ‘son’.
(As for Adam and Eve, it is said in the Qoran): ‘And (your Lord)
created from it (i.e., the first soul which is Adam) its mate’ (IV, 1).
This shows that Adam married no other than himself. Thus from him
issued both his wife and his child. The reality is one but assumes many
forms.
Of this passage, al-Qashani gives an important philosophical expla-
nation. 28 It is to be remarked in particular that, regarding the
self-determination of the Absolute, he distinguishes between the
‘universal self-determination’ ( al-ta‘ayyun al-kulliy ), i.e., self-
determination on the level of species, and the particular or
‘individual self-determination’ ( al-ta‘ayyun al-juz’iy). These two
self-determinations correspond to the ontological plane of the
archetypes and that of the concrete things.
‘The reality is one but assumes many forms’ means that what is in
reality the one unique Essence multiplies itself into many essences
through the multiplicity of self-determinations.
These self-determinations are of two kinds: one is ‘universal’ by
which the Reality in the state of Unity becomes ‘man’, for example,
and the other is ‘individual’ by which ‘man’ becomes Abraham. Thus,
in this case, (the one unique Essence) becomes ‘man’ through the
universal self-determination: and then, through an individual self-
determination, it becomes Abraham, and through another (indi-
vidual self-determination) becomes Ishmael. 29
Metaphysical Perplexity 81
In the light of this, (Abraham, not as an individual named Abraham,
but on the level of) ‘man’ before individuation, did not sacrifice
anything other than himself by executing the ‘big sacrifice’ (i.e., by
sacrificing the ram in place of his son). For (the ram he sacrificed) was
hjmself in reality (i.e., if we consider it on the level of the Absolute
before any self-determination). (It appeared in the form of the ram
because) the Absolute determined itself by a different universal
self-determination 30 (into ‘ram’) and then by an individual self-
determination (into the particular ram which Abraham sacrificed.)
Thus the same one Reality which had appeared in the form of a man
appeared in the form of a ram by going through two different self-
determinations, once on the level of species, then on the level of
individuals.
Since ‘ man’ remains preserved both in father and child on the level of
the specific unity, (Ibn ‘Arabi) avoids affirming the difference of
essence in father and child and affirms only the difference of ‘capa-
city’ ( hukm ) saying ‘or more exactly, in the capacity of son’. This he
does because there is no difference at all between the two in essence,
that is, in so far as they are ‘man’; the difference arises only in regard
to their ‘being father’ and ‘being son’ respectively.
The same is true of Adam and Eve. Both of them and their children
are one with respect to their ‘being man’.
Thus the Absolute is one in itself, but it is multiple because of its
various self-determinations, specific and individual. These self-
determinations do not contradict the real Unity. In conclusion we
say: (The Absolute) is One in the form of Many.
It is remarkable that here al-Qashani presents the contradictory
relation between the One and the Many in terms of the Aristotelian
conception of genus-species-individual. There is no denying that
the world-view of Ibn ‘Arab! has in fact a conspicuously philosophi-
cal aspect which admits of this kind of interpretation. However, the
problem of the One and the Many is for Ibn ‘Arab! primarily a
matter of experience. No philosophical explanation can do justice
to his thought unless it is backed by a personal experience of the
Unity of Being ( wahdah al-wujud). The proposition: ‘Adam mar-
ried himself’, for example, will never cease to be perplexing and
perturbing to our Reason until it is transformed into a matter of
experience.
Philosophical interpretation is after all an afterthought applied to
the naked content of mystical intuition. The naked content itself
cannot be conveyed by philosophical language. Nor is there any
linguistic means by which to convey immediately the content of
mystical intuition. If, in spite of this basic fact, one forces oneself to
express and describe it, one has to have recourse to a metaphorical
or analogical language. And in fact, Ibn ‘Arabi introduces for this
purpose a number of comparisons. Here I give two comparisons
which particularly illumine the relation of the One and the Many.
82 Sufism and Taoism
The first is the organic unity of the body and the diversity of the
bodily members. 31
These forms (i.e., the infinite forms of the phenomenal world) are
comparable to the bodily members of Zayd. A man, Zayd, is admit-
tedly one personal reality, but his hand is neither his foot nor his head
nor his eye nor his eyebrow. So he is Many which are One. He is
Many in the forms and One in his person.
In the same way, ‘man 1 is essentially One no doubt, and yet it is also
clear that ‘Umar is not the same as Zayd, nor Khalid, nor Ja‘far. In
spite of the essential one-ness of ‘man’, the individual exemplars of it
are infinitely many. Thus man is One in essence, while he is Many
both in regard to the forms (i.e., the bodily members of a particular
man) and in regard to the individual exemplars.
The second is a comparison of the luxuriant growth of grass after a
rainfall. It is based on the Qoran, XXII, 5, which reads: ‘Thou seest
the earth devoid of life. But when We send down upon it water, it
thrills, swells up, and puts forth all magnificent pairs of vegetation’.
He says: 32
Water 13 , is the source of life and movement for the earth, as is indicated
by the expression: ‘it thrills’. ‘It swells up’ refers to the fact that the
earth becomes pregnant through the activity of water. And ‘it puts
forth all magnificent pairs of vegetation’ , that is, the earth gives birth
only to things that resemble it, namely, ‘natural’ things like the
earth . 34 And the earth obtains in this way the property of ‘double-
ness’ by what is born out of it . 35
Likewise, the Absolute in its Being obtains the property of multiplic-
ity and a variety of particular names by the world which appears from
it. The world, because of its ontological nature, requires that the
Divine Names be actualized. And as a result, the Divine Names
become duplicated by the world (which has arisen in this way), and
the unity of the Many (i.e., the essential unity of the Divine Names)
comes to stand opposed to the world . 36 Thus (in the comparison of
the earth and vegetation, the earth) is a unique substance which is
one essence like (the Aristotelian) ‘matter’ (hayula). And this unique
substance which is one in essence is many in its forms which appear in
it and which it contains within itself.
The same is true of the Absolute with all the forms of its self-
manifestation that appear from it. So the Absolute plays the role of
the locus in which the forms of the world are manifested, but even
then it maintains intact the intelligible unity. See how wonderful is
this Divine teaching, the secret of which God discloses to some only
of His servants as He likes.
The general ontological thesis that the Many of the phenomenal
world are all particular forms of the absolute One in its self-
manifestation is of extreme importance in Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view
not only because of the central and basic position it occupies in his
Metaphysical Perplexity 83
thought but also because of the far-reaching influence it exercises
on a number of problems in more particular fields. As an interesting
example of the application of this idea to a special problem, I shall
here discuss the view entertained by Ibn ‘Arabi concerning the
historical religions and beliefs that have arisen among mankind.
The starting-point is furnished by the factual observation that
various peoples in the world have always worshipped and are wor-
shipping various gods. If, however, all the things and events in the
world are but so many self-manifestations of the Absolute, the
different gods also must necessarily be considered various special
forms in which the Absolute manifests itself.
All gods are ultimately one and the same God, but each nation or
each community believes in, and worships, Him in a special form.
Ibn ‘Arab! names it ‘God as created in various religious beliefs’.
And pushing this argument to its extreme, he holds that each man
has his own god, and worships his own god, and naturally denies the
gods of other people. God whom each man thus worships as his god
is the Lord ( rabb ) of that particular man.
In truth, everybody worships the same one God through different
forms. Whatever a man worships, he is worshipping indirectly God
Himself. This is the true meaning of polytheism or idolatry. And in
this sense, idol-worship is, as we have seen above, nothing blam-
able.
In order to bring home this point, Ibn ‘Arab! refers to an article of
belief which every Muslim is supposed to acknowledge; namely,
that God on the day of Resurrection will appear in the presence of
the believers in diverse forms. 37
You must know for sure, if you are a real believer, that God will
appear on the day of Resurrection (in various forms successively):
first in a certain form in which He will be recognized, next in a
different form in which He will be denied, then He will transform
Himself into another form in which He will be again recognized.
Throughout this whole process, He will remain He; in whatever form
He appears it is He and no one else. Yet, on the other hand, it is also
certain that this particular form is not the same as that particular
form.
Thus, the situation may be described as the one unique Essence
playing the role of a mirror. A man looks into it, and if he sees there
the particular image of God peculiar to his religion he recognizes it
and accepts it without question. If, however, he happens to see an
image of God peculiar to some other religion than his, he denies it.
This is comparable to the case in which a man sees in a mirror his own
image, then the image of some one else. In either case, the mirror is
one substance while the images reflected upon it are many in the eye
of the man who looks at it. He cannot see in the mirror one unique
image comprising the whole . 38
84 Sufism and Taoism
Thus the truth itself is quite simple: in whatever form God appears
in the mirror, it is always a particular phenomenal form of God, and
in this sense every image (i.e., every object worshipped as a god) is
ultimately no other than God Himself. This simple fact, however, is
beyond the reach of Reason. Reason is utterly powerless in a matter
of this nature, and the reasoning which is the activity of Reason is
unable to grasp the real meaning of this phenomenon. 39 The only
one who is able to do so is the real‘knower’ (‘arif). Ibn ‘ Arabi calls
such a true ‘knower’ who, in this particular case, penetrates into the
mystery of the paradoxical relation between the One and the Many,
a ‘worshipper of the Instant’ (‘ abid al-waqt), 40 meaning thereby a
man who worships every self-manifestation of God at every
moment as a particular form of the One.
Those who know the truth of the matter show a seemingly negative
attitude toward the various forms which ordinary people worship as
gods. (But this attitude of denial is merely a make-believe. In reality
they do not deny such a form of worship for themselves) for the high
degree of spiritual knowledge makes them behave according to the
dictates of the Instant. In this sense they are ‘worshippers of the
Instant .’ 41
In the consciousness of such men of high spirituality, each Instant is
a glorious ‘time’ of theophany. The Absolute manifests itself at
every moment with this or that of its Attributes. The Absolute,
viewed from this angle, never ceases to make a new self-
manifestation, and goes on changing its form from moment to
moment. 42 And the true ‘knowers’, on their part, go on responding
with flexibility to this ever changing process of Divine self-
manifestation. Of course, in so doing they are not worshipping the
changing forms themselves that come out outwardly on the surface;
they are worshipping through the ever changing forms the One that
remains eternally unchanging and unchangeable.
These men know, further, that not only themselves but even the
idol- worshippers are also (unconsciously) worshipping God beyond
the idols. This they know because they discern in the idol-
worshippers the majestic power of Divine self-manifestation ( sultan
al-tajalli ) working actively quite independently of the conscious
minds of the worshippers. 43
If, in spite of this knowledge, the ‘knowers’ hold outwardly an
attitude of denial toward idolatry, it is because they want to follow
the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. The prophet forbad
idol-worship because he knew that the understanding of the mass of
people being shallow and superficial, they would surely begin to
worship the ‘forms’ without going beyond them. He urged them,
instead, to worship One God alone whom the people could know
Metaphysical Perplexity 85
only in a broad general way but never witness (in any concrete
form). The attitude of the ‘knowers’ toward idol- worship is pious
imitation of this attitude of Muhammad.
Let us go back to the point from which we started. We opened this
chapter with a discussion of the problem of ‘perplexity’ ( hayrah ).
We are now in a better position to understand the true nature of the
‘perplexity’ and to see to what extent the ontological structure of
Being is really ‘perplexing’ . A brief consideration of the problem at
this stage will make a suitable conclusion to the present chapter.
An infinity of things which are clearly different from each other
and some of which stand in marked opposition to one another are,
with all the divergencies, one and the same thing. The moment man
becomes aware of this fact, it cannot but throw his mind into
bewildering confusion. This ‘perplexity’ is quite a natural state for
those who have opened their eyes to the metaphysical depth of
Being.
But on reflection it will be realized that the human mind falls into
this ‘perplexity’ because it has not yet penetrated deeply below the
level of superficial understanding. In the mind of a sage who has
experienced the Unity of Being in its real depth there can no longer
be any place for any ‘perplexity’ . Here follows what Ibn ‘Arab! says
on this point. 44
The ‘perplexity’ arises because the mind of man becomes polarized
(i.e., toward two contradictory directions, one toward the One and
the other toward the Many). But he who knows (by the experience of
‘unveiling’) what I have just explained is no longer in ‘perplexity’, no
matter how many divergent things he may come to know. For (he
knows that) the divergence is simply due to the nature of the locus,
and that the locus in each case is the eternal archetype itself of the
thing. The Absolute goes on assuming different forms in accordance
with different eternal archetypes, i.e., different loci of self-
manifestation, and the determinate aspects which man perceives of it
go on changing correspondingly. In fact, the Absolute accepts every
one of these aspects that are attributed to it. Nothing, however, is
attributed to it except that in which it manifests itself (i.e., the
particular forms of its self-manifestation). And there is nothing at all
(in the whole world of Being) except this . 45
On the basis of this observation al-Qashani gives a final judgment
concerning the metaphysical ‘perplexity’. It is, he says, merely a
phenomenon observable in the earliest stage of spiritual
development. 46
The ‘perplexity’ is a state which occurs only in the beginning when
there still lingers the activity of Reason and the veil of thinking still
86
Sufism and Taoism
remains. But when the ‘unveiling’ is completed and the immediate
intuitive cognition becomes purified, the ‘perplexity’ is removed with
a sudden increase of knowledge coming from the direct witnessing of
the One manifesting itself in diverse forms of the archetypes in
accordance with the essential requirement of the Name ‘All-
knowing’ (‘alim).* 1
Notes
1. Fu$., p. 55/72.
2. Cf. Affifi, Fu$., Com., p. 40; Fuj., p. 56/72-73.
3. Reference to Qoran, XXXVIII, 47.
4. p. 56.
5. Fuj., p. 56/73.
6. Qashani, p. 56.
7. Fuj., p. 57/73.
8. p. 57.
9. ibid.
10. i.e., from the point of view of the Names, in whose plane alone there come into
existence all these differences in degrees.
11. Fus-, p. 58/74.
12. Fuj., p. 48/69.
13. p. 48.
14. Qashani, ibid.
15. Fuj., p. 64/77.
16. p. 64.
17. Fus„ p. 64/77.
18. The words in parentheses belong to al-Qashani, p. 65.
19. ibid.
20. It is to be remarked that the multiplication of the mathematical ‘one’ is described
in terms of ‘self-manifestation’ ( tajalh ) just in the same way as the Absolute is
described as ‘manifesting itself’ in the Many.
Metaphysical Perplexity
21. p. 65, footnote.
22. Fu$„ p. 65/77-78.
87
23. i.e., one and the same thing qua ‘number’ is non-existent on the level of the
senses, existing only on the level of intellect, but it is, qua ‘a thing counted’, existent
on the level of the senses. In other words, it is the ‘thing counted’ that makes a
number exist in a concrete, sensible form. The same applies to the relation between
an archetype and a thing which actualizes it in a sensible form.
24. i.e., besides the ‘number’ and the ‘thing counted’, there must necessarily be also
‘one’ which is the ultimate source of all numbers and things counted. But ‘one’ which
thus causes and establishes the numbers is also caused and established by the latter in
concrete forms.
25. That is to say: we admit the one-ness (i.e., uniqueness) of each number, while
recognizing at the same time the one-ness (i.e., sameness) of all numbers.
26. You affirm of every number that which you negate of it when you consider it in
itself. This may be explained in more concrete terms in the following way. You admit
the inherence of ‘one’ in every number; ‘one’ is the common element of all the
numbers and is, in this respect, a sort of genus. But, on the other hand, you know that
‘one’ is not inherent in every number in its original form but only in a particularized
form in each case; ‘one’ may be considered a sort of species as distinguished from
genus. Thus ‘one’ , although it does exist in every number, is no longer the ‘one’ perse
in its absoluteness. And this precisely corresponds to the ontological situation in
which the Absolute is manifested in everything, but not as the absolute Absolute.
27. Fu$., p. 67/78.
28. p. 67.
29. the Absolute
/\
(universal self-determination)
/ \ .
, A
( individual
V self-determination ,
. / \
this ram that ram
, N
/ individual \
\ self-determination /
f \
Abraham Ishmael
30. i.e., by a specific self-determination different from the self-determination by
which the Absolute became ‘man’.
31. Fu$„ pp. 231-232/183-184.
32. Fus., p. 253/200.
33. ‘Water’ for Ibn ‘Arabi is a symbol of cosmic Life.
34. The idea is that the earth produces only ‘earth-like’ things, i.e., its own ‘dupli-
cates’ , the symbolic meaning of which is that the things of the world are ultimately of
the same nature as the Absolute which is their ontological ground.
88 Sufism and Taoism
35. i.e., the luxuriant vegetation which grows forth from the earth, being of the same
nature as the latter, ‘doubles’ so to speak the earth.
36. This is a difficult passage, and there is a remarkable divergence between the
Cairo edition and that of Affifi. The Affifi text reads: fa-thabata bi-hi wa-khaliqi-hi
ahadlyah al-kathrah ‘thus the unity of the Many becomes established by the world
and its Creator’. The Cairo edition, which I follow here, reads: fa-thunniyat bi-hi
wa-yukhalifu-hu ahadiyah al-kathrah.
37. Fuy., p. 232/184.
38. i.e., what he actually sees in the mirror is always the particular image of a
particular object which happens to be there in front of the mirror; he can never see a
universal image comprising all the particular images in unity.
39. Fuj., p. 233/185.
40. The word waqt ‘Time’ in this context means, as al-Qashani remarks, the present
moment, or each successive moment as it is actualized (p. 247).
41. Fu. j., p. 247/196.
42. a view comparable with the atomistic metaphysics of Islamic theology.
43. Fus., p. 247/196.
44. Fu$., p. 68/78.
45. All the divergent aspects ( ahk 'am ) that are recognizable in the world of Being are
so many actualizations of the eternal archetypes. And the eternal archetypes, in their
turn, are nothing but so many self-manifestations of the Absolute. In this sense
everything is ultimately the Absolute. And there is no place for ‘perplexity’.
46. p. 68.
47. The archetypes are, as we shall see later in more detail, the eternal essential
forms of the things of the world as they exist in the Divine Consciousness. They are
born in accordance with the requirement of the Attribute of Omniscience.
VI The Shadow of the Absolute
In the preceding chapter the special relation between the Absolute
and the world has been discussed. We have seen how the Absolute
and the world are contradictorily identical with one another. The
two are ultimately the same; but this statement does not mean that
the relation between them is one of simple identification: it means
that the Absolute and the world are the same while being at the
same time diametrically opposed to each other. The creatures are in
essence nothing other than God, but in their determined forms they
are far from being the same as God. Rather, they are infinitely
distant from God.
Ibn ‘ Arab!, as we have observed, tries to describe this contradic-
tory situation by various images. ‘Shadow’ (zill) is one of them.
Using this metaphor he presents his view in a basic proposition:
‘The world is the shadow of the Absolute’ . The world, as the shadow
of the Absolute, is the latter’s form, but it is a degree lower than the
latter.
Know that what is generally said to be ‘other than the Absolute’ or
the so-called ‘world’, is in relation to the Absolute comparable to
shadow in relation to the person. The world in this sense is the
‘shadow’ of God . 1
It is to be remarked concerning the passage just quoted that in Ibn
‘ ArabFs thought, there is, strictly speaking, nothing ‘other than the
Absolute’ . This last phrase is merely a popular expression. 2 But the
popular expression is not entirely groundless, because philosophi-
cally or theologically the world is a concrete phenomenal form of
the Divine Names, and the Divine Names are in a certain sense
opposed to the Divine Essence. In this respect the world is surely
‘other than the Absolute’. The argument of Ibn ‘Arab! contirlues:
(To say that the world is the shadow of the Absolute) is the same as
attributing existence (i.e., concrete, sensible existence) to the world.
For shadow surely exists sensibly, except that it does so only when
there is something 3 in which it makes its appearance. If there is
nothing in which to appear, the shadow would remain merely
90
Sufism and Taoism
intelligible without existing in a sensible form. In such a case, the shadow
rather remains in potentia in the person to whom it is attributed.
The structure of this phenomenon is made more explicit by al-
Qashani in the following remark : 4
In order that there be shadow there must necessarily be three things:
(1) a tall object which casts the shadow, (2) the place where it falls,
and (3) light by which alone shadow becomes distinctively existent.
The ‘object’ corresponds to the real Being or the Absolute. The
‘place’ in which shadow appears corresponds to the archetypal
essences of the possible things. If there were no ‘place’, shadow
would never be sensible, but would remain something intelligible like
a tree in a seed. It would remain in the state of potentiality in the
‘object’ which would cast the shadow.
The ‘light’ corresponds to the Divine Name the ‘Outward’.
If the world had not come into contact with the Being of the Abso-
lute, the ‘shadow’ would have never come to exist. It would have
remained for ever in the primordial non-existence which is charac-
teristic of the possible things considered in themselves without any
relation to their Originator (who brings them into the state of real
existence). For ‘shadow’, in order to exist, needs the ‘place’ as well as
an actual contact with the thing that projects it. God, however,
‘ existed when there was nothing beside Him’ , and in that state He was
completely self-sufficient having no need of the whole world.
This interpretation by al-Qashani makes it clear that the ‘shadow’ is
cast not on what we call the ‘world’ directly, but on the archetypes of
the things. In other words, the ‘world’ begins to exist on a higher
level than the one on which our common sense usually thinks it to
exist. The moment the shadow of the Absolute is cast on the
archetypes, the world is born, although, strictly speaking, the
archetypes themselves are not the ‘world’ but rather the locus of
the appearance of the world’.
Shadow, however, does not appear except by the activity of light.
This is the reason why we have the Divine Name ‘Light’ ( nur ).
The locus of the appearance of this Divine ‘shadow’ called the ‘ world’
is the archetypal essences of the possible things. 5 It is on these
archetypes that the shadow (first) spreads. And the shadow becomes
perceivable in accordance with the amount actually spread of the
Being of the One who projects it upon them. The perception of it,
however, can take place only in virtue of the Name ‘Light’. 6
It is remarkable that the shadows of things projected on the earth
are said to take on a dark, blackish color. This has a symbolic
meaning. It symbolizes in the first place that, in the particular case
which is our immediate concern, the source of the ‘shadow’ is a
Mystery, an absolutely Unknown-Unknowable. The blackness of
The Shadow of the Absolute
91
shadow indicates, in the second place, that there is a distance
between it and its source. Here is what Ibn ‘Arab! says on this
problem : 7
The ‘shadow’ spreading over the archetypal essences of the possible
things, (becomes visible in the primal) manifestation-form of the
unknown Mystery ( ghayb ). 8
Do you not see how all shadows appear blackish? This fact indicates
the inherence of obscurity in the shadows due to an intervening
distance in the relation between them and the objects which project
them. Thus, even if the object be white, the shadow it casts takes on a
blackish color.
As usual al-Qashani reformulates what is implied by this passage in
more ontological terms : 9
The archetypes are dark because of their distance from the light of
Being. And when the light which is of a totally different nature from
their own darkness spreads over them, their proper darkness of
non-Being ( zulmah ‘ adamiyah ) affects the luminosity of Being, and
the light-nature turns toward darkness. In other.words, the light of
Being turns in this way toward obscurity, just as the shadow does in
relation to the thing which casts it. The relation of the relative Being
to the absolute Being is exactly like that, so that, if it were not for its
being determined by the archetypal essences of the possible things,
the absolute Being would shine forth with extreme incandescence
and no one would be able to perceive it because of the intensity of the
light.
Thus it comes about that those who are veiled by the darkness of
determination see the world but do not see the Absolute, for ‘being in
utter darkness they do not see’ (Qoran, II, 17). But those who have
come out of the veils of determinations witness the Absolute, for they
have torn asunder the veil of darkness and veiled themselves with
light against darkness, i.e., veiled themselves with the Essence
against the ‘shadow’. Those, however, who are not veiled by either of
the two against the other can witness the light of the Absolute in the
midst of the blackness and darkness of the creaturely world.
In the following passage Ibn ‘Arab! emphasizes the effect of the
distance that separates the archetypes from the Absolute in produc-
ing the darkish color of the former . 10
Do you not see how the mountains, if they happen to be far away
from the sight of the man who looks at them, appear black, when in
reality they may be quite different in color from what the sense
perceives. And the distance is the only cause for this phenomenon.
The same is true of the blue of the sky. In fact, anything which is not
luminous produces the same kind of effect on the sense when there is
a long distance between the object and sight.
Exactly the same situation is found with regard to the archetypal
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essences of the possible things, for they, too, are not luminous by
themselves. (They are not luminous) because they are non-existent
(ma‘dum). True, they do possess an ontological status intermediary
between sheer non-existence and pure existence but they do not
possess Being by themselves, because Being is Light.
Another important effect produced by distance on the sense of sight
is that it makes every object look far smaller that it really is. For Ibn
‘Arabi this also has a deep symbolic meaning.
Even the luminous objects, however, appear small to the sense by
dint of distance. And this is another effect of distance on sense
perception. Thus the sense does not perceive (distant luminous
objects) except as very small things, while in reality they are far
bigger and of greater quantities than they look. For example, it is a
scientifically demonstrated fact that the sun is one hundred and sixty
times bigger than the earth. Actually, however, it appears to the
sense as small as a shield, for instance. This, again, is the effect
produced by distance.
The world is known just to the same degree as shadow is perceived,
and the Absolute remains unknown to the same degree as the object
which casts the shadow remains unknown.
Thus, as long as the ‘shadow’ (which can be perceived and known) is
the ‘shadow’ (of the Absolute), the Absolute also is known. But as
long as we do not know the essential form of the object contained
within the ‘shadow’, the Absolute remains unknown.
This is why we assert that the Absolute is known to us in one sense,
but is unknown to us in another. 11
The Absolute in this comparison is the source of the ‘shadow’. And
the former is known to us to the very extent that ‘shadow’, i.e., the
world, is known. This amounts to saying, if we continue to use the
same metaphor, that the Absolute is known to us only as something
‘small and black’. And this ‘something small and black’ is what is
generally understood as our God or our Lord. The real Something
which projects this ‘shadow’ is never to be known. Ibn ‘Arabi bases
his argument on a few Qoranic verses which he interprets as he
always does, in his own way . 12
‘Hast thou not seen how thy Lord spreads shadow? But if He so
desired He could make them stand still’ (XXV, 45). The phrase
‘stand still’ means ‘remain within God in the state of potentiality.’
God means to say (in this verse): It is not in the nature of the
Absolute to manifest itself to the possible things (i.e., the archetypes)
unless there appears first (upon them) its ‘shadow’. Yet the ‘shadow’
(in this state and in itself) is no different from those of the possible
things which have not yet been (actualized) by the appearance of the
corresponding concrete things in the (phenomenal) world.
When the Absolute ‘desires’ to manifest itself in the archetypes
(and through them in the concrete things), there appears first a dark
‘shadow’ upon them. The Divine self-manifestation never occurs
unless preceded by the appearance of the ‘shadow’. But if God so
wishes at this stage, the ‘shadow’ would be made to ‘stand still’, i.e.,
it would remain forever in that state of potentiality and would not
proceed further toward the level of concrete things. In such a case,
the ‘shadow’ would simply be another possible thing just as the
archetypes themselves which have no corresponding realities in the
outer world. Ibn ‘Arabi goes on : 13
‘Then We have made the sun its indicator’ (XXV, 45). The sun
(which is thus made to be the indicator of the ‘shadow’) is the Divine
Name ‘Light’ to which reference has already been made. And the
sense bears witness to it (i.e., to the fact that the indicator of the
‘shadow’ is no other than the Light) because shadows have no real
existence where there is no light.
‘Then We withdraw it toward us with an easy withdrawal’ (XXV, 46).
God withdraws to Himself the ‘shadow’, because it is His ‘shadow’
which He Himself has projected. Thus everything appears from Him
and goes back to Him, for it is He, no one else.
Everything you perceive is the Being of the Absolute as it appears
through the archetypal essences of the possible things. The same
thing, as the He-ness of the Absolute, is its Being, and, as the
divergence of forms, is the archetypal essences of the possible things.
Just as the name ‘shadow’ does not cease to subsist in it with the
divergence of forms, the name ‘world’ does not cease to subsist in it
with the divergence of forms. Likewise the name ‘other than the
Absolute’.
In regard to its essential unity in being ‘shadow’ , it is the Absolute, for
the latter is the Unique, the One. But in regard to the multiplicity of
forms it is the world.
Briefly, this means that the ‘shadow’, as it spreads over the
archetypes, can be observed in two opposed aspects: the aspect of
fundamental unity and the aspect of diversity. In fact, the ‘shadow’,
as any physical shadow in this world is one; and in this aspect it turns
toward its source. Or rather, it is nothing else than the Absolute
itself, because it is a direct projection of the Divine Unity ( ahad -
iyah). But in its second aspect, the same ‘shadow’ is already
diversified, and is faced toward the world of concrete things; or
rather, it is the world itself.
Thus considered, the world in the sense in which we ordinarily
understand it has no reality; it is but a product of imagination . 14
If the truth is what I have just pointed out to you, the world is an
illusion having no real existence in itself. And this is the meaning of
imagination. The world, in other words, looks as if it were something
independent and subsisting by itself outside the Absolute.
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This, however, is not true. Do you not see how in your ordinary
sensible experience shadow is so closely tied up with the thing which
projects it that it is absolutely impossible for it to liberate itself from
this tie?
This is impossible because it is impossible for anything to be detached
from itself.
Since the world is in this way the ‘shadow’ of the Absolute, it is
connected with the latter with an immediate tie which is never to be
loosened. Every single part of the world is a particular aspect of the
Absolute, and is the Absolute in a state of determination. Man,
being himself a part of the world, and a very special part at that,
because of his consciousness, is in a position to know intimately,
within himself, the relation of the ‘shadow’ to the Absolute. The
extent to which a man becomes conscious of this ontological rela-
tion determines his degree of ‘knowledge’. There naturally result
from this several degrees of ‘knowledge’.
Know your own essence (‘ayn, i.e., your archetypal essence). Know
who you are (in your concrete existence) and what your He-ness is.
Know how you are related with the Absolute; know in what respect
you are the Absolute and in what respect you are the ‘world’ , ‘other’
and something ‘different’ from the Absolute.
This gives rise to a number of degrees among the ‘knowers’. Thus
some are simply ‘ knowers’ , and some others are ‘ knowers’ in a higher
degree . 15
These degrees of the ‘knower’ are described in a more concrete
form by al-Qashani in his Commentary . 16 The lowest is represented
by those who witness only the aspect of determination and
diversification. They see the created world, and nothing beyond.
The second rank is that of those who witness the Unity of Being
which is manifested in these forms. They witness the Absolute (but
forget about the created world). The third rank witness both
aspects. They witness both the creatures and the Absolute as two
aspects of one Reality. The fourth in degree are those who witness
the whole as one Reality diversifying itself according to various
aspects and relations, ‘one’ in Essence, ‘all’ with the Names. Those
are the people of God who have the real knowledge of God. In
terms of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’) and ‘self-subsistence’ ( baqa ’),
al-Qashani says that those who witness only the Absolute, lpsing
sight of the creatures, are people who are dominated by ‘self-
annihilation’ and ‘unification’, while those who witness the Abso-
lute in the creatures and the creatures in the Absolute are described
as people who have obtained a perfect vision in the state of ‘self-
subsistence’ -after-‘self-annihilation’ and the view of ‘dispersion’ -
after - 4 unification’.
The Shadow of the Absolute
95
Ibn ‘Arab! himself compares these spiritual degrees to a naturally
colorless light being tinged with various colours as it passes through
coloured pieces of glass . 17
The relation of the Absolute to a particular ‘shadow’ , small, large, or
pure in different degrees, may be compared to the relation of light to
a piece of glass intervening between it and the eye of a man who looks
at it. The light in such a case assumes the color of the glass, while in
itself it is colorless. (The colorless light) appears to the sense of sight
as colored - an appropriate comparison for the relation of your own
reality with your Lord.
If you say that the light has become green because of the green color
of the glass, you are right. This is evidenced by your sense perception.
But if you say that the light is not green nor, indeed, of any color at all,
you are also right. You are, in this case, following what is given by
your logical reasoning. And your judgment is based on the right
activity of Reason.
See how the light passes through a ‘shadow’ which is no other than
the glass. The glass (is a ‘shadow’ , but it is) a ‘shadow’ which is of the
nature of light because of its transparency . 18
In just the same way, when one of us has realized in himself the
Absolute, the Form of the latter appears in him more than it does in
others. (He who has realized in himself the Absolute is of two
different degrees): the first degree is represented by a man whose
hearing, sight, and all other faculties and bodily members are the
Absolute itself in accordance with the teaching of the Revelation
concerning the Absolute . 19 Even in such a case, however, the
‘shadow’ itself is still there (in the form of his enlightened ‘self’)
because the personal pronoun in ‘his hearing’ , ‘his sight’ etc. refers to
the man. He who represents the second (i.e., higher) degree is
different from this. A man of this second degree is close to the Being
of the Absolute than all others.
As we see, Ibn ‘ ArabI does not give any detailed description of those
of the second degree. He is content with stating that they are closer
to the Absolute than others. Al-Qashani makes this point more
explicit and precise . 20
The first is he who has ‘annihilated himself’ from his own attributes in
the Attributes of the Absolute so that the Absolute has taken the
place of his attributes. The second is he (who has ‘annihilated him-
self’) from his own essence in the Essence of the Absolute so that the
Absolute has taken the place of his essence.
The first is the kind of man who is referred to when we say, ‘the
Absolute is his hearing, his sight, etc.’ . . . Such a man is closer to the
Absolute than other (ordinary) believers who act with their own
attributes and who remain with their (natural) veils (i.e., the veils of
human attributes). His attitude (toward God) is described as the
‘closeness of supererogatory works’ ( qurb al-nawafil). And yet, his
‘shadow’ itself, i.e., his relative existence, which is no other than his
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ego, still subsists in him. And the self-manifestation of the Absolute
in such a man occurs and is witnessed in accordance with his own
attributes, for the personal pronoun in 'his hearing’ etc. refers to the
particularized existence which is the ‘shadow’.
Closer still than this closeness is the ‘closeness of the obligatory
works’ ( qurb al-fara’id) which is represented by the second degree. A
man of this second category is one who has ‘annihilated himself’
totally with his essence and is ‘subsistent’ in the Absolute. This is the
kind of man by whom the Absolute hears and sees. Thus such a man is
the hearing of the Absolute itself and the sight of the Absolute. Nay,
he is the Form of the Absolute. To him refer God’s words: ‘(when
thou threwest,) thou wert not the one who threw, but God it was who
really threw’ (VIII, 17).
Thus it is clear that, although both categories are men who have
realized themselves in the Absolute, the first is inferior to the
second in that the ‘shadow’, that is, man’s existence, still remains in
the first, and in the view of such men the Absolute and the world
stand opposed to each other. This is the standpoint of the ‘exterior’
( zahir ), while the second represents the standpoint of the ‘interior’
(ba(in).
And this makes it also clear that the world, though it is a ‘perfect
form’ in which the Absolute manifests itself with all its perfections,
is necessarily a degree lower than the Absolute.
Just as woman is a degree lower than man according to the Divine
words: ‘men have a degree of superiority over them (i.e., women)’
(II, 228), that which has been created in the image (of God) is lower
than He who has brought it out to existence in His image. Its being in
the image of God (does not prevent it from being lower than its
Originator). And by that very superiority by which He is disting-
uished from the creatures He is completely independent of the whole
world and is the Prime Agent. For the ‘image’ is only a secondary
agent and does not possess the priority which belongs to the Absolute
alone. 21
Notes
1. Fus., p. 113/101.
2. fi al-‘urf al-'amm as al-Qashani says, p. 113.
3. Ibn ‘Arab! actually uses a personal form, ‘somebody’, instead of
‘something’.
4. pp. 113-114.
The Shadow of the Absolute
97
5. The expression a‘yan al-mumkinat is explained by Jam! as a'yan al-mumkinat
al-thabitah fi al-hadrah al-‘ilmiyah ( Sharh al-Fusiis).
6. Fus., p. 114/102.
7. Fus., p. 114/102.
8. The primal manifestation-form of the Mystery’ is nothing other than the
metaphysical level of Divine Consciousness which is in fact the first visible form
assumed by the Mystery (Jami).
9. p. 114.
10. Fus., p. 114/102.
11. Fuy., p. 115/102.
12. ibid.
13. Fus., P- 116/103. Many of the leading commentators give quite a different
interpretation to the latter part of the passage just quoted. The difference comes
from the fact that they take the particle hand in the sense of kay or li-kay ‘in order
that’, while I take it to mean ‘until.’ The passage, according to their interpretation,
would read: ‘It is impossible, in view of the very nature of the Absolute, that it should
manifest itself to possible things (i.e., archetypes) in order to produce its own
shadow in such a way that the “shadow” (once produced) would remain the same
as the rest of the possible things to which no reality has yet been actualized in the
empirical world. Thus interpreted, the passage would mean that those archetypes
upon which the ‘shadow’ has been projected immediately obtain an ontological
status differentiating them from the other archetypes that have not yet attained
any degree of reality. This meaning, however, does not seem to fit in the present
context.
14. Fus., p. 117/103.
15. ibid.
16. p. 117.
17. Fus., p- 118/103-104.
18. Al-Qashani says (p. 103): When the Absolute manifests itself in the world of
Command (i.e., in the spiritual world) to pure Spirits and non-corporeal Intellects,
the self-manifestation is of the nature of light, because the forms in which the
Absolute appears in this domain of pure spirituality are a ‘shadow’ made of light; it is
transparent and has no darkness within. But the light passing through a colored glass
is a symbol of the Absolute appearing in the form of a soul tinged with the coloring of
the bodily constitution. The intellectual soul ( al-nafs al-na(iqah, i.e., the soul of
man), although it is not bodily in itself, becomes turbid and colored by bodily
elements.
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19. The reference to a famous Tradition in which God Himself speaks in the first
person ( hadith qudsiy): ‘The servant (i.e. believer) never ceases to strive for super-
reogatory works until I love him. And when I do love him, I am his hearing with
which he hears and I am his sight with which he sees, etc.'
20. p. 118.
21. p. 273/219.
VII The Divine Names
The philosophical world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi is, concisely stated, a
world-view of Divine self-manifestation ( tajalti ), for, as we have
seen, as long as the Absolute remains in its absoluteness there can
be nothing in existence that may be called the ‘world’, and the word
‘world- view 5 itself would lose all meaning in the absence of the world.
The principle of tajalli, on the world’s side, is the ‘preparedness’
(or ontological aptitude), and the same principle of tajalli from the
standpoint of the Absolute is constituted by the Divine Names. The
present chapter will deal thematically with the problem of tajalli in
so far as it directly bears upon the Divine Names.
Islamic theology discusses as one of the basic themes the question
whether a Name (ism) is or is not the same as the ‘object named’
(musamm'a ) . Ibn ‘ Arabi gives his answer to this theological question
by saying that a Name and its ‘object named’ are the same in one
sense and different from each other in another sense.
The reason why they are one and the same thing is that all the
Divine Names, in so far as they invariably refer to the Absolute, are
nothing but the ‘object named’ (i.e., the Essence [dhdt] of the
Absolute) itself. Each name is a special aspect, or special form, of
the Absolute in its self-manifestation. And in this sense, each Name
is identical with the Essence. All the Divine Names, in other words,
are ‘the realities of the relations’ (haqaiq al-nisab ),* i.e., the rela-
tions which the One Reality bears to the world, and in this respect
they are all the Divine Essence itself viewed from the standpoint of
the various special relations which are caused by the phenomenon
of Divine self-manifestation.
The relations which the Absolute can possibly bear to the world
are infinite, that is, to use Ibn ‘ArabFs peculiar terminology, the
forms of the Divine self-manifestation are infinite in number. Con-
sequently, the Divine Names are infinite. However, they can be
classified and reduced to a certain number of basic Names. For
example, it is generally recognized that the Qoran gives ninety-nine
Names of God.
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Sufism and Taoism
These Names, whether infinite or finite in number, can also be
considered by themselves independently of the Essence to which
they refer. In other words, they can be regarded as so many inde-
pendent Attributes. Considered in this way, each Name has its own
‘reality’ ( haqiqah ) by which it is distinguished from the rest of the
Names. And in this respect, a Name is different from the ‘object
named’.
Ibn ‘Arab! explains this point by making reference to the famous
Sufi of the West, Abu al-Qasim b. Qasi (d. 1151). 2
This is what is meant by Abu al-Qasim b. Qasi when he says in his
book Taking Off The Sandals that every Divine Name carries in itself
all the Divine Names and all their properties; this because every
Name indicates both the Essence and the particular meaning of
which it is the Name and which is especially required by the latter.
Thus every single Name, in so far as it points to the Essence, contains
all the Names, but in so far as it points to its own proper meaning, is
different from all the rest, like ‘Lord’, ‘Creator’ or ‘Giver of the
forms’ etc. The Name, in short, is the same as the ‘object named’ in
regard to the Essence, but it is not the same as the ‘object named’ in
regard to its own particular meaning.
Thus the most conspicuous feature of the Divine Names is their
double structure, that is, their having each two designations. Each
Name designates, and points to, the unique Essence, while pointing
to a meaning or reality which is not shared by any other Name.
In the first aspect, every Name is one and the same as all other
Names, because they all are indicative of the same Essence. In this
respect, even such Names as appear to contradict each other (e.g.,
‘All-Forgiving’ and ‘Revenger’, ‘Outward’ and ‘Inward’, ‘First’ and
‘Last’) are identical with each other.
In the second aspect, on the contrary, each Name is something
independent, something having its own peculiar reality. It definitely
distinguishes itself from all others. The ‘Outward’ is not the same as
the ‘Inward’ . And what a distance between the ‘First’ and the ‘Last’ !
It will have been made clear to you (by what precedes) in what sense
each Name is the same as another and in what sense it is different
from another. Each Name, in being the same as others, is the Abso-
lute, and in being ‘other’ than others, is the ‘Absolute as it appears as
a particular image’ ( al-haqq al-mutakhayyal ) . Glory be to Him who is
not indicated by anything other than Himself and whose existence is
established by nothing other than Himself and whose existence is
established by nothing other than His own self ! 3
The ‘Absolute as it appears in particular images’, i.e., the world, is
nothing but the whole sum of the Divine Names as concretely
actualized. And since it is the sole indicator of the absolute Abso-
The Divine Names
101
lute, the latter, after all, is not indicated by anything other than
itself. The Absolute indicates itself by itself, and its concrete exist-
ence is established by itself. Ibn ‘Arab! cannot withold his pro-
found admiration for the beauty and the grandeur of this structure.
We discussed in Chapter V the relation between the One and the
Many. In terms of the main topic of the present chapter, the Many
are the forms of the Absolute actualized in accordance with the
requirements of the Names. The Many are the ‘Absolute as it
appears in particular images’, i.e., the Absolute ‘imagined’ under
the particular forms of the Names. And from this point of view, the
One is the Essence {dhat) which is indicated by the Names and to
which return all the Names. At this juncture Ibn ‘Arabi uses an
interesting expression, ‘the names of the world’ ( asma ’ al-‘alam), as
a counterpart to the Divine Names ( al-asma ’ al-ilahiyah). 4
Whatever really exists in the world of Being is solely what is indicated
by (the word) ‘unity’ ( ahadiyah ), whereas whatever exists only in
imagination is what is indicated by ‘multiplicity’ (kathrah). Therefore
he who sticks to the multiplicity stands on the side of the world, the
Divine Names and the names of the world, while he who takes the
position of the Unity stands on the side of the Absolute. The Abso-
lute here is the Absolute considered in the Essence which is com-
pletely independent of the whole world, not in its aspect of Divinity
(i.e., being God) and its phenomenal forms.
In this passage Ibn ‘Arabi states that the Absolute in its Essence is
completely ‘independent’, i.e., has absolutely no need of the world.
It is to be remarked that having no need of the world is the same as
having no need of the Divine Names. The Names are, as we have
observed above, the relations in which the Absolute stands to the
creatures. They are there because of, and in the interests of, the
creatures. The Essence in itself is not something which cannot
subsist apart from such centrifugal relations. What needs the Names
is not the Absolute, but the created world. He says; 5
If the Essence is completely independent of the whole world, this
independence must be the same independence by which the Essence
transcends the Names to be attributed to it. For the Names indicate
not only the Essence but particular ‘objects named ’ 6 which are differ-
ent from the Essence. This is evidenced by the very effect of the
Names . 7
Thus, the Divine Names, in their centrifugal side turning toward
multiplicity-diversity, are definitely ‘other’ than the Absolute, and
the Absolute maintains its ‘independence’ in regard to them. But in
their centripetal side turning toward the Essence, all the Divine
Names are ultimately one because they are reducible to the
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Absolute. And in this second aspect, the Absolute at the level of the
Names is One as it is at the level of its absoluteness.
The Absolute is in this way. One in two different senses . 8
The Unity of God on the level of the Divine Names which require
(the existence of) us (i.e., the phenomenal world) is the Unity of
multiplicity ( ahadiyah al-kathrah ). And the Unity of God in the sense
of being completely ‘independent’ of us and even of the Names is the
Unity of essence ( ahadiyah al-'ayn). Both aspects are called by the
same name: ‘One’.
The Unity of multiplicity here spoken of is also called the Unity of
‘unification’ ( ahadiyah al-jam‘). It plays an exceedingly important
role in the world-view of Ibn ‘ Arabi, as we have already seen in what
precedes and as we shall see in more detail in what follows. In brief,
it is a position which recognizes multiplicity existing in potentia in
the Absolute which is essentially One . 9
We have observed above that the Absolute, in so far as it is the
Absolute, does not need the Names, and that it is the creatures that
need them. The latter half of this statement, namely, that the world
needs the Divine Names, may be formulated in more philosophical
terms by saying that the Names have the property of causality
(‘illiyah or sababiyah). From this point of view, the Divine Names
are the ‘cause’ {‘illah or sabab) for the existence of the world. The
world needs the Divine Names in the sense that nothing in the world
can exist without them.
There can be no doubt that the world stands in essential need of many
causes. And the greatest of all the causes which it needs is the
Absolute. But the Absolute can act as the cause needed by the world
only through the Divine Names as its cause.
By ‘Divine Names’ here is meant every Name that is needed by the
world (as its cause), whether it be part of the world itself or the very
Absolute. In either case it is God, nothing else . 10
This passage makes it clear that, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, if the world
essentially needs as its cause the Absolute, it does not need the
Absolute in its absoluteness but in its various aspects, such as
‘creativity’, ‘Lordship’, etc. In other words, the Absolute on the
level of the Names is the ‘cause’ of the world’s existence. Regarding
the latter half of the passage, nothing, I think, could make its
meaning more lucid than the following explanation by al-Qashani . 11
The Divine Names are the very things which are needed by the world
(as its causes). (Two cases are distinguished). The first is when the
Name needed is something similar to the thing which needs it: e.g.,
‘son’ needs ‘father’ in his existence, sustenance and maintenance. In
such a case the things needed are nothing but concrete forms taken by
The Divine Names
103
the Names of the Absolute, i.e., their concrete manifestations. The
second case occurs when the thing needed is (directly) the Absolute
itself: e.g., the ‘son’ is in need of the Absolute, the Former, the
Creator, in having his own form, figure and character. This is differ-
ent from (the first case in which) he needs something similar to
himself (e.g., ‘father’).
In either case, however, the Name needed is no other than the Name
‘Allah’. (This may not be clear) in the first case, (but that it is so will
be known from the following consideration). The causality of ‘father’
does not lie in the permanent archetype of ‘father’, for the latter is
(actually) non-existent. The causality of ‘father’ comes from ‘father’
in its real existence, his action, and his power. But the existence (of
‘father’) is essentially nothing but the Absolute as manifested in a
locus of self-manifestation; and the action, the form, the ability, the
power, the sustenance, and the maintenance - all these are but what
naturally follows from existence: they are but Attributes of the
Absolute and its Actions (in concrete forms). What properly pertains
to ‘father’ is only being-receptive and being-a-locus-of-Divine-
self-manifestation. As you already know, however, the one who
merely receives has no positive activity; the positive activity belongs
only to the One which manifests itself in (the receiver as) its locus of
self-manifestation. (The causality of the Absolute) in the second case
is too obvious to need explanation.
The gist of the argument may conveniently be given in the following
way: in the second case in which the world directly needs God, God
is the ‘cause’ of the world; but in the first case, too, in which the
things in the world need each other in the form of a cause-caused
relation, it is again God who is the ultimate ‘cause’ of everything.
When, for example, ‘son’ needs ‘father’, it is the causality of God
that is working through the medium of ‘father’.
We see in this way that everything in this world, every event
which occurs in this world, is an actualization of a Divine Name, that
is to say, a self-manifestation of the Absolute through a definite
relative aspect called Divine Name. The conclusion to be drawn
from this is that there are as many Divine Names as there are things
and events in the world. The Divine Names in this sense are infinite
in number.
The Names of God are limitless because they become known by what
comes out of them and what comes out of them is limitless . 12
However, they are reducible to a limited number of basic Names
( u$ul , lit. ‘roots’) which are the ‘Mothers’ of Names or, we might say,
the ‘Presences’ (i.e., basic dimensions) of all the Names.
The truth of the matter is that there is only one Reality ( haqiqah ) that
receives all these relations and relative aspects which are called the
Divine Names. And this same Reality requires that each of these
Names that come into appearance limitlessly should have its own
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reality which distinguishes it from all other Names. The Name is this
reality which distinguishes each individual Name, not that thing (i.e.,
the Reality) which is common to all. This situation is comparable to
the fact that the Divine gifts are distinguished from each other by
their individual natures, though they are all from one source.
It is evident that this is different from that, and the reason for this
difference lies in the individual distinction of each Name. Thus in the
Divine world, however wide it is, nothing repeats itself. This is a truly
fundamental fact . 13
Here again, as we see, we are brought back to the basic dictum: the
One is the Many and the Many are the One. Only the dictum is here
interpreted topically in terms of the Divine Names. The Many, i.e.
the Divine Names, determine a point of view from which there is not
even one thing that is the same as some other thing, because
‘nothing repeats itself’ in the world. Even ‘one and the same thing’
is not in reality the same in two successive moments . 14 In general,
any two things that are normally considered the same are not in
reality the ‘same’; they are merely ‘similar to each other’ ( shab -
ihan). And of course, ‘similar to each other’ means ‘different from
each other’ (ghayran ). 15 However, from the point of view of the
Essence, not only similar things but things that are widely different
from each other, are one and the same thing.
The sage who knows the truth sees multiplicity in ‘one’; likewise, he
knows that the Divine Names, even though their (individual) realities
are different and many, all point to one single Entity. This (difference
among the Names) is but a multiplicity of an intelligible nature (i.e.,
existent only in potentia ) in the reality of the One. And this (intelli-
gible multiplicity) turns into sensible multiplicity to be witnessed in
one single Reality, when (the One) manifests itself (in the world).
The situation may be best understood by what happens to Prime
Matter ( hayula ) as it enters the inner structure of every ‘form’. In
spite of their multiplicity and diversity, all the ‘forms’ ultimately are
reducible to one single substance which is their ‘ matter’ . And ‘he who
knows himself’ in this way ‘knows his Lord’, because (the Lord) has
created him in His own image, nay, He is the very He-ness of the man
and his true reality . 16
All the Divine Names point to one single Reality, and in this sense
they are, as we have just seen, all one. This, however, does not
mean that all the Names stand on an equal level. On the contrary, a
difference of degrees or ranks is observable among them. This
difference of ranks corresponds to the difference of ranks among
the things of the world. And this is natural because, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s
view, the Divine Names owe their very existence to the ontological
requirements of the things. Ibn ‘Arab! explains this difference of
ranks among the Names in the following terms : 17
The Divine Names
105
There is absolutely nothing except it (i.e., the Absolute ). 18 However,
there must also be a certain respect in which we are obliged to use
language of discrimination in order to account for the (observable)
existence of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ in the world, so that we might be able
to talk about (for example) this man being ‘more’ learned than that,
notwithstanding the essential unity (of ‘knowledge’) itself . 19 This
implies (that there is a similar difference in rank between Attributes;
that, for example,) the Will, in respect to the number of its objects, is
inferior to Knowledge.
Although Will and Knowledge are both Attributes of God and are
one in this aspect, Will is lower than Knowledge. But that same Will
is higher than Power. This because, generally speaking, ‘will’ begins
to work only after one ‘knows’ something, and ‘will’ not only
precedes ‘power’ but covers a wider field than the latter. Exactly the
same kind of superior-inferior relation obtains among all the Divine
Names. The thing to which they all point, that is, the Essence, stands
on a transcendental height above all comparisons and relations, but
the things other than the Divine Essence are different in ranks,
some being ‘higher’ and others ‘lower’. Concerning the transcen-
dental height of the Essence Ibn ‘Arab! says : 20
The Transcendent ( al - ‘ aliy ) in itself is that which possesses the (abso-
lute) perfection ( kamal ) in which are engulfed all existent things as
well as non-existent relations 21 in such a way that there can absolutely
be no property that is not found therein, whether it be something
which is considered ‘good’ according to convention, Reason, and the
Divine Law, or something to be judged ‘bad’ by the same standards.
And this is a state of affairs which is observable exclusively in what is
designated by the Name Allah.
This passage is explicated by al-Qashani as follows : 22
The Transcendent with a real and essential - not a relative - height,
possesses an absolute perfection which comprises all the perfections
pertaining to all things. The perfections comprised are (exhaustive),
covering as they do both those that are positively existent and those
that are in the nature of non-existence; some of them are ‘good’ in
every possible aspect, and some of them are ‘bad’ in a certain respect.
This last point may be understood if one remembers that some of the
perfections are essentially of a relative nature and are ‘bad’ in rela-
tion to some of the things; e.g., the valor of a lion in relation to his
prey. But the absolute perfection must not lack even one property or
ethical qualification or action. Otherwise, it would be imperfect in
that particular aspect.
Ibn ‘Arabi asserts that such an essential height and an absolute
perfection can only belong to the One as determined by the primary
self-determination on the level of the Onesness ( wahidiyah ) which
gathers together all the Names. And this is the Greatest Name
106 Sufism and Taoism
( al-ism al-a‘zam) which is the very thing designated by the Name
Allah or the Name Merciful (al-rahman) P In this state, all the Divine
Names which have a positive effect (on the things of the world) are
considered together as a unity; they are not considered in their aspect
of multiplicity.
Such is ‘God’ as the comprehensive whole unifying all the Names.
As to ‘what is not the thing designated by the Name Allah’, i.e., all
things that are not God, Ibn ‘Arab! distinguishes two kinds: (1) that
which is a locus of theophany {mafia, i.e. the place of tajalli), and (2)
that which is a form {$urah) in God, the word ‘form’ in this context
meaning a particular Name by which the Divine Essence becomes
determined.
‘What is not the thing designated by the Name Allah' is either a locus
of the self-manifestation of it or a form subsisting in it. In the former
case, it is quite natural that there should occur a difference of ranks
between individual loci. In the second case, the ‘form’ in question is
the very essential perfection (belonging, as we have seen, to the
Transcendent) for the form is nothing other than what is mani-
fested in it (i.e., the Transcendent itself), so that what belongs to that
which is designated by the Name Allah must also belong to the
form . 24
The meaning of this seemingly obscure passage may be made
explicit in the following way. In case ‘other than God’ signifies a
locus of theophany, the One Absolute is witnessed in the concrete
things of the world as so many loci of theophany. In this case the
Absolute assumes various different aspects in accordance with the
natures of the individual things. And there naturally arise various
ranks and degrees according to the more-or-less of the self-
manifestation. 25 But in case ‘other than God’ signifies a ‘form’ in
God, various forms are witnessed in the Absolute itself. And in this
case, each one of the forms will possess the very same essential
perfection which is possessed by the whole, i.e., God. If God pos-
sesses perfection, the same perfection must necessarily be possessed by
each ‘form’ because the latter appears in nothing other than God.
The existents thus differ ontologically from each other in rank, but
taken as a whole, they constitute among themselves a well-
organized order. And this ontological order corresponds to the
order formed by the Divine Names.
Two things are worth remarking concerning this theologico-
ontological hierarchy. (1) A higher Name implicitly contains all the
Names that are lower than itself. And, correspondingly, a higher
existent, as a locus of the self-manifestation of a higher Name,
contains in itself all the lower existents. (2) Every single Name,
The Divine Names 107
regardless of its rank in the hierarchy, contains in a certain sense all
the other Names. And, correspondingly, every single part of the
world contains all the other parts of the world. Ibn ‘Arab! says: 26
When you assign a higher rank to a Divine Name, you are thereby
calling it (implicitly) by all the Names (that stand lower than it) and
attributing to it all the properties (that belong to the Names of lower
ranks). The same is true of the things of the world; every higher being
possesses the capacity of comprehending all that is lower than itself.
However, every particle of the world is (virtually) the whole of the
world, that is, every single particle is capable of receiving into itself all
the realities of all single particles of the world. So the observed fact,
for instance, that Zayd is inferior to ‘ Amr in knowledge does not in
any way prevent the same He-ness of the Absolute being the very
essence of Zayd and ‘Amr; nor does it prevent the He-ness being
more perfect, more conspicuous in ‘Amr than in Zayd.
This situation corresponds to the fact that the Divine Names differ
from each other in rank while being all no other than the Absolute.
Thus, for example, God as ‘Knower’ is more comprehensive, regard-
ing the domain covered, than God as ‘Wilier’ or ‘Powerful’, and yet
God is God in every case.
Of the numerous Divine Names, the greatest and most comprehen-
sive, and the most powerful one is the ‘Merciful’ ( rahman ). It is a
‘comprehensive’ (shamil) Name in that it gathers all the Names
together into a unity. And the Absolute on this level of unity is
called Allah. In the following two chapters these two Names will be
discussed in detail.
Notes
1. Fw>., p. 193/153.
2. Fus., p. 70/79-80.
3. Fu$., p. 119/104.
4. fks., p. 120/104-105.
5. ibid.
6. i.e., particular Attributes which are, more concretely, various particular aspects
of the world.
7. i.e., the fact that the Names indicate besides the Essence the special aspects of the
world as something different from the Essence is clearly shown by the created world
itself which is the very effect of the Names.
8. Fu$., p. 121/105.
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Sufism and Taoism
9. Ibn ‘Arabi here distinguishes between two types of ahadiyah or ‘Unity’. In his
technical terminology, the first kind of Unity, i.e., the Unity of multiplicity at the
ontological stage of Divine Names and Attributes, is specifically called wahidlyah
‘Oneness (of Many)’ and is thereby strictly distinguished from the absolute, pure
Unity (ahadiyah), the Unity of Divine Essence. It will be well to remember that there
is in his system one more basic type of ahadiyah. It is the Unity of ‘actions and effects’
(, ahadlyah al-afal wa-al-athar) and is symbolized by the name of the prophet Hud.
Al-Qashani (p. 123) refers to these three types of Unity as follows: ‘There are three
degrees in the Unity. The first is the Unity of the Essence. (God is called at this stage
ahad “One” or “Unique” in a non-numerical sense). The second is the Unity of the
Names. This is the stage of Divinity, and God is called at this stage wahid “One” in a
numerical sense). The third is the Unity of Lordship ( rububiyah ) or the Unity of
actions and effects’. This last kind of Unity means that whatever we may do in this
world, whatever may happen in this world, everything is ‘walking along the straight
road’. Everything, every event, occurs in strict accordance with the law of Being
(which is nothing other than the Absolute). All are ‘one’ in this sense.
10. Fu$.,p. 122/105-106.
11. p. 122.
1 2. ‘The Essence as the Unity is, in relation to each single thing that comes out of it, a
particular Name. Thus whenever a determination comes into being there is a Name
therein. And the relations (of the Essence with the things of the world) are limitless
because the receptacles (i.e., the things that receive the self-manifestation of the
Absolute) and their natural dispositions are limitless. Thus it comes about that the
Names of God are limitless’ - al-Qashani, p. 38.
13. Fuy, pp. 38-39/65.
14. This is the concept of the ‘ever new creation’ ( khalq jadid), which will be
discussed in detail later.
15. Fuy., p. 152/124-125.
16. ibid.
17. Fwj., p. 193/153.
18. He means to say: since everything is a self-manifestation of the Absolute
through a particular Name, all that exist in the world are nothing but the Absolute.
19. This example properly concerns only the existence of degrees in one single
attribute called ‘knowledge’. But the real intention of Ibn ‘Arabi is to maintain that
there is also a difference of degrees between ‘knowledge’ itself and other attributes.
20. Fu$., p. 69/79.
21. As we have observed before, the relations ( nisab ) are in themselves essentially
non-existent.
22. p. 69.
23. On Allah = the Merciful see the next two chapters which will be devoted
specifically to this question.
The Divine Names
109
24. Fw$., p. 69/79.
25. If, for example, all the Divine Names are actualized in a thing, it will be the
Perfect Man, while if the most of the Names are manifested, it will be an ordinary
(non-perfect) man, and if the number of the Names manifested happens to be far less
than that, it will be an inanimate thing - al-Qashani, p. 69.
26. Fuy., pp. 193-194/153.
!
Allah and the Lord
111
VIII Allah and the Lord
One of the cardinal elements of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s thought on God is the
theologico-ontological difference between Allah and the Lord
( rabb ). In the Chapter of Noah (Qoran, LXXI) to which reference
was made before, Noah addressing himself to God uses the expres-
sion ‘O my lord (rabb-i)' he does not say ‘O my God (ilah-iy . In
this Ibn ‘Arabi find a special meaning.
Noah said ‘ O my Lord’ , he did not say 1 O my God’ . This because the
‘ Lord’ has a rigid fixity (thubiit), while 'God' ( ilah ) is variable with the
Names in such a way that ‘He is every day in a new state ’. 2
This short passage contains the gist of Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought on the
difference and relation between Allah and the Lord. It may be
explicated as follows.
The Lord is the Absolute as manifested through a particular
concrete Name, while Allah is the Absolute who never ceases to
change and transform Himself from moment to moment according
to the Names. The Lord has a rigid ‘fixity’ in the sense that it is the
Absolute in one particular aspect being bound and determined by
one particular Name or Attribute suitable for the occasion. Hence a
very particular relation between the Lord and man; namely, that
man, whenever he prays to God and makes petition or supplication
to Him, he must necessarily address himself to his Lord. An ailing
man prays to God not vaguely and generally but in the ‘fixed’ form
of the ‘Healer’ (shaft). Likewise, a sinner asking for Divine forgive-
ness supplicated the ‘All-forgiving’ ( ghajur ). And he who wants
something prays to the ‘Giver’ (m«‘li), 3 etc.
God under each of these and other similar Names is the Lord of
the particular man who prays from a particular motive. Hence
al-Qashani’s definition 4 of the Lord: the Lord is the Essence taken
with a particular Attribute through which (the man who prays)
obtains what he needs; thus it is, of all the Divine Names, the most
suitable one for the occasion which motivates the man when he
addresses himself to God. This is the reason why Noah, in the
Qoranic verse in questions, says ‘my Lord’ . Lordship ( rububiyah ) in
this sense means the truly personal relationship of each individual
man with God.
It is to be remarked that this individual relationship is also of an
ontological nature. In the Qoran (XIX, 55) it is related that IsmaTl
(Ishmael) ‘was approved by his Lord’, that is, his Lord was satisfied
with Ishmael. But if we understand the phrase ‘his Lord’ in the
particular sense in which Ibn ‘Arabi understands it, we must admit
that not only Ishmael but every being is approved by his Lord. As
Ibn ‘Arabi says: 5
Indeed, every being is approved by his Lord. From the fact, however,
that every being is approved by his Lord it does not follow necessarily
that every being is approved by the Lord of another creature. This is
because every being has chosen a particular form of Lordship from
among all (the possible types of Lordship contained in the absolute
Lordship) and not from one single Lordship (commonly shared by
all). Every being has been given out of the (infinitely variable) whole
only what particularly fits it, and that precisely is its Lord.
As al-Qashani says, 6 ‘the Lord (i.e., its Lord) demands of every
being only that which (naturally) appears in it, while the being, in its
turn, because of its ‘preparedness’, does not demand of its Lord
except those attributes and actions that its Lord causes to appear in
it (naturally)’ . In other words, when the Absolute manifests itself in
each individual being, it is able to do so only through one particular
Name because of the natural limitation set by the ‘preparedness’ of
that particular being. But this is exactly what is willed by the
Absolute and what is desired by the recipient, there being no
discordance between the two parties. And this is what is meant by
everything being approved by its own Lord.
It must be noticed that Ibn ‘Arabi is no longer speaking of the
personal relationship between a man and his Lord established by
the act of prayer and supplication, but has clearly shifted his interest
to the ontological aspect of the problem. And in fact, there is an
ontological aspect to the personal relation between each individual
being and his Lord.
In the phenomenon of ‘prayer’, from which Ibn ‘Arab! has
started, each single Name has been regarded as representing a
particular aspect of the Absolute. But a Divine Name, in order to
actualize, necessarily requires a particular being. A particular being
in that capacity is a locus of the self-manifestation of that Name.
And in this context, each individual being, as a locus in which a
particular Name is manifested, maintains with the Absolute the
same individual relationship as in the ‘prayer’ context. Only it
maintains the same individual relationship, this time, on the
ontological level.
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Sufism and Taoism
It follows from this that each individual being or thing, at each
particular moment, picks up only one out of many Names, and the
Name chosen behaves as his or its Lord. Looking at the situation
from the reverse side, we can express the same thing by saying that it
never happens that the Absolute should manifest itself as it is in its
original Oneness, i.e., the comprehensive unity of the Names, in any
being. Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to say: 7
No being can establish a particular Lord-servant relationship with
the Absolute on the level of Unity. This is why the true sages have
denied the possibility of Divine self-manifestation ( tajalli ) on the
level of Unity. . . . 8
The Absolute on the level of Oneness is a synthesis of all Names,
and as such, no one single being is able to contain it. Only the world
as an integral whole can actualize the Oneness of the Names and
offer an ontological counterpart to it. However, Ibn ‘Arabi seems to
admit one exceptional case. As al-Qashani says, the exception
arises in the case of the Perfect Man. Unlike ordinary men, the
Perfect Man actualizes and manifests not one single particular
Name but all the Names in their synthesis. An ordinary man is
approved by his particular Lord. The latter is his Lord; not the Lord
of other people. So that no ordinary man is in direct relation with
the absolute Lord ( al-rabb al-mutlaq). The Perfect Man, on the
contrary, actualizes in himself all the attributes and actions of the
One who approves of him not as his Lord alone but as the absolute
Lord.
The expression, ‘the absolute Lord’, used by al-Qashani corres-
ponds to the Qoranic expression, ‘the Lord of the worlds’ ( rabb
al-‘alamin , and is equivalent to ‘the Lord of all Lords’ ( rabb al-
arbab ) or Allah. Thus the statement that, in normal cases, the
Names in their original synthesis can never be actualized in any
single being, amounts to the same thing as saying that Allah as such
cannot be the Lord of any particular individual.
Know that the object designated by the Name Allah is unitary
(i ahadiy ) in regard to the Essence, and a synthesis ( kull ) in regard to
the Names. Every being is related to Allah only in the form of his
particular Lord; it is impossible for any being to be related to Allah
directly in the original form of synthesis. . . .
And blessed indeed is he who is approved by his Lord! But, properly
speaking, there is no one who is not approved by his Lord, because he
(i.e., every individual) is just the thing by which the Lordship of the
Lord subsists. Thus every individual being is approved by his Lord,
and every individual being is happy and blessed. 9
In the latter half of this passage an intimate reciprocal relationship is
affirmed between each individual being and his Lord. It goes with-
Allah and the Lord
out saying that every being depends essentially on his Lord for his
existence. But the Lord also depends, in a certain sense, upon the
receptive ability ( qabiliyah ) 10 of the individual being of whom He is
the Lord. The Lord can never be a Lord without there being
someone to be ‘lorded over’ ( marbub ). Ibn ‘Arabi refers at this
point to the following dictum left by Sahl al-Tustari, a famous
Sufi-theologian of the ninth century. 11
‘The Lordship has a secret, and that (secret) is thyself’ - here (by
saying thyself) Sahl is addressing himself to every individual being
that exists in concrete reality - ‘if it were nullified, 12 the Lordship
itself would come to naught’. Remark well that Sahl says if which
implies an impossibility of the actual occurrence of the event in
question. In other words, this (secret) will never be nullified, and,
consequently, the Lordship will never come to naught. For there can
be no existence for any being except by virtue of its Lord, but as a
matter of fact every individual being is forever existent (if not in the
physical world, at least in some of the non-physical dimensions of
reality). Thus the Lordship will forever be existent.
As has been suggested in the preceding more than once, the ‘Lord’,
in Ibn ‘ArabFs thought, is considered on two different levels: (1)
‘absolute’ ( muflaq ) and (2) ‘relative’ (iddfiy). The Lord on the
‘absolute’ level is Allah , while on the second level the Lord is the
Lord of one particular being and is an actualized form of one
particular Name. From the viewpoint of the concept itself of ‘Lord’
(rabb), the ‘relative’ is the proper case, the Lord in the ‘absolute’
sense being only an extremely exceptional case. This fact is
explained by al-Qashani in the following way: 13
Rabb is properly a relative term and necessarily requires its object
(marbub, lit. ‘the one who is lorded over’). The word rabb in Arabic is
used in three senses: (1) ‘possessor’ , e.g. rabb al-dar (the possessor of
the house), rabb al-ghanam (the possessor of the cattle) etc., (2)
‘master’, e.g., rabb al-qawm (the master of the people), rabb al-‘abid
(the master of the slaves) etc., (3) ‘one who brings up’, e.g., rabb
al-sabi (the one who brings up the boy), rabb al-tifl (one who brings
up the infant) etc.
The word rabb is not applicable in the non-relative sense except to
the Lord of the whole universe. In this case we say al-rabb with a
definite article (without mentioning the ‘object’ of Lordship).
Thereby is meant Allah alone. And to Him belongs in an essential
way the Lordship in the three meanings distinguished above, while to
anybody other than Allah the lordship belongs only accidentally. For
‘other than Allah' is but a locus in which it (i.e., the Lordship
belonging properly to Allah) is manifested.
Thus Lordship is an attribute properly belonging to one single thing
(i.e., Allah) but appearing in many forms (as ‘relative’ lordships).
Everybody in whom it is manifested possesses an accidental lordship
114
115
Sufism and Taoism
in accordance with the degree to which he is given the power of free
disposal which he may exercise over his possessions, slaves or
children.
Since the attribute of Lordship differs from locus to locus in its
self-manifestation, there necessarily arise a number of degrees. Thus
he who has been given a stronger control (over his possessions) than
others has naturally a higher lordship.
Thus we see that the ‘Lord’, whether ‘absolute’ or ‘relative’, essen-
tially requires an object over which to exercise the Lordship. The
rabb , in short, cannot subsist without marbiib. And this holds true
even when the Lord in question happens to be no other than God.
The only one who does not need anything other than himself is, as
we know, the Absolute in its absoluteness, i.e., the Divine Essence.
The Divine Names are essentially the same as the Named. And the
Named is (ultimately) no other than God. (But a difference comes
into being because) the Names (unlike the Essence) do not cease to
require the realities which they themselves produce. And the realities
which the Names require are nothing other than the world. Thus
Divinity ( uluhiyah , i.e., the Absolute’s being God) requires the
object to which it appears as God ( ma’luh , lit. an object which is
‘god-ed’), as Lordship requires its own object {marbub ‘lord-ed’).
Otherwise, i.e., apart from the world, it (i.e., Divinity or Lordship)
has no reality of its own.
What is absolutely free from any need of the world is solely the
Absolute qua Essence. The Lordship has no such property.
Thus Reality is reducible to two aspects: what is required by the
Lordship on the one hand, and, on the other, the complete indepen-
dence from the world which is rightly claimed by the Essence. But
(we may go a step further and reduce these two aspects to one,
because) in reality and in truth the Lordship is nothing other than the
Essence itself . 14
We come to know in this way that the ‘Lord’ is no other than the
Essence ( dhat ) considered as carrying various relations ( nisab ). We
must not forget, however, that these relations are no real entities
subsisting in the Divine Essence. They are simply so many subjec-
tive points of view peculiar to the human mind which cannot by
nature approach the Divine Essence except through them.
*■
Allah and the Lord
ship is the ‘Presence of actions ( afaiy , i.e., the plane of those
Names that are specifically concerned with Divine actions in
administering, sustaining, and controlling the affairs of the
creatures.
Notes
1. LXXI, 5, 21, 26.
2. Fus., p. 57/73.
3. Cf. Affifi, Fus„ Com., p. 42.
4. p. 57.
5. Fus., p. 95/91.
6. p. 95.
7. Fus., p. 95/91-92.
8. In this passage Ibn ‘Arabi uses the term ‘Unity’ (ahadiyah) in the sense of
wahidiyah. It goes without saying that there can be no exterior tajalli on the level of
ahadiyah, because, as we have seen in the earlier contexts, ahadiyah is the absolute
state of Essence (dhat) before it begins to split itself into the Names. The real
intention of Ibn ‘Arab! in this passage, however, is to assert that even on the level of
the Oneness ( wahidiyah ) where the Absolute is ‘God comprising and unifying all the
Names into one’ no individual being is able to be a locus of the self-manifestation of
the Oneness in its integrity.
9. Fus., PP- 93-94/90-91.
10. Qashani, p. 94.
11. Fus., P- 94/90-91.
12. As Affifi (Com., p. 87) says, the word zahara ‘appear’, ‘be disclosed’ here has a
meaning diametrically opposed to the usual one; namely, that it must be understood
in the meaning of zala ‘disappear’ or ‘cease to exist’ . Many examples of this usage of
the word can be adduced from ancient poetry.
13. pp. 262-263.
Incidentally, we have seen, in the above-quoted passage, Ibn ‘Arabi
making a distinction between Divinity ( uluhiyah ) and Lordship
(rububiyah). The Divinity represents, as al-Qashani says , 15 the
‘Presence’ or ontological plane of the Names, that is, of those
Names that belong to the Absolute considered as God. In this plane,
the Absolute ( qua God) is the object of veneration, praise, awe,
fear, prayer, and obedience on the part of the creatures. The Lord-
14. Fus -, P- 143/119.
15. pp. 143-144.
IX Ontological Mercy
The two preceding chapters will have made it clear that there is a
difference of ranks among the Divine Names, and that a higher
Name virtually contains in itself all the Names of lower ranks. If
such is the case, then it is natural for us to suppose that there must be
in this hierarchy the highest, i.e., the most comprehensive, Name
that contains all the rest of the Names. And in fact, according to Ibn
‘Arab!, there actually is such a Name: ‘Merciful’ (Rahman). The
present chapter will be devoted to a detailed consideration of Ibn
‘ArabFs thought concerning this highest Name, its nature and its
activity.
From the very beginning, the concept of Divine Mercy was a
dominant theme in Islamic thought. The Qoran emphasizes con-
stantly and everywhere the boundless Mercy of God shown toward
the creatures. The Mercy of God is indeed ‘wide’; it covers every-
thing. Ibn ‘Arabi, too, greatly emphasizes the boundless width of
Divine Mercy. ‘Know that the Mercy of God extends to everything,
both in actual reality and possibility ’. 1
However, there is one important point at which his understanding
of ‘mercy’ ( rahmah ) differs totally from the ordinary common-
sense understanding of the term. In the ordinary understanding,
rahmah denotes an essentially emotive attitude, the attitude of
compassion, kindly forbearance, pity, benevolence, etc. But, for Ibn
‘Arabi, rahmah is rather an ontological fact. For him, rahmah is
primarily the act of making things exist, giving existence to them. It
is bestowal of existence, with, of course, an overtone of a subjective,
emotive attitude on the part of the one who does so.
God is by essence ‘overflowing with bounteousness’ (fay y ad
bi-al-jud ), that is, God is giving out existence limitlessly and end-
lessly to everything. As al-Qashani says, ‘existence ( wujud ) is the
first overflowing of the Mercy which is said to extend to every-
thing ’. 2
Such an understanding of rahmah gives a very particular coloring
to the interpretation of the ethical nature of God which plays an
Ontological Mercy
117
important role in the Qoran and in Islam in general. This is best
illustrated by Ibn ‘ArabFs interpretation of the concept of Divine
‘wrath’.
As is well known, the Qoran, while emphasizing that God is the
Merciful, stresses at the same time that He is also a God of Wrath, a
God of Vengeance. The God of the Qoran is God of justice. He
shows unlimited love and compassion toward the good and pious,
but that does not prevent Him from inflicting relentless punishment
and chastisement upon those who do wrong, those who refuse to
believe in Him and obey Him.
Ibn ‘Arabi, too, admits God’s wrath’ (ghadab). For him, how-
ever, ghadab is not an ordinary emotion of anger. It is, like its
counterpart, rahmah , something of an ontological nature.
Moreover, it is put in a subordinate position in relation to rahmah,
for ghadab itself is but an object of the boundless rahmah of God.
The very existence of Wrath originates from the Mercy of God for the
Wrath. Thus His Mercy precedes His Wrath . 3
This statement would seem to need an explication. Here is what
al-Qashani says about it : 4
Mercy pertains essentially to the Absolute because the latter is by
essence ‘Bounteous’ (jawad) . . . Wrath, however, is not of the
essence of the Absolute. On the contrary, it is simply a negative
property that arises from the absence of receptivity on the part of
some of the things for a perfect manifestation of the effects of
existence and the various properties of existence.
The absence of receptivity in some of the things for Mercy entails the
non-appearance of Mercy (in those things), whether in this world or
the Hereafter. And the fact that Divine Mercy is prevented from
overflowing into a thing of this kind because of its non-receptivity is
called Wrath in relation to that particular thing. . . .
Thus it is patent that Mercy has precedence over Wrath with regard
to the Absolute, for Wrath is nothing but the actual non-receptivity
of the locus which is (supposed to receive) Mercy in a perfect form.
We ordinarily imagine that what we call ‘evil’ (sharr) is something
positive, something positively existent. But ‘evil’ is in itself a pure
non-existence (‘adam). It exists only in the purely negative sense
that a certain thing, when Divine Mercy works upon it, cannot by
nature receive and accept it as it should. In other words, ‘evil’ is the
negative situation of those things which cannot receive Mercy
( = existence) in its full and perfect form, and which, therefore,
cannot fully realize existence.
Apart from these things which constitute the objects of Divine
Wrath, or, more philosophically speaking, the things that properly
cannot have existence, all the remaining things which naturally have
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the proper receptivity for existence, demand of God existence. And
the Divine activity which arises in response to this demand is Mercy.
It is natural, then, that Mercy should cover all things that can
possibly exist.
Every essence (‘ ayn , i.e., everything in its archetypal state) asks for
existence from God. Accordingly God’s Mercy extends to, and cov-
ers, every essence. For God, by the very Mercy which He exercises
upon it, accepts (i.e., recognizes approvingly) the thing’s (latent)
desire to exist (even before the desire actually arises) and brings it
(i.e., the desire) out to existence. This is why we assert that the Mercy
of God extends to everything both in actual reality and possibility. 5
Everything, already in its archetypal state, cherishes latently a
desire ( raghbah ) for actual existence. God’s Mercy extends even to
this ontological desire while it is still in the state of mere possibility,
and brings it out into existence. The desire thus actualized consti-
tutes the ‘preparedness’ ( istVdad ) of the thing. The explication of
the above passage by al-Qashanl is philosophically of great
importance. 6
The permanent archetypes in their state of latency have only an
intelligible existence (as objects of God’s Knowledge) ; by themselves
they have no actual existence. They are desirous of actual existence,
and are asking for it from God. When the archetypes are in such a
state, God’s essential Mercy extends to every archetype by giving it a
capacity to receive an ontological Divine self-manifestation. This
receptivity, or the essential ‘preparedness’ f or receiving existence, is
exactly the archetype’s desire for actual existence.
Thus the very first effect of the essential Mercy upon an archetype
appears in the form of its natural aptitude for receiving existence.
This aptitude is called ‘preparedness’. God exercises Mercy upon an
archetype, even before it has the ‘preparedness’ for existence, by
existentiating the ‘preparedness’ itself through the ‘ most holy emana-
tion’ ( al-fayd al-aqdas), i.e., the essential self-manifestation occur-
ring in the Unseen. Thus the ‘preparedness’ of an archetype is itself (a
result of) Divine Mercy upon it (i.e., the archetype), for previous to
that, the archetype properly speaking has no existence if only to ask
for its own ‘preparedness’.
These words make it clear that the exercise of Divine Mercy is
nothing other than the process of the self-manifestation of the
Absolute, which has often been referred to in the preceding pages.
For Mercy is bestowal of existence, and, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s conception,
the Absolute’s bestowing existence upon the things of the world is
exactly the same as the Absolute’s manifesting itself in these things.
In the passage just quoted, al-Qashanl states that the first stage in
the appearance of Mercy is the giving of ‘preparedness’ for exist-
ence to things not yet actually existent. And he says this stage
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Ontological Mercy
corresponds to the ‘most holy emanation’ in the theory of Divine
self-manifestation. But this is somewhat misleading because it pre-
sents the whole matter in an extremely simplified form. We shall
have to reconsider in detail the process by which Divine Mercy is
manifested, following closely what Ibn ‘Arab! himself says about it.
Unfortunately, though, this is one of the most obscure parts of the
Fusuy. Let us first quote the whole passage, and then split it into
three parts representing, as I think, the three major stages in the
gradual appearance of Mercy. 7
The Divine Names are ‘things’, and they all are ultimately reducible
to one single Essence (1).
The first object to which the Mercy is extended is the very thing-ness
(i.e., the primary ontological reality by dint of which anything
becomes cognizable as ‘something’) of that Essence (‘ayn) which
produces the Mercy itself out of Mercy. Thus the first thing to which
the Mercy is extended is the Mercy itself (2). Then (in the second
stage, the object of the Mercy is) the thing-ness of (the Names) that
has just been mentioned (3). Then (in the third stage, it is) the
thing-ness of all existents that come into being without end, both of
this world and of the Hereafter, whether substances or accidents,
composite or simple (4).
The first stage in the appearance of Divine Mercy is referred to in
the second sentence (2) in this passage. The situation will be more
understandable if we describe it analytically in the following terms.
In the bosom of the absolute Absolute, or the abysmal Darkness,
there appears first a faint foreboding, a presentment, so to speak, of
the Mercy. Since, however, the Mercy, before it begins positively to
manifest itself, is a non-existent (‘adam), it needs something which
would bestow upon it ‘existence’, that is, another Mercy preceding
it. But there can be no Mercy preceding the Divine Mercy. The only
possibility then, is that the Divine Mercy is exercised upon itself.
The self-Mercy of the Mercy constitutes the very first stage in the
appearance of Mercy.
Looking at the same situation from the point of view of the
ontological Divine self-manifestation (tajalli) we might describe it
as the first appearance of a foreboding of ‘existence’. And the
appearance of a foreboding (or possibility) of ‘existence’ in the
absolute Absolute means nothing else than the Absolute becoming
conscious of itself as ‘existence’. It is the self-manifestation of the
Absolute to itself. And in terms of ‘emanation’ to which reference
has been made, this stage represents the beginning of the ‘most holy
emanation’ of the Absolute.
The sentence (2) in the above passage is intended to be a theoreti-
cal formulation of this phenomenon. It means that ‘the first object
of the Mercy is the thing-ness (shay’iyah) of that Essence (i.e., the
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Sufism and Taoism
absolute Divine Essence) which, with its own Mercy, brings Mercy
into existence’. It implies that by the very first manifestation of its
own Mercy, the absolutely Unknown-Unknowable turns into a
‘thing’ (shay’). And to say that the Absolute obtains ‘thing-ness’,
i.e., an ontological status by which it presents itself as a ‘thing’ -
which is the most general, the most undetermined of all determina-
tions - is to say that a process of ‘self-objectification’ has already
begun to take place within the Absolute itself. This is the appear-
ance of self-consciousness on the part of the Absolute, and is, for
the world, the appearance of a faint light just preceding the advent
of the dawn of existence. In this state there exists as yet nothing at all
except the Absolute, but the bestowal of existence which is, theo-
logically, the ‘creation’, is already steadily operating.
The second stage in the appearance of Mercy is the establishment of
the thing-ness of the Names or the permanent archetypes, referred
to by sentences (1) and (3) in the above-quoted passage. At this
stage, the Mercy, which has turned the absolutely Unknown-
Unknowable into a ‘thing’, now extends to all the Names and
bestows upon them existence. The Names are thereby given
‘thing-ness’, and become ‘things’.
On the side of tajalli, the second stage represents the completion
of the ‘most holy emanation’ . Unlike the first stage, the second stage
brings us closer to the external world of sensible experience, but
even at this stage the tajalli is not an external tajalli ; it is still an event
occurring inside the Unseen. Only the Unseen (ghayb) here is no
longer a primordial state of total indiscrimination, for the essential
forms of the things are already clearly discernible. These forms of
the things (guwar al-mawjuddat ) in the darkness of the Unseen are
the Divine Names. And the Absolute, as we have seen earlier,
reveals itself to itself by being manifested in these essences. This is
the final form in which Divine Consciousness makes its appearance,
and thus is completed the ‘most holy emanation’.
These essential forms constituting the content of Divine Con-
sciousness are the first ‘determinations’ ( ta‘ayyunat ) that appear in
the Essence in its relation with the creaturely world. And the
‘ thing-ness’ that arises at this stage is nothing other than the being of
the permanent archetypes, and is, therefore, different from the
thing-ness of the first stage. For all the existents at this stage,
although they still maintain the essential unity peculiar to the first
stage, have, at the same time, the meaning of being the totality of
the essences which are in potentia divisible. And the Mercy which is
at work at this stage is the Mercy of the Divine Names ( rahmah
asma’iyah ), and is to be distinguished from the Mercy operating at
the first stage, which is the Mercy of the Essence (rahmah dhatiyah).
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Ontological Mercy
The third stage in the appearance of the Mercy is described in
sentence (4) of the above passage. After having brought into exist-
ence the Divine Names (the second stage), the Mercy causes the
individual things to arise as concrete actualizations of the Names.
The ontological activity of the Mercy becomes thereby completed,
and the tajalli, on its part, reaches its final stage. This is what Ibn
‘Arab! calls the ‘holy emanation’ (al-fayd al-muqaddas ) to be tech-
nically distinguished from the above-mentioned ‘most holy emana-
tion’ (al-fayd al-aqdas ). Thus, the Mercy, starting from the Divine
Essence itself, ends by being extended over all the possible beings of
phenomenal reality, and comes to cover the whole world.
It is to be remarked that the activity of the Mercy covering the whole
world of Being is absolutely impartial and indiscriminating. It
extends literally over everything. In understanding the nature of its
activity, we should not associate with it anything human with which
the word ‘mercy’ (rahmah) is usually associated.
There does not come into its activity any consideration of attaining an
aim, or of a thing’s being or not being suitable for a purpose. Whether
suitable or unsuitable, the Divine Mercy covers everything and any-
thing with existence . 8
Such an indiscriminating and gratuitous Mercy is called by Ibn
‘Arab! the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ (rahmah al-imtinan). 9 It is
totally gratuitous; freely bestowed without any particular
justification. The gift is given not in reward for something good
done. As al-Qashani defines it, 10 the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ is an
essential Mercy which extends to all things without exception. It is
extended to anything whatsoever because it is not a reward for some
act. Thus anything that acquires thing-ness obtains this Mercy.
The Mercy in this sense is synonymous with ‘existence’. And to
exercise ‘mercy’ means to bestow ‘existence’ by way of a gratuitous
gift. This is, for Ibn ‘Arabi, the meaning of the Qoranic verse: ‘My
Mercy covers everything’ (VII, 156). It means that the Absolute
bestows existence upon everything without any discrimination.
In contrast, there is a kind of ‘mercy’ which is more human in
nature, that is, the kind of ‘mercy’ which is exercised in reward for
some act done. Ibn ‘Arabi calls this second type the ‘Mercy of
obligation’ (rahmah al-wujub). The conception is based on another
Qoranic verse: ‘Your Lord has written upon Himself Mercy’ (VI,
12). This is the kind of Mercy exercised with discrimination, i.e., in
accordance with what each person actually has done. Ontologically
speaking, it is Mercy exercised in accordance with the ‘prepared-
ness’ of each individual being.
There are, therefore, two different kinds of Mercy ( rahmatan );
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Sufism and Taoism
and the ‘Merciful’ is, accordingly, given two meanings. These two
senses are differentiated in Arabic by two different Names: the first
is al- Rahman and the second is al-Rahim. The Rahman is the
Merciful in the sense of the One who exercises the ‘Mercy of
gratuitous gift’, while the Rahim is the Merciful in the sense of the
One who exercises the ‘Mercy of obligation’."
Since, however, the act of Mercy of the second category is but a
special case of the first (which consists in bestowing existence on all
beings), the Name Rahim is included in the Name Rahman. This
point is explained by Ibn ‘Arab! in the following way : 12
(The Mercy is of two kinds:) the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ and the
4 Mercy of obligation’ corresponding to (the Names) the Rahman and
Rahim respectively. (God) exercises Mercy as a gratuitous act under
the Name of the Rahman , while He obligates Himself to (requite with
Mercy) under the Name of Rahim.
This kind of ‘obligation’, however, is part of ‘gratuitous gift’, and so
the Rahim is contained within the Rahman. God ‘has written upon
Himself Mercy’ in such a way that Mercy of this kind may be
extended to His servants in reward for the good acts done by them
individually - those good works which are mentioned in the Qoran.
This kind of Mercy is an obligation upon God with which He has
bound Himself toward those servants, and the latter rightfully merit
this kind of Mercy by their good works.
Thus the ‘Mercy of obligation’ would seem to indicate that each
person merits this kind of Mercy by whatever good work he has
done. For Ibn ‘Arabi, this is merely a superficial understanding of
the matter. In the eyes of those who know the truth, he who really
does a good work is not man; the real agent is God Himself.
He who is in this state (i.e., whoever is fully entitled to the ‘ Mercy of
obligation’) knows within himself who is the real agent (of the good
works which he does). Good works are distributed among the eight
bodily members of man. And God has definitely declared that He is
the He-ness (i.e., the inmost reality) of each of these bodily members.
From this point of view, the real agent cannot be other than God;
what belongs to man is only the outward form. (When we say that)
the Divine He-ness itself is inherent in man, (what is meant thereby is
that) it inheres in nothing other than one of His Names (i.e., man as a
concrete form of one of the Divine Names, not in man as a physical
being.) 13
As regards the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’, the most important point
to remember is that it covers all without exception. Quite naturally,
then, the Divine Names themselves are objects of this kind of
Mercy.
God has put the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ above all restrictions when
He has declared: ‘My Mercy covers everything’ (VII, 156). So it
Ontological Mercy
covers even the Divine Names, i.e., the realities of all relative deter-
minations (of the Divine Essence). God has shown ‘Mercy of gratu-
itous gift’ to the Names by (the very act of bestowing existence to) us
(i.e., the world). Thus we (the world) are the result of the ‘Mercy of
gratuitous gift’ exercised upon the Divine Names, i.e., the relations
pertaining to the Lordship (i.e., the various relations which arise
because of the Absolute being the ‘Lord’). 14
This universal, unconditional, and indiscriminating nature of the
‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’ cannot but affect gravely that part of Ibn
‘Arabi’s ontology which concerns the value of things. His position
on this problem may succinctly be described by the phrase ‘Beyond
Good and Evil’.
As we have seen, the Mercy in this sense is nothing but bestowing
upon everything existence qua existence. And this is done by the
Absolute’s manifesting itself in the creaturely forms. This ontologi-
cal act has in itself nothing to do with moral judgments. In other
words, it does not matter essentially whether a thing as an object of
the Mercy be good ( khayr ) or bad ( sharr ). Things assume these and
other evaluational properties only after having been given existence
by the act of the universal Mercy. The actual appearance of good-
ness, badness, etc., is the result of the activity of the ‘Mercy of
obligation’, for a thing’s assuming properties of this kind is due to
the nature of the thing itself.
The ‘ Mercy of gratuitous gift’ is bestowal of existence. It concerns
existence qua existence; it does not concern existence being good or
bad. This is one of the major theses of Ibn ‘Arabi. Briefly stated,
everything is a self-manifestation of the Absolute; the Mercy
extends in this sense to all, and all are on the ‘straight way’ ( sira(
mustaqim ); and there is no distinction at this stage between good
and evil.
Verily God's is the straight Way; the Way is there, exposed to sight
everywhere. Its reality is inherent in great things and small, in those
who are ignorant of the truth as well as in those who know it well. This
is why it is said that His Mercy covers everything, whether it be vile
and contemptible or grand and stately.
Thus (it is said in the Qoran:) ‘There is not even one single animal on
earth but that He seizes its forelock. Verily my Lord is on the straight
Way’. (XI, 56). It is clear, then, that everybody walking on the earth
is on the straight Way of the Lord. From this point of view nobody is
of ‘those upon whom is God’s wrath' (I, 7) nor of ‘those who go
astray’ (ibid.). Both ‘wrath’ and ‘going astray’ come into being only
secondarily. Everything goes ultimately back to the Mercy which is
universal and which precedes (the appearance of all secondary
distinctions). 15
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Sufism and Taoism
God himself seizes the forelock of every animal and leads it along
the straight Way. This means that everything qua being is good as it
is, and is, as we have seen earlier, actually approved by God.
As all things go in this manner along the straight Way of God
under His own guidance, each shows its own characteristic feature,
i.e., each goes on doing individually various acts which are peculiar
to it. These acts are each a concrete manifestation of the particular
Name which acts as the personal Lord of each being. In other words,
everything, after having been put on the straight Way by the
ontological activity of the Mercy , begins to show secondarily its own
characteristic traits in accordance with the individual peculiarity
(khu$u$iyah) of the Name of which it happens to be an embodiment.
Everything except the Absolute is (what is described by the Goran
as) an animal walking on the earth. It is called ‘animal because it is
possessed of a spirit ( ruh ). 16
But there is nothing that ‘walks around’ by itself. Everything that
‘walks around’ does so only secondarily, following the movement of
(its own Lord) who is the one who really walks along the straight
Way. But the Way, on its part, cannot be a way unless there be people
who walk upon it. 17
Thus the statement is fundamentally right that everything is primar-
ily, i.e., qua being, neither good nor bad. However, since existence
is a direct manifestation of the essential Mercy of the Absolute,
everything in that sense must be said to be essentially ‘good’
( tayyib ). Anything whatsoever is good in its existence. Only when
man, from his subjective and relative point of view, begins to like
and dislike things, does the distinction between good and bad come
into being. For Ibn ‘Arabi, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are a sheer matter of
relative viewpoints. He explains this in the following way : 18
Concerning the ‘badness’ of garlic, the Prophet once observed: ‘It is a
plant whose scent I dislike’ . He did not say, ‘I dislike garlic , because
the thing itself is not to be disliked; what is liable to be disliked is only
what appears from the thing.
Thus displeasure arises either because of a habit, namely, because a
thing does not suit one’s nature or purpose, or because of some
regulation in the Law, or because of the thing falling short of the
desired perfection. There can be no other cause than those which I
have just enumerated.
And as the things of the world are divided into categories: good (i.e.,
agreeable) and bad (i.e., disagreeable), the Prophet (Muhammad)
was made to be of such a nature that he liked the good and disliked
the bad.
The Prophet also says in describing the angels that they are annoyed
by the offensive odors, (which the human beings exhale) because of
the natural putrefaction peculiar to the elemental constitution of
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Ontological Mercy
man. Man has been ‘created of clay of black mud wrought into shape’
(XV, 26), so he emits a repulsive odor. The angels dislike it by nature.
The dung-beetle finds repulsive the scent of rose, which, in reality, is
a sweet fragrance. For the dung-beetle, rose does not emit a sweet
smell. Likewise, a man who is like a dung-beetle in his nature and
inner constitution, finds truth repulsive and is pleased with falsehood.
To this refer God’s words: ‘And those who believe in falsehood and
disbelieve in God’ (XXIX, 52). And God describes them as people at
a loss when He says: ‘they it is who are the losers’ (ibid.), meaning
thereby that these are the people who lose themselves. For they do
not discern good from bad, and, therefore, totally lack discernment.
As to the Apostle of God (Muhammad), love was inspired into his
heart for the good concerning everything. And, properly speaking,
everything without exception is (essentially) good.
However, is it at all imaginable that there be in the world (a man of)
such an inner constitution that he would find in everything only the
good and nothing bad? I should say, ‘No, that is impossible.’ Because
we find the (opposition between good and bad) even in the very
Ground from which the world arises, I mean, the Absolute. We know
that the Absolute (as God) likes and dislikes. And the bad is nothing
other than what one dislikes, while the good is nothing other than
what one likes. And the world has been created in the image of the
Absolute (i.e., having likes and dislikes), and man has been created in
the image of these two (i.e., the Absolute and the world).
Thus it is natural that no man should be (of such a) constitution that
he would perceive exclusively one aspect (i.e., either the good or bad
aspect) of everything. But there does not exist a (man of such a)
constitution that he discerns a good element in anything bad, being
well aware that what is bad is bad simply because of (the subjective
impression caused by) the taste, and that it is (essentially) good if
considered apart from the (subjective impression caused by the)
taste. In the case of such a man, the perception of the good may be so
overwhelming as to make him forget completely the perception of
the bad. This is quite possible. But it is impossible to make the bad
disappear completely from the world, i.e., from the realm of Being.
The Mercy of God covers both good and bad. Anything bad consid-
ers itself good, and what is good (for others) looks bad to it. There is
nothing good in the world but that it turns into something bad from a
certain point of view and for a certain constitution, and likewise,
conversely.
Viewed from such a height, even the good and bad in the religious
sense, i.e., ‘obedience’ ( (a‘ah ) and ‘disobedience’ (ma‘$iyah), turn
out ultimately to be two aspects of one and the same thing. Ibn
‘Arabi explains this by the symbolic meaning contained in the story
of Moses throwing down his staff in the presence of Pharaoh . 19
‘Then he threw down his staff (XXVI, 32). The staff (‘ asd ) symbol-
izes something (i.e., the spirit or nature of Pharaoh) with which
/
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Sufism and Taoism
Pharaoh disobeyed (‘asa) Moses in his haughtiness and refused to
respond to the call of Moses. ‘And, lo, it turned into a serpent
manifest’ (ibid.), that is, the staff was changed into an apparent snake
(hayyah). Thus (the Qoranic verse here quoted means that) the
disobedience, which was a bad thing, transformed itself into obedi-
ence, which was a good thing.
In competing with the magicians of the Egyptian court in the pres-
ence of Pharaoh, Moses throws down on the floor the staff in his
hand. The staff - in Arabic, ‘asa - is immediately associated in the
mind of Ibn ‘Arabi with the verb ‘asa (meaning ‘to rebel’ ‘to dis-
obey’) by phonetic association, and the staff becomes a symbol of
‘disobedience’. The staff becomes the symbol of the fact that
Pharaoh disobeyed Moses, and did not respond to the latter’s call.
The staff, thrown down, changes at once into a serpent. The
Arabic word for ‘serpent’ or ‘snake’ , hayyah , arouses in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s
mind, again by phonetic association, the word hayah, i.e., ‘life’.
‘Life’ in this particular context, is the spiritual life resulting from
man’s getting into immediate touch with the depth structure of
Reality. And, for Ibn ‘Arabi, it means ‘obedience’ to God.
Thus the feat enacted by Moses depicts symbolically the naturally
disobedient soul of Pharaoh being transformed into an obedient,
docile soul. Not that there are two different souls: one obedient,
another disobedient. As al-Qashanl remarks , 20 soul itself is ‘one and
single reality’, except that it becomes good or bad according to
contexts. One and the same reality shows two different aspects, and
appears in two different modes.
The staff of Moses per se remains the same, but it appears some-
times as a staff, sometimes as a serpent according to particular
situations, i.e., according to the point of view from which one looks
at it. Likewise, whatever Pharaoh may do, the act itself is neither
good nor bad. The only thing that changes are its properties. The
same act of Pharaoh becomes sometimes obedience, sometimes
disobedience.
All this happens in accordance with God’s words: ‘God will change
their evil deeds into good deeds’ (XXV, 70), that is to say, in so far as
concerns their qualifications (and not the essences themselves of
their deeds). Thus, in this case, different qualifications appeared as
distinctive realities within one single substance. That is to say, one
single substance appeared as a staff and as a snake or, (as the Qoran
says) ‘a serpent manifest.’ As a snake, it swallowed up all the other
snakes, while as a staff, it swallowed up all the staffs. 21
Ibn ‘Arabi develops the same thought from a properly theological
point of view, as the problem of Divine Will ( mashVah ).
All events that occur in this world, all actions that are done, are,
Ontological Mercy
without even a single exception, due to Divine Will. In this sense,
there can be no distinction between good and bad, or right and
wrong. Every phenomenon, as it actually is, is a direct effect of the
Will of God. Every event occurs as it actually does because it is so
willed by God.
This standpoint is totally different from that of the Sacred Law
which approves of this and disapproves of that. When a ‘bad’ man
does something ‘evil’ , his act obviously goes against the Sacred Law,
but, according to Ibn ‘Arabi it never goes against Divine Will. For it
is absolutely impossible that something should occur against the
Will of God. Here is what Ibn ‘Arabi, says about this problem : 22
Every decree which is carried out now in the world (i.e., anything that
actually occurs in the world as a concrete phenomenon) is a decree of
God, even if it violates the particular kind of decree which has been
established under the name of a Sacred Law. For in reality only when
a decree is truly God’s decree, is it actually carried out. Everything
that occurs in the world occurs solely in accordance with what is
decreed by the Will of God, not in accordance with the decree of an
established Sacred Law, although, to be sure, the very establishment
of a Sacred Law is itself due to Divine Will. Besides, precisely
because it is willed by God, establishment of the Sacred Law is
actualized. However, Divine Will in this case concerns only the
establishment of the Law; it does not concern the practice of what is
enjoined by the Law.
Thus the Will has a supreme authority. And this is why Abu Talib
(al-Makki) regarded it as the ‘Throne of the Divine Essence’,
because the Will demands for itself that the decrees should be carried
out.
Such being the case, nothing occurs in this world apart from the Will,
nor is anything removed from the sphere of Being except by the Will.
And whenever the Divine Command 23 is violated in this world by
what is called ‘disobedience’ (or ‘sin’), it is the matter of the ‘ mediate’
Command, not the ‘creational’ Command. Nobody, whatever he
may do, can ever act against God in so far as the Command of the Will
(i.e., the creational Command) is concerned. Disobedience occurs
only in regard to the ‘mediate’ Command.
The Will of God concerns only takwin , i.e., ‘bringing into existence’ ,
or ‘creation’ . Within the sphere of human acts, for instance, the Will
concerns the coming into existence of a certain act. The Will is not
directly concerned with the question as to who happens to be the
individual person through whom the act occurs. All acts occur
necessarily through individual persons. Every individual, in this
sense, is a ‘responsible’ (mukallaf) person, that is, a person who
bears a number of moral responsibilities within the boundaries of
the system of a Sacred Law. And every human act becomes ‘good’
or ‘bad’ through this very process of personal ‘mediation’.
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In reality the Command of the Will is directed exclusively toward the
bringing into existence of an act itself; it is not a matter of concern to
the Will ‘who’ actually manifests the act. So it is absolutely impossible
that the act should not occur. But in regard to the particular locus (in
which it actually occurs), the (same) act is called sometimes ‘dis-
obedience’ to the Divine Command (namely, when the particular
person who does it happens to be prohibited to do it by the Sacred
Law of his community), and sometimes ‘obedience’ (namely, when
the person happens to belong to a community whose Sacred Law
enjoins the act). And (the same act) is followed by blame or praise
accordingly.
The situation being just as we have shown, all creatures are destined
ultimately to reach happiness in spite of the difference in kind that
exists among them. God Himself expresses this fact when He states
that His Mercy covers everything and that the Mercy forestalls
Divine Wrath. ‘Forestall’ means to get ahead of something. Thus, as
soon as a particular person who has already been given a (negative)
judgment by that which (essentially) comes afterward (i.e., Wrath)
overtakes that which goes ahead of it (i.e., Mercy), the latter pro-
nounces a (new) judgment upon him, so that Mercy gets hold of him.
Such a (miraculous) thing can actually occur because there is abso-
lutely nothing that can ever forestall it (i.e., Mercy).
This is what is meant by the dictum: ‘God’s Mercy forestalls His
Wrath’, because of the decisive influence Mercy exercises upon
whatever reaches it, for it stands at the ultimate goal (awaiting
everything), and everything is running toward the goal. Everything
necessarily attains to the ultimate goal. So everything necessarily
obtains Mercy and leaves Wrath . 24
The preceding description of the Mercy clearly suggests that Ibn
‘ Arabi is considering the phenomenon of the universal Mercy from
two different points of view at one time. The basic dictum: ‘the
Mercy of God runs through all beings’ , 25 means ontologically that
everything existent is existent by the Divine act of the bestowal of
existence. The dictum also means that everything is under Divine
Mercy, and that everything, therefore, is essentially blessed and is in
felicity.
Everything which is remembered by Mercy is happy and blessed. But
there is nothing that has not been remembered by Mercy. And
Mercy’s remembering things is exactly the same as its bringing them
into existence. Thus everything existent is affected by Mercy.
Do not, o my friend, lose sight of what I have told you under the
influence of your vision of the people of misery and your belief in the
torments of the Hereafter which are never to be slackened once men
are put into them. Know before everything else that Mercy is primar-
ily exercised in bringing everything into existence, so that even the
torments of Hell themselves have been brought into existence by
Mercy that has been directed toward them . 26
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Ontological Mercy
Then, in the passage which immediately follows what we have just
quoted, Ibn ‘Arab! distinguishes two different kinds of effect pro-
duced by the Mercy: (1) an ontological effect produced directly by
its Essence, and (2) an effect produced in accordance with man’s
asking. This distinction corresponds to what we have already discus-
sed in terms of the distinction between the ‘Mercy of gratuitous gift’
and the ‘Mercy of obligation’. Only he considers it this time from a
somewhat different perspective.
Mercy in its effect has two different aspects. The first concerns an
effect it produces in accordance with essential requirement of itself.
It consists in that Mercy brings into existence every individual
essence (‘ ayn , i.e., archetype). In doing this, it does not pay any
attention to purpose or non-purpose, suitability or non-suitability,
for the object of Mercy is the essence of every existent thing before
the latter actually exists, that is, while it is still in the state of a
permanent archetype.
So (for instance,) Mercy discerns the Absolute as ‘created’ in the
various religions, (even before its actual existence) as one of the
permanent archetypes (i.e., as a potential existent), and spontane-
ously shows Mercy upon it by bringing it into actual existence. This is
the reason why I assert that the Absolute as ‘created’ in the various
religions constitutes the first object of Mercy immediately after the
Mercy has exercised Mercy upon itself by concerning itself with the
existentiation of all existents.
The second kind of effect is that induced by ‘asking’ (on the part of
creatures). But (there are two kinds of ‘asking’). Those who are
veiled (from the truth) ask the Absolute to show Mercy upon them,
each representing the Absolute in (the particular form provided by)
his own religion. The people of ‘unveiling’, on the contrary, ask the
Mercy of God to reside in them. They ask for Mercy in the Name
Allah, saying, "O Allah, show Mercy upon us!’ And (the Absolute, in
response) shows Mercy upon them only by making Mercy reside in
them. And Mercy (thus residing in these sages) produces its positive
effect in them (i.e., they themselves become the possessors of the
Mercy and begin to act as ‘merciful’ ones ). 27
We must try to grasp exactly what is meant by Ibn ‘Arabi in this
important but obscure passage. The first of the two aspects of the
effect of Mercy here described is not difficult to understand,
because it concerns the ontological activity of Mercy which we have
already discussed earlier in terms of the Mercy of the rahman type.
It refers to one of the most fundamental theses of Ibn ‘Arabi, that
beings obtain their existence by the Essence of the Absolute mani-
festing itself in the particular form of each one of them in accord-
ance with the capacity determined in eternity for each thing.
Ibn ‘Arab! here leaves the plane of general theoretical considera-
tions and narrows down his observation to a very particular case;
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namely, the problem of the relation between the believer and the
object of his belief within the boundaries of the traditional religion
of his community. The effect of Mercy, he argues, appears first in
Mercy exercising an ontological (i.e., existentiating) Mercy upon its
own self. Following this, Mercy bestows existence upon the Abso-
lute as ‘created’ in various religions.
It goes without saying that the believers themselves, in so far as
they are ‘beings’, are originally permanent archetypes, and as such
must necessarily be objects of the ontological Mercy. But the
objects of belief of these believers, i.e., their gods, are also originally
permanent archetypes which are included within the archetypes of
the believers. So it is natural that they, too, should be affected by the
ontological Mercy. In other words, the very same activity of the
Mercy, which brings into existence the believers as so many objects
of Mercy, brings into existence also the ‘created’ Absolute within
the believers themselves.
In contrast to this activity of the ontological Mercy, the second
aspect concerns the effect of the Mercy which is produced in accor-
dance with what an individual person asks from his Lord, each being
motivated by a personal purpose. This aspect of Mercy varies in
accordance with the nature of what is asked by individual ‘seekers’ .
Ibn ‘Arab! divides the ‘seekers’ ( talibun ) of Mercy into two
classes: (1) the ‘veiled’ people, and (2) the people of ‘unveiling’.
Each one of the first class implores his Lord saying, ‘Have mercy
upon me!’ ‘Give me this, or give me that!’ This, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s view,
is nothing but a silly act which arises from the ignorance of the truth.
The Mercy of God does not produce any effect except on the basis
of what has been eternally determined in the form of permanent
archetypes. However much they may implore God, the permanent
archetypes of himself and of others can never be altered.
The people of the second class, on the contrary, ask for something
extraordinary. First of all, they do not direct their supplication to
any individual Lord. They address themselves to Allah as the point
of comprehensive unification of all the Names. They cry out, ‘O
Allah, have mercy upon us!’ This should not be taken literally as if
they implored God to show mercy to them in the manner in which a
‘merciful’ man shows mercy to other human beings. What they are
asking for is that God should make them subjectively conscious of
the universal Mercy which is implied in the Name Allah. Their wish
is to go beyond the passive state of being objects of the Mercy
{marhum) and to put themselves in the position of the rahim , i.e.,
one who shows mercy, and thereby have the consciousness of all the
Names being, so to speak, their own attributes.
When this wish is really fulfilled, Mercy begins to show its positive
effect within these people as their own personal attributes. And
Ontological Mercy
each one of them turns from the state of marhum to that of rahim.
Mercy works in this way according to Ibn ‘Arabi because the real
effect of a property begins to appear positively only when the
non-material content ( ma‘na ) of it comes to reside in a particular
locus.
Thus it (i.e., the non-material essence of Mercy residing in a particu-
lar locus) functions as the rahim in the real sense of the word. God
shows Mercy to His servants about whom He is concerned only
through Mercy, and when this Mercy becomes established in them
(as their subjective state), they experience by ‘immediate tasting’ the
positive effect of Mercy as their own property. For he whom Mercy
remembers (in this sense) is himself a subject of Mercy. His state then
(will be more properly expressed by) a name descriptive of an agent
(rather than a name descriptive of the passive state, marhum), that is,
the ‘merciful’ or rahim. 2 *
Such a man, Ibn ‘Arab! says, is conscious within himself of Mercy
being active as his own subjective state. He is no longer an ‘object’
of Mercy, one to whom Mercy is shown; he is rather a ‘subject’ of
Mercy, one who exercises it toward other beings. He is now a man
worthy to be called ‘merciful’. The grave consequence of this per-
sonal transformation through the appropriation of Mercy will be
studied later when we deal with the problem of the Perfect Man.
In what precedes, we have been following Ibn ‘Arab! as he develops
his thought on the Divine Name ‘Merciful’ ( rahman ), and we have
tried to clarify the structure of Mercy (rahmah) which is the concep-
tual core of this Name.
The next problem to consider is: How does Mercy issue forth
from the Absolute? Ibn ‘Arab! explains his view on this problem
using a very bold and colorful image of ‘breathing out’.
It is a matter of common experience that, when we hold our
breath for some time, the air compressed in the chest makes us feel
unbearable pain. And when the utmost limit is reached, and we
cannot hold it any longer, the air that has been held inside bursts out
all at once. It is a natural phenomenon that the breath compressed
in the breast seeks forcibly for an outlet, and finally explodes and
gushes forth with a violent outburst. Just as air bursts forth from the
chest of man, the compressed existence within the depths of
the Absolute, taking the form of Mercy, gushes forth from the
Absolute. This he calls the ‘breath of the Merciful’ ( al-nafas
al-rahmaniy ). 29
The state preceding the bursting forth of the breath of Mercy is
described by Ibn ‘Arab! by an equally expressive word karb. The
word is derived from a root meaning ‘to overload’ or ‘to fill up’ , and
is used to designate the state in which the stomach, for instance, is
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surfeited. It is a state of extreme tension, just short of explosion,
caused by an excessive amount of things accumulated inside.
Because of this surfeit (i.e., in order to relieve itself from the excess of
inner tension) the Absolute breathes out. The breath is attributed to
the Merciful (and called the ‘breath of the Merciful’) because the
(Absolute under the Name of) Merciful shows Mercy by means of
this breath toward the Divine Relations (i.e., the Names) and
responds to their demand that the forms of the world be brought into
existence . 30
The Mercy, as we have seen above, means bestowal of existence. So
the ‘breathing out’ of the breath of the Merciful is a symbolic
expression for the manifestation of Being, or the Divine act of
bringing into existence the things of the world. In the imagery
peculiar to Ibn ‘Arab!, this phenomenon may also be described as
the Divine Names bursting out into the real world of existence. The
Divine Names, in this imagery, are originally in the state of intense
compression within the Absolute. And at the extreme limit of
interior compression, the Names ‘burst out’ from the bosom of the
Absolute. Ibn ‘Arab! depicts in this vividly pictorial way the
ontological process by which the Divine Names become actualized
in the forms of the world. This is the birth of the world as the whole
of outwardly existent beings. The process itself is explained in more
plain terms by Bali Efendi in the following manner . 31
The Names, previous to their existence in the outer world, exist
hidden in the Essence of the Absolute, all of them seeking an outlet
toward the world of external existence. The state is comparable to the
case in which a man holds his breath within himself. The breath, held
within, seeks an outlet toward the outside, and this causes in the man
a painful sensation of extreme compression. Only when he breathes
out does this compression cease . . . Just as the man is tormented by
the compression if he does not breathe out, so the Absolute would
feel the pain of compression if it did not bring into existence the world
in response to the demand of the Names.
To this Bali Efendi adds the remark that this phenomenon of Divine
‘breathing’ ( tanaffus ) is the same as God’s uttering the word ‘Be!’
(kun) to the world. ‘He breathed out’ means ‘He sent out what was
in His Interior to the Exterior by means of the word Be. Thus He
Himself, after having been in the Interior, has come to exist in the
Exterior 5 .
What is important to observe is that, in Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view,
this ‘breathing out’ of Mercy is not something that took place, once
for all, sometime in the past. On the contrary, the process of the
‘compressed breath’, i.e., the Names contained in the Absolute,
bursting out in virtue of its own pressure toward the outside, is going
Ontological Mercy
on continuously without intermission. And it is this continuous
process that maintains the present world in subsistence. To use the
Aristotelian terminology, things are constantly turning from the
state of potentiality to that of actuality. It is a constant and everlast-
ing process of a universal overflow of the Being of the Absolute into
Being of the creatures. Thus the real and absolute Being ( al-wujud
al-haqiqiy) goes on transforming itself without a moment’s rest into
the relative Being {al-wujud al-idafiy). And this ontological trans-
formation, which Ibn ‘Arab! sometimes calls ‘emanation’ ( fayd ), is,
in his view, a natural and necessary movement of Being caused by
the inner pressure of the ontological potentiality kept within the
Absolute. Without this constant transformation, i.e., ‘breathing
out’, the Being would be compressed within beyond its extreme
limit, and the Essence of the Absolute would be in structurally the
same situation as when we suffer an unbearable pain by holding our
breath.
The phenomenon of the ‘breath of the Merciful’ has been inter-
preted in the preceding pages in terms of the Divine Names. It may
also be understood in terms of the Lordship ( rububiyah ), for, as we
have seen, ‘Lord’ is a particularized form of the Absolute on the
level of the Divine Names. The Absolute in its absoluteness is
completely ‘independent’; it does not need anything, it does not
seek anything outside itself. But the Absolute qua Lord needs
objects of its Lordship; it does not subsist without marbub.
But marbub (‘one who is lorded over’) is nothing other than the
world in existence. Thus the Lord must bring into existence the
things of the world. The same thing can be expressed in religious
terms by saying that to the Absolute qua Lord essentially belongs
solicitude for his servants.
In the plane of Being where it is split into various relations opposed to
each other , 32 God describes Himself in a (famous) Tradition as
having ‘solicitude {shafaqah) for His servants’.
The very first thing which (the Absolute) breathed out by its ‘breath
of Mercy’ was Lordship. And this was actualized by the bringing into
existence of the world, because the world was what was essentially
required by Lordship and all (the other) Divine Names. From this
point of view it is evident that Mercy covers everything . 33
Thus the ‘breath of the Merciful’ is the principle of Being or the
ground of Being extending over both the world of material things
and the world of spiritual beings. In this ontological capacity, the
‘breath of the Merciful’ is regarded by Ibn ‘Arab! as Nature
{( abVah ).
Viewed from this perspective, the ‘breath’ is a Substance (jawhar ,
in the Aristotelian sense of Prime Matter) in which all the forms of
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Sufism and Taoism
Being, both material and spiritual, are manifested. In this sense,
Nature necessarily precedes any form which becomes manifest in it.
Nature precedes all that are born out of it with definite forms. But in
reality, Nature is no other than the ‘breath of the Merciful’. All the
forms of the world become manifest in the latter, ranging from the
highest forms to the lowest, in virtue of the spreading of the ‘breath’
through the material substance in the world of physical bodies in
particular. The ‘breath’ spreads also through the Being of the spirits
of a luminous nature and the attributes. But that is another kind of
the spreading of the ‘breath ’. 34
According to this passage, the Divine ‘breath’ pervades the material
substance, i.e., the Prime Matter ( hayiila ), which is receptive of the
physical forms, and it brings into existence the physical bodies in
the material world. The ‘breath’ pervades, at the same time, the
spiritual substances bringing into existence the spirits of the Light-
nature, i.e., immaterial things by spreading through the spiritual
Nature which is another kind of Prime Matter. It also spreads
through the accidental Nature and thereby brings into being various
accidents which exist as inherent attributes of substances.
To consider bestowal of existence by the Absolute as the ‘breath’
of the Merciful is, for Ibn ‘Arab!, by no means a mere metaphor
which has come to his mind haphazardly. It is an essential metaphor.
The ontological phenomenon, in his view, coincides in every im-
portant respect with the physiological phenomenon of breathing.
All the basic attributes which characterize the human act of breath-
ing apply analogically to the ‘breath’ of God. We shall in what
follows consider this point, basing ourselves on Ibn ‘Arabfs own
description . 35
The Absolute attributes to itself the ‘breath of the Merciful’. Now
whenever anything is qualified by an attribute, all the qualities that
naturally follow that attribute must necessarily be attributed to that
thing. (In our particular case), you know well what qualities naturally
follow the'attribute of breathing in an animal that breathes . 36 This is
why the Divine breath receives the forms of the world. Thus the
Divine breath acts as the Prime Matter in relation to the forms of the
world. And (the Divine breath in this capacity) is precisely what we
call Nature.
Accordingly, the four elements, everything that has been generated
from the elements, the higher spiritual beings, and the spirits of
seven Heavens, all these are found to be ‘forms’ of Nature . 37
Thus the four elements are forms (i.e., specific determinations) of
Nature. And those beings above the elements, namely, the ‘higher
spirits’ that are (ranged in a hierarchical order down to a level just)
above the seven Heavens - they are forms of Nature. And those
Ontological Mercy
being born of the elements are also forms of Nature. (By ‘those that
are born of the elements’) I mean the spheres of the seven Heavens
and the spirits (governing their movements) ; they are of an elemental
nature, because they are made of, and born of, the vapor 38 of the
elements.
Each one of the angels born in any of the seven Heavens is likewise of
the elements. Thus all the heavenly angels are elemental. Those
(angels) above the heavenly spheres (are not elemental, but they
nonetheless) belong to Nature. And this is the reason why God
described the angels as mutually rivaling. This may be explained by
the fact that Nature itself tends by essence to be split into opposed
poles. And the essential opposition among the Divine Names, i.e.,
the Divine Relations, has been caused only by the ‘breath of the
Merciful’ . Do you not see how even in the Divine Essence which is in
itself completely free from such a property (i.e., polarization) there
appears (at the level of the Divine Names) the definite property of
essential independence ? 39 Thus the world has been produced in the
image of its creator which is (not the Essence but) the ‘breath of the
Merciful ’ 40 . . . He 41 who wants to know (the nature of) the Divine
breath must try to know the world, for (as the Prophet said) ‘he who
knows himself knows his Lord’ who manifests Himself in him. That is
to say, the world makes its appearance in the ‘breath of the Merciful’
by which God breathes out from the Divine Names the inner com-
pression that has been caused by the non-manifestation of their
effects. (God relieves the Names of the pain of their inner compres-
sion by letting them manifest their effects.) At the same time, God
thereby shows Mercy toward Himself, that is, by what He brings into
existence in the ‘breath ’. 42 Thus the first effect shown by the Divine
‘breath’ appears in God Himself (by the manifestation of His
Names). Then, following that stage, the process goes on stage by
stage by the ‘breathing out’ of all the Divine Names until it reaches
the last stage of Being (i.e., the world).
Ibn ‘Arabi concludes with a short poem, the first verse of which
runs: ‘Thus everything is contained in the bosom of the Breath, just
as the bright light of day is in the very darkness before dawn’. The
whole world is still completely shrouded in darkness. But it is not
the darkness of midnight, for the light of dawn is already potentially
there, ready to appear at any moment. Commenting on this verse,
Affifi writes : 43 The ‘breath’ symbolizes the material substance ( al -
jawhar al-hayularii) in which the forms of all beings become mani-
fested. In itself, it is utter darkness, i.e., utterly unknowable, but
seen from the viewpoint of manifestation, all the forms of the
universe are faintly observable in the midst of the darkness.
Mercy ( rahmah ) is unquestionably one of the key-concepts which
characterize in a definite way the structure of Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought.
Probably a little less important than Mercy, but very close to it in
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content is another key-concept, Love (mahabbah). The Divine
Love is, after all, the same thing as Mercy, but looked at from a
somewhat different angle. It is, theologically speaking, the funda-
mental motive of the creation of the world by God, and in terms of
the ontology peculiar to Ibn ‘Arab!, it is the driving force of the
self-manifestation of the Absolute. Before we close the present
chapter, we shall analyze this concept and discuss the place it
occupies in the philosophical system of Ibn ‘Arabl.
There is a particular reason why the concept of Love plays such an
important role in Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought. Its importance is due to the
existence of an explicit statement put in the mouth of God Himself
in a famous Tradition which may be considered the starting-point,
the basis, and the very gist of his philosophy: ‘I was a hidden
treasure, and I desired {ahbabtu, ‘loved’) to be known. Accordingly
I created the creatures and thereby made Myself known to them.
Any they did come to know Me’.
As this Tradition tells us with utmost clarity, Love ( hubb ) is the
principle which moved the Absolute toward the creation of the
world. It is, in this sense, the ‘secret of creation’ (sirr al-khalq ) or
‘cause of creation’ {‘illah al-khalq). If we are to express the thought
in terms more characteristic of Ibn ‘ Arabi, we might say that Love is
something because of which the Absolute steps out of the state of
abysmal Darkness and begins to manifest itself in the forms of all
beings.
For Ibn ‘Arabi, speaking more generally, ‘love’ is the principle of
all movement ( harakah ). All movements that actually occur in the
world (e.g., when a man does something) are due to the driving
force of ‘love’. In explaining events that take place in and around
ourselves, our attention tends to be drawn toward various causes 44
other than ‘love’. We usually say, for example, that the ‘cause’ of
such-and-such an action we do is such-and-such a thing (e.g., fear,
anger, joy, etc.). In doing so, we are overlooking the real cause, i.e.,
the most basic cause of all causes. In the eyes of those who know the
truth, all phenomena of movement, on all levels of Being, are
caused by ‘love’. If it were not for the activity of ‘love’, everything
would remain in the state of eternal rest, i.e., non-movement. And
non-movement ( sukun ) means nothing other than non-existence
(‘ adam ). 45
From this point of view, the fact that the world has come out of
the state of non-existence into the state of existence is a grand-scale
ontological ‘ movement’ , and this movement has been caused by the
Divine Love. Ibn ‘Arabi expresses this conception in the following
way : 46
The most basic and primary movement was the movement of the
world from the state of non-existence (i.e., the archetypal state), in
Ontological Mercy
137
which it had been reposing, into the state of existence. This is the
reason why it is said that the reality of existence is a movement from
the state of repose. And the movement which is coming into exist-
ence of the world is a movement of Love. This is clearly indicated by
the Apostle when he says (conveying God’s own words): ‘I was a
hidden treasure, and I loved to be known’. If it were not for this love,
the world would never have appeared in this concrete existence. In
this sense, the movement of the world toward existence was a move-
ment of Love which brought it into existence. . . .
And the world, on its part, loves to witness itself in the existence as it
used to witness itself in the state of archetypal repose. Thus, from
whichever side one considers it, the movement of the world from the
state of the archetypal non-existence toward concrete existence was a
movement of Love, both from the side of the Absolute and from the
side of the world itself.
And all this is ultimately due to the Love of the Absolute for being
‘perfect’ in both its Knowledge and Existence. If the Absolute
remained in isolation in its own original absoluteness, neither its
Knowledge nor its Existence would have attained perfection. Ibn
‘Arabi goes on to say : 47
Perfection ( kamal ) is loved for its own sake. But as for God’s Know-
ledge of Himself, in so far as He was completely independent of the
whole world (i.e., in so far as He remained in isolation before the
creation of the world), it was there (from the beginning in absolute
perfection). The degree of the Knowledge was to be made perfect
only by a temporal Knowledge (‘ilm hadithy* which would concern
the concrete individual objects of the world once these would be
brought into existence. Thus the form of Perfection is realized (in
God) by the two kinds of Knowledge, temporal and eternal, and the
degree of His Knowledge is brought to perfection through these two
aspects. Correspondingly, the degrees of Being are also perfected (by
the creation of the world). For Being is of two kinds: eternal ( a parte
ante) and non-eternal, that is temporal. The ‘eternal’ ( azaliy ) Exis-
tence is the Existence of the Absolute for itself, while the ‘non-
eternal’ is the Existence of the Absolute in the forms of the
archetypal world. This latter kind of Being is called ‘becoming’
(huduth) because the Absolute in it (splits itself into multiplicity and)
appears to one another. The Absolute in this way appears to itself in
the forms of the world. And this brings Being to perfection.
And so Ibn ‘Arab! comes to a conclusion in which he connects the
concept of Love with that of the breath of Mercy.
Thus you should understand that the movement of the world is born
of Love for perfection.
Do you not see how the Absolute breathed out and relieved the
Divine Names of (the pain of compression) which they had been
feeling because of the non-appearance of their effects, in an entity
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called the world? This happened because the Absolute loves relaxa-
tion ( rahah ). And relaxation was only to be obtained through the
existence of the forms high and low. Thus it is patent that movement
is caused by Love, and that there can be no movement in the world
but that it is motivated by Love.
Notes
1. Fus., p. 222/177.
2. p. 222.
3. Fus., p. 222/177.
4. p. 222.
5. Fu<>., PP- 222-223/177.
6. p. 223.
7. Fus., p. 223/177.
8. Fus., P- 224/177
9. Fus -, P- 227/180.
10. p. 227
11. Accordingly, rahmah al-imtinan is sometimes called al-rahmah al-rahmaniyah,
and rahmah al-wujiib is called al-rahmah al-rahimiyah.
12. Fus., p. 191/151.
13. Fus., p. 192/152.
14. Fus ., p- 193/153.
15. Fus., PP- 123-124/106.
16. Why does Ibn ‘Arabi specifically emphasize that everything other than the
Absolute is ‘possessed of a spirit’ ( dhii ruh)2 Bali Efendi thinks (p. 124) that it is
because, according to the Qoran, everything is ‘praising God’, and the act of ‘prais-
ing comes only from a spirit. We may, I think, also understand the phrase ‘possessed
of a spirit in the sense of ‘possessed of life’. As we shall see in the next chapter,
everything, in Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view, is ‘alive’.
17. Fus., p. 124/106.
18. Fus., pp. 276-278/221.
19. Fus., pp. 261-262/210.
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Ontological Mercy
20. p. 261.
21. Fus., P- 262/210.
22. Fus., pp- 206-207/165.
23. ‘Command’ ( amr ) is different from the Will ( mashi’ah ). The latter, as we have
seen, is absolute, and its decree irrevocable. Disobedience is out of question here.
The Command is of two kinds: (1) mediate (bi-al-wasi(ah) and (2) creational
(takwiniy). The second concerns the coming into existence of anything, and is
identical with the Will. The first, however, is identical with the Sacred Law ( shar ' ),
and may be disobeyed.
24. Fus., PP- 207-208/165-166.
25. Rahmah Allah fi al-akwan sariyah, Fus., P- 225/177.
26. Fus., P- 225/178.
27. ibid.
28. Fus., p. 226/178.
29. Fus., P- 273/219.
30. Fus., p- 133/112.
31. p. 133.
32. The Divine Names, as we already know, are the relations which the Absolute
bears toward the things of the world. And on this level, there occur in the Absolute
oppositions in accordance with the Names, such as ‘Inward’ - ‘Outward’, ‘First’ -
‘Last’, etc.
33. Fus., p- 144/119.
34. Fus., P- 273/219. In the case of ‘spirits’ or non-material beings, the ‘breath’
spreads through ‘spiritual matter’ ( hayiil'a riihaniyah ), and in the case of ‘accidents’
through ‘accidental matter’.
35. Fus -, P- 182/143-144.
36. Man breathes, for example, and his breath ‘receives’ sounds and words, which
are linguistic ‘forms' - al-Qashani, p. 182.
37. Fus., PP- 182-183/mrmf
38. ‘Vapor’ (dukhan), or ‘steam’, to be compared with the ch’i of the ancient
Chinese. Of the ‘vapor’ of the elements, that which is ‘subtle’ becomes the governing
spirits of the seven Heavens, whereas that which is ‘coarse’ becomes the seven
Heavens themselves.
39. The Essence itself has nothing to do with the appearance of the world. But as
soon as it comes down to the level of Names it becomes ‘independent’ . And as soon as
it becomes ‘independent’ it becomes opposed to ‘dependent’, thus causing a primary
polarization within the Absolute itself.
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Sufism and Taoism
40. The world, thus produced, necessarily reflects the nature of its immediate
creator, the ‘breath of the Merciful’. And since the ‘breath of the Merciful’ requires
polarizations because of the self-polarizing nature of the Divine Names, the world
also is split into oppositions.
41. Fus„ p. 185/145.
42. ‘God shows Mercy toward Himself’ because the Divine Names are ultimately no
other than God Himself.
43. Fus., Com., pp. 197-198.
44. i.e., the so-called ‘proximate causes’ ( asbab qaribah).
45. Fus„ pp. 255-256/203.
46. Fus„ p. 256/203.
47. Fu$., p. 256/204.
48. Note that Ibn ‘ Arabi recognizes in God the temporally produced Knowledge in
addition to the ‘eternal’ ( qadim ) Knowledge. He thereby stands definitely against the
majority of the theologians.
X The Water of Life
In the preceding chapter we have seen that the Mercy of God
pervades all beings on all levels of Being. We know also that this is
another way of saying that the Being of the Absolute pervades all
beings which are at all entitled to be described as ‘existent’ , and that
the Form of the Absolute runs through the entire world of Being.
This thesis, in this general form, is the same as that which was
discussed in Chapter IV under the key-word tashbih. In the present
chapter the same general problem will be reconsidered from a
particular point of view.
The key-word to be considered as the starting-point of discussion in
this particular context is latif, meaning roughly ‘subtle’, ‘thin’ and
‘delicate’. Lap/stands opposite to kathif. This latter word connotes
the quality of things ‘thick’, ‘dense’ and ‘coarse’ , that is, those things
that are characterized by dense materiality. As the semantic oppo-
site of this, /aft/means the quality of things, the materiality of which
is in the extreme degree of rarefaction, and which, therefore, are
capable of permeating the substances of other things, diffusing
themselves in the latter and freely mixing with them. The fact that
this word, lafif, is one of the Divine Names is, for Ibn ‘Arabi,
extremely significant.
The Name lafif or ‘Subtle’ with this particular connotation rep-
resents the Absolute as a Substance ( jawhar ) which, immaterial and
invisible, permeates and pervades the entire world of Being just as a
color permeates substances. This Substance which is infinitely vari-
able runs through everything and constitutes its reality. All indi-
vidual things are called by their own particular names and are
thereby distinguished one from the other as something ‘different’,
but these differences are merely accidental. Seen from the view-
point of the invisible Substance running through the whole world,
all things are ultimately one and the same. Let us listen to Ibn ‘ Arabi
himself as he explains this point in his peculiar way . 1
(God) says of Himself: ‘Verily God is la(if (XXXI, 16). It is indeed
the effect of His lafafah (i.e.. His being la(if, in the above explained
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Sufism and Taoism
The Water of Life
143
sense of non-material flexibility) and His lu(f(i.e., His being la(if in
the sense of graciousness ) 2 that He is (immanent) in every particular
thing which is determined as such-and-such by a particular name, as
the inner reality of that particular thing. He is immanent in every
particular thing in such a way that He is, in each case, referred to by
the conventional and customary meaning of the particular name of
that thing. Thus, we say (usually), ‘This is Heaven’ , ‘This is the earth’ ,
‘This is a tree’, ‘This is an animal’, ‘This is a king’, ‘This is food’ etc.
But the essence itself that exists in every one of these things is simply
one.
The Ash’arites uphold a similar view when they assert that the world
in its entirety is homogeneous in its Substance, because the world as a
whole is one single Substance. This corresponds exactly to my thesis
that the essence is one. The Ash‘arites go on to say that the world (in
spite of the homogeneousness) differentiates itself (into different
things) through accidents. This also is identical with my thesis that
(the one single Essence) differentiates itself and becomes multiple
through forms and relations so that (the things) become distinguish-
able from one another. Thus in both of these theories, this is not that
(i.e., the particular things are different from one another) in regard to
the ‘form’ ($urah), or ‘accident’ (‘ arad ), or ‘natural disposition’
(mizaj) - you may call this (differentiating principle) by whatever
name you like - but, on the other hand, this is the same as that in
regard to their ‘substance’. And this is why the ‘substance’ itself (as
‘ matter’) must be explicitly mentioned in the definition of every thing
(having a particular) ‘form’ or ‘natural disposition’.
However (there is also a fundamental difference between my posi-
tion and the Ash‘arites; namely), I assert that (the Substance here in
question) is nothing other than the ‘Absolute’, while the (Ash'arite)
theologians imagine that what is called Substance, although it is a
‘reality’ , is not the same absolute Reality as understood by the people
who (uphold the theory of) ‘unveiling’ and ‘self-manifestation’.
But this (i.e., what I teach) is the profound meaning of God’s being
la(if.
It is remarkable that in this passage Ibn ‘ArabI recognizes to a
certain degree an identity between his thesis and the Ash‘arite
ontology. The theologians of this school take the position that the
world is essentially one single Substance and all the differences
between individual things are due to accidental attributes. How-
ever, Ibn ‘Arabi does not forget to emphasize the existence of a
basic difference between the two schools. As al-Qashanl says, ‘the
Ash‘arites, although they assert the unity of the Substance in all
the forms of the world, assert also the essential duality, namely,
that the essence of the Substance pervading the world is different
from the Absolute’. 3
The Qoran, immediately after stating that ‘God is latif, declares
that ‘ God is khabir ’ , that is, God has information about everything.
This, too, has a very special significance for Ibn ‘Arabi. If the latif is
a reference to the relation of the Absolute with the external things
existing in the world, the khabir refers to the relation of the Abso-
lute with the ‘interior’ i.e., consciousness, of all those beings that
possess consciousness. The Absolute, in other words, not only
pervades all things that exist outwardly in the world, but runs
through the interior of all beings possessed of consciousness and
constitutes the inner reality of the activity of consciousness.
The Absolute is Omniscient, and His Knowledge is eternal. So, in
this sense, all without exception are known to the Absolute from
eternity. But in addition to this kind of eternal Knowledge, the
Absolute also penetrates into the interior of each one of the beings
endowed with consciousness and knows things through the organs
of cognition peculiar to those things. If one looks at the matter from
the opposite, i.e., human, side, one will find that all those things that
man thinks he sees or hears are in reality things that the Absolute
residing in his interior sees and hears through his sense organs.
This latter kind of Knowledge is called by Ibn ‘ Arabi - in contrast
to the ‘absolute’ Knowledge (77m mutlaq) - the ‘experiential’
Knowledge (77m dhawqiy or 7/m ‘an ikhtibar ). According to him,
the Qoranic verse: ‘Surely We will try you in order to know’
(XL VII, 31) refers precisely to this kind of Knowledge. Otherwise,
it would be completely meaningless for God to say ‘in order to
know’, because God knows (by the ‘absolute’ Knowledge) every-
thing from the beginning. The verse is meaningful because it con-
cerns the ‘experiential’ Knowledge.
It is characteristic of the ‘experiential’ Knowledge, which is evi-
dently a temporal phenomenon (hadith), that it necessarily requires
an organ of cognition through which it is obtained. Since, however,
God has no organs, the cognition is operated through the organs of
individual beings, 4 although, as we know by the principle of latafah,
the things that outwardly appear as human organs are nothing other
than various phenomenal forms assumed by the Absolute itself.
God (in the Qoran) qualifies Himself by the word khabir, that is, one
who knows something by personal experience. This applies to the
Qoranic verse: ‘Surely We will try these people in order to know’.
The words ‘to know’ here refer to the kind of Knowledge obtainable
through personal experience. Thus God, despite the fact that He
(eternally) knows everything as it really is, describes Himself as
‘obtaining Knowledge’ (in an non-absolute way) . . . And he distin-
guishes thereby between ‘experiential’ Knowledge and ‘absolute’
Knowledge.
The ‘experiential’ Knowledge is conditioned by the faculties of cogni-
tion. God affirms this by saying of Himself that He is the very
cognitive faculties of man. Thus He says (in a Tradition), ‘I am his
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Sufism and Taoism
hearing’, hearing being one of the faculties of man, ‘and his sight’,
sight, being another of man’s faculties, ‘and his tongue’, tongue
being a bodily member of man, ‘and his feet and hands’. And we
see, He mentions in this explanation not only faculties of man, but
even goes to the length of mentioning bodily members (and identifies
Himself with them). And since man is after all no other than these
members and faculties, the inner reality itself of that which is called
man is (according to this Tradition) the Absolute. This, however, is
not to say that the ‘servant’ (i.e., man) is the ‘master’ (i.e., God ). 5
All this is due to the fact that the relations in themselves are essen-
tially distinguishable from each other, but the (Essence) to which
they are attributed is not distinguishable (i.e., divisible). There is only
one single Essence in all the relations. And that single Essence is
possessed of various different relations and attributes . 6
The Absolute, in this sense, pervades and runs through all. The
Absolute is in all beings of the world, according to what is required
by the reality (i.e., the eternal ‘preparedness’) of each thing. If it
were not for this permeation of the Form of the Absolute through
the things, the world would have no existence . 7 For, as al-Qashani
says , 8 ‘The fundamental ground of the possible things is non-
existence. And existence is the Form of God. So if He did not
appear in His Form, which is existence qua existence, the whole
world would remain in pure non-existence’.
All beings in the state of ontological possibility absolutely require
the permeation of Existence in order to leave the original state of
non-existence and to come into the state of existence. This state of
affairs is considered by Ibn ‘ Arabi analogous to the notion that any
attribute or quality shown by a concrete particular thing cannot
exist in actu except as an individualization of a Universal . 9 Inciden-
tally, there is in Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought-pattern a conspicuous ten-
dency toward Platonizing, although we surely cannot call him
offhand a Platonist. The present case is an example illustrating this
phase of his thought. The following remark by al-Qashani makes
this point very explicit . 10
(Ibn ‘Arabi here) compares the essential dependence of the existence
of the world on the ‘form’ (i.e., the essential reality) of the Existence
of God to the dependence of particular properties on universal
realities, like ‘life’ in itself and ‘knowledge’ in itself.
The existence, for example, of ‘knowledge’ in a particular person,
Zayd, is dependent on the universal‘knowledge’ per se. If it were not
for the latter, there would be no ‘knower’ in the world, and the
property of ‘being a knower’ would rightly be attributed to nobody.
In exactly the same manner, every determinate individual existent is
dependent on the Existence of the Absolute, Existence being the
Absolute’s ‘Face’ or Form. Apart from the Existence of the Abso-
lute, nothing would be existent, nor would existence be predicated of
anything.
The Water of Life
145
Since, in this way, nothing can be called an ‘existent’ ( mawjud ),
except when it is pervaded by the Form of the Absolute, all the
existents essentially need the Absolute. This need resides deep in
the very core of every existent. It is not one of those ordinary cases
in which something needs externally something else. This inner
essential dependence is called by Ibn ‘Arabi iftiqar 11 (lit. ‘poverty’,
i.e., ‘essential need’).
But the Absolute, on its part, cannot be actualized on the level of
the Names and Attributes without the world. The Absolute, in this
sense, needs the world. And thus the relation of iftiqar is reciprocal;
the iftiqar of the world to the Absolute is in its existence, and the
iftiqar of the Absolute to the world concerns the ‘appearance’ or
self- manifestation of the former. This is expressed by Ibn ‘Arab! in
verse : 12
We (i.e., the world) give Him that by which He appears in us, while
He gives us (the existence by which we come into outward appear-
ance). Thus the whole matter (i.e., Being) is divided into two,
namely, our (giving) Him (appearance) and His (giving us existence.)
Ibn ‘Arabi describes this particular relation that obtains between
the Absolute and the creaturely world by a bold and vividly evoca-
tive image of Food ( ghidha ’) which he ascribes to Sahl al-Tustari.
As al-Qashani says : 13
The Absolute is the ‘food’ of the creatures in regard to existence,
because the creatures exist, subsist, and are kept alive by the Abso-
lute just in the same way as food keeps the man existent and alive who
eats it and gets nourishment out of it. . . .
The Absolute, on its part, eats, and is nourished by, the properties of
the phenomenal world and the forms of the creatures ... in the sense
that by virtue of the latter alone do the Names, Attributes, Properties
and Relations make their actual appearance in the Absolute.
The Names and attributes would not have existence if there were no
world, no creatures. The creatures ‘nourish’ the Absolute as its ‘food’ by
making manifest all the perfections of the Names and Attributes.
You are God’s food through (your) particular properties. But He is
also your food through the existence (which He confers upon you). In
this respect He fulfils exactly the same function (toward you) as you
do (toward Him). Thus the Command comes from Him to you, but it
also goes from you to Him . 14
Certainly, you are called mukallaf in the passive form (i.e., you are in
this world a morally responsible person who is ‘charged’ with the
responsibilities imposed upon you by the Sacred Law) and yet God
has ‘charged’ you only with what you yourself asked Him, saying
‘charge me (with such-and-such)!’, through your own state (i.e.,
permanent archetype) and through what you really are . 15
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Sufism and Taoism
The thesis that the Absolute qua Existence is the food and nourish-
ment of all the creatures is relatively easy to understand even for
common-sense. But less easily acceptable is the reverse of this
thesis; namely, that the creatures are the food of the Absolute.
Nourishing things nourish those who assimilate them. As nourish-
ment penetrates the body of the living being in such a way that finally
there does not remain a single part that has not been pervaded by it,
so does the food go into all the parts of one who has assimilated it.
The Absolute, however, has no parts. So there is no other way than
the ‘food’ penetrating all the ontological stations ( maqamat ) of God
which are usually called the Names. And the Divine Essence
becomes actually manifest by means of those stations (when the
latter become penetrated by the ‘food ’). 16
Food cannot act as food, that is, cannot nourish the body unless it
penetrates all the parts of the body and is completely assimilated by
the bodily organism. So the condition is that the body has parts. But
the Absolute has no part, if we understand the word ‘part’ in a
material sense. However, in a spiritual sense, the Absolute does
have ‘parts’. The spiritual ‘parts’ of the Absolute are the Names.
This conception has a grave implication, for it affirms that the
Absolute on the level of the Names is thoroughly penetrated by the
creatures, and that only by this penetration do all the possibilities
contained in the Absolute come into concrete existence.
Thus we see that the tajalli or Divine self-manifestation is not at
all a unilateral phenomenon of the Absolute permeating everything
in the world and making itself manifest in the forms of the world.
The tajalli involves, at the same time, the permeation of the Abso-
lute by the things of the world. Since, however, it is absurd even to
imagine the things of the world qua substances penetrating the
Absolute in such a way that they be assimilated by the latter, we
must necessarily understand the process as something purely non-
substantial. And the same is true of the other side of the process, I
mean, the penetration of the world by the Absolute and the self-
manifestation of the Absolute in the things of the world. The
interpenetration of the two which takes place in the process of tajalli
is not something that occurs between the Absolute as an Entity and
things as entities. It is a phenomenon of pure Act on both sides. This
point, I think, is of paramount importance for a right understanding
of Ibn ‘Arabi’s conception of tajalli, for, unless we understand it in
this way, we fall into a most coarse kind of materialism.
We shall bring this section to an end by quoting with running
commentary a few verses in which Ibn ‘ ArabI describes this process
of reciprocal penetration : 17
‘Thus we are to Him, as we are to ourselves. This has been proved by
our proofs’. (Thus we, the world, are ‘food’ for God because it is we
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The Water of Life
who sustain Him in concrete existence, as we are ‘food’ to ourselves,
i.e., we sustain ourselves in existence by being ourselves).
‘ He has no Being except my Being. And we owe Him our existence as
we subsist by ourself’. (I, the world, am the only thing by which He
manifests Himself in the world of Being. We, the world, exist only in
the capacity of a locus for His self-manifestation, but, on the other
hand, we are independent beings existing by ourselves as determi-
nate things).
‘Thus I have two faces, He and I. But He does not have / through
(my) /’. (I, as a concrete individual being, am possessed of two faces
opposed to each other. One of them is the Absolute qua my inmost
essence, i.e., my He-ness. The other face is turned toward the world,
and is my outer I-ness by which I am a creature different from the
Absolute. Thus every creature obtains through the Absolute both
He-ness and I-ness, while the Absolute does not obtain I-ness from
the world, because the I-ness of any individual creature does not
constitute by itself the I of the Absolute).
‘ But He finds in me a locus in which to manifest Himself, and we are
to Him like a vessel’. (By manifesting Himself in my I-ness, He
establishes His I-ness in Himself.)
With these preliminary remarks, we turn now to the proper subject
of the present chapter, the permeation of the entire world by Divine
Life.
As we have seen, ‘existence’ ( wujud ), in the world-view of Ibn
‘ArabI, is primarily and essentially the Absolute itself in its dynamic
aspect, i.e., as Actus. ‘Existence’ here does not simply mean that
things are just there. The concept of ‘existence’ as the Absolute qua
Actus is given special emphasis by Ibn ‘ArabI when he identifies it
with Life.
To say that the Absolute pervades and permeates all beings is to
say that Divine Life pervades and permeates the world of Being in
its entirety. The whole universe is pulsating with an eternal cosmic
Life. But this pulsation is not perceptible to the majority of men.
For them, only a small portion of the world, is alive, i.e., only some
of the beings are ‘animals’ or living beings. In the eyes of those who
see the truth, on the contrary, everything in the world is an ‘animal’
(hay a wan).
There is nothing in the world but living beings, except that this fact is
concealed in the present world from the perception of some men,
while it becomes apparent to all men without exception in the
Hereafter. This because the Hereafter is the abode of Life . 18
Existence-Life pervades all and flows through all. The Existence-
aspect of this fact is easy to see for everybody because everybody
understands without any difficulty that all ‘things’ are existent. But
the Life-aspect is not so easily perceivable. This is the reason why
i
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the majority of people do not see that everything in the world is
alive. To see this, the special experience of ‘unveiling’ ( kashf ) is
necessary.
The Absolute in its self-manifestation does not, as we have
already observed, possess uniformity; on the contrary, the self-
manifestation is infinitely variable and multiple according to the loci
of manifestation. Thus, although it is true that Existence or Life
pervades all, it does not pervade all uniformly and homogeneously.
The modes of this pervasion vary from case to case according to the
degree of purity ($afa’) and turbidity ( kudurah ). The Philosophers
understand the differences thus produced in terms of the degree of
the right proportion (i‘ tidal) in the mixture of the ‘elements’
(‘ anasir ). 19 In those cases, they maintain, in which the elemental
mixture is actualized in a well-proportioned form, the result is the
birth of animals. And when the mixture occurs in such a way that the
right proportion of the elements is no longer maintained, we get
plants. And if the mixture is further away from the right proportion,
we get minerals or ‘inanimate’ things.
From the viewpoint of Ibn ‘ Arab! such a theory is characteristic of
those who are blind to the basic fact that Divine Life is manifested in
the things of the world in various degrees of ‘purity’ and ‘turbidity’.
Ordinary people will see the real fact only in the Hereafter when the
‘veil’ over their sight will be removed. But the people of ‘unveiling’
know already in the present world that everything is alive with the
all-pervading Life of the Absolute.
For Ibn ‘Arab!, the most appropriate symbol of Life is afforded by
‘water’ . Water is the ground of all natural elements, and it flows and
penetrates into even the narrowest corners of the world. ‘The secret
of Life has diffused into water’ . 20 And everything in existence has a
watery element in its very constitution, because water is the most
basic of all elements. Everything is alive because of the ‘water’ it
contains. And the ‘watery’ element contained in all things in varying
degrees corresponds to the He-ness of the Absolute which, as
Actus , runs through all.
It is significant that Ibn ‘Arab! mentions ‘water’ in this sense at the
outset of the chapter which deals with the ‘wisdom of the Unseen’
symbolized by Job. Affifi points out quite appropriately in this
connection that Job is, for Ibn ‘Arab!, a symbol of a man who strives
to obtain ‘certainty’ (yaqin ) about the world of the Unseen. The
excruciating pain which Job undergoes is, therefore, not a physical
pain, but the spiritual suffering of a man who strives for, but cannot
attain to, ‘certainty’. And when Job implores God to remove from
him this pain, God commands him to wash himself in the running
water beneath his feet. Here ‘water 5 symbolizes Life that runs
The Water of Life
149
through all the existents, and ‘washing oneself in water’ means to
immerse oneself in the ‘water of existence’ and to know thereby the
reality of existence. 21
Thus the Water of Life is eternally flowing through all. Each
single thing is in itself a unique existent, and yet it is immersed in the
limitless ocean of Life together with all the other existents. In the
first aspect, everything is unique and single, but in the second
aspect, everything loses its identity in the midst of the ‘water’ that
flows through all.
Everything in the world has, in this way, two distinct aspects: (1)
the aspect in which it is its own self, and (2) the aspect in which it is
Divine Life. The first aspect, which is the creaturely aspect of each
individual existent, is called by Ibn ‘Arab \ nasut or the ‘human (or
personal) aspect’ and the second, which is the aspect of the Abso-
lute in each individual existent, is called lahut or the ‘divine aspect’ .
According to Ibn ‘Arab!, ‘life’ is of a spiritual nature. For it is of
the very essential nature of ‘spirit’ that it vivifies everything which it
touches. As Bali Efendi remarks, 22 ‘life’ is the primary attribute of
‘spirit’, and ‘spirit’ strikes whatever it touches with this primary
attribute.
Know that all spirits have a peculiar property by which they bring to
life everything that comes under their influence. As soon as a spirit
touches a thing, there flows through it life . 23
And in the view of Ibn ‘ Arab!, the whole world of Being is under the
direct influence of the Universal Spirit. So all the things that exist
are without a single exception in touch with it, and are, therefore,
alive. Only the way they are influenced by it actually varies from one
individual to another in accordance with the particular ‘prepared-
ness’ of each. In other words, things differ one from the other in the
intensity of Life they manifest, but all are the same in that they
maintain their ‘selves’ in the midst of the all-pervading Life.
The (universal) Life which flows through all things is called the
‘divine aspect’ {lahut) of Being, while each individual locus in which
that Spirit (i.e., Life) resides is called the ‘human aspect’ ( nasut ). The
‘human aspect’, too, may be called ‘spirit’, but only in virtue of that
which resides in it . 24
The intimate relationship between nasut and lahut in man may be
compared to the relationship that exists between ‘dough’ (‘ ajin ) and
‘leaven’ ( khamir ). 25 Every man has in himself something of the
Divine ‘leaven’ . If he succeeds in letting it grow in a perfect form, his
‘dough’ will come completely under its influence and will finally be
transformed into something of the same nature as the ‘leaven’ . This
is what is called in the terminology of mysticism ‘self-annihilation’
( fana ’).
150 Sufism and Taoism
Notes
1. Fus., p. 239/188-189.
2. Lafif has two meanings: ( 1) 'subtle’ and (2) 'gracious’ . The property of being ( 1) is
called latafah and the property of being (2) is called lu(f.
3. p. 239.
4. In truth, however, the things that are called the organs of cognition in man are
nothing other than particular phenomenal forms assumed by the Absolute itself. We
know this by the above-explained principle of latafah.
5. i.e., the He-ness (inmost essence) of ‘servant’, considered independently of the
relation of servant-ness, is the Absolute as considered independently of the relation
of its being God and Master. But, of course, the essence of 'servant’ qua ‘servant’,
i.e., considered in his servant-ness, is not 'master’ qua ‘master’. -al-Qashani p. 240.
6. p. 240/189.
7. Fus., p. 24/55.
8. p. 24.
9. ‘If it were not for those universal, intelligible realities ( haqa'iq maqulah kulliyah,
corresponding to the Ideas of Plato) , there would never appear anything in the world
of concrete individual existents ( mawjiidat ‘ayniyyahf - Fus., p. 24/55.
10. p. 24.
11. Fus., P- 24/55.
12. Fus., p. 181/143.
13. pp. 180-181.
14. The Command is issued to Him by you in the sense that, in bestowing existence
upon man, He never deviates from the way which has been eternally determined by
the archetypes.
15. Fus., pp. 76-77/83.
16. Fus., p. 79/84.
17. ibid.
18. Fus., p. 194/154.
19. See, for instance, the explanation given by al-Ghazali in his Maqasid al-
Falasifah, pp. 274-275, Cairo (Sa‘adah), 1331 A.H.
The Water of Life
22. p. 172.
23. Fus ., p. 172/138.
24. Fus., p. 173/138.
25. Fus., P- 189/149.
151
20. Fus., 213/170.
21. Affifi, Fus., Com., p.245.
The Self-manifestation of the Absolute
153
XI The Self-manifestation
of the Absolute
Reference has frequently been made in the preceding pages to the
concept of ‘self-manifestation’ (tajalli). And in not a few places the
concept has been discussed and analyzed in some detail. This is
proper because tajalli is the pivotal point of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought.
Indeed, the concept of tajalli is the very basis of his world-view All
his thinking about the ontological structure of the world turns round
this axis, and by so doing develops into a grand-scale cosmic system
No part of his world-view is understandable without reference to
th ! s „ c . e ” tr ^ concept. His entire philosophy is, in short, a theory of
tajalli. So by discussing various problems relating to his world-view
we have been in fact doing nothing other than trying to elucidate
some aspects of tajalli. In this sense, we know already quite a lot
about the main topic of the present chapter.
Tajalli is the process by which the Absolute, which is absolutely
unknowable in itself, goes on manifesting itself in ever more con-
crete forms. Since this self-manifestation of the Absolute cannot be
actualized except through particular, determined forms the self-
manifestation is nothing other than a self-determination or self-
dehmmation of the Absolute. Self-determination (-delimination) in
this sense is called \ ta‘ayyun (lit. ‘making oneself a particular, indi-
vidual entity’). Ta‘ayyun (pi. ta‘ayyunat ) is one of the key-terms of
Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontology.
The self-determination, as it develops, forms a number of stages
or levels. Properly and essentially, these stages are of a non-
temporal structure, subsisting as they do beyond the boundaries of
time . But at the same time they come also into the temporal order
o things and give a particular ontological structure to it.
At any rate, when we describe this process we are willy-nilly
forced to follow the temporal order. And this is naturally what Ibn
rabi himself does in his description of the phenomenon of tajalli.
But it would be a mistake if we thought that this is merely a matter of
necessity caused by the structure of our language, as it would be
equally wrong to suppose that the self-manifestation of the Abso-
lute is an exclusively temporal process.
The self-manifestation of the Absolute is, in fact, possessed of a
double structure. It is a trans-historical, trans-temporal phenom-
enon, but it is also a temporal event. One might even say that this is
precisely the greatest coincidentia oppositorum observable in the
structure of Being. It is a temporal event because from eternity the
same process of tajalli (the Absolute^the world) has been repeated
and will go on being repeated indefinitely. Since, however, exactly
the same ontological pattern repeats itself infinitely, and since,
moreover, it is done in such a way that as the first wave is set in
motion, there already begins to rise the second wave, the process in
its totality comes to the same thing: an eternal, static structure.
This dynamic-static self-manifestation of the Absolute is
described in terms of the ‘strata’ (maratib,sg.martabah) . Let us first
observe how al-Qashanl explains the ‘strata’. 1
He begins by saying that there is in Being nothing except one
single Reality {‘ayn) which is the Absolute, and its ‘realization’
(haqiqah), which is Being in its phenomenal (mashhiid) aspect. But,
he adds, this phenomenal aspect of Being is not a one-stratum
structure, but it comprises six major strata.
The first stratum: Being at this stage is still completely free from
any limitation. This stratum represents ‘Reality’ in its non-
determination (la-ta‘ayyun) and non-delimination (‘ adam inhisar).
In other words, there is as yet absolutely no self-manifestation
occurring; Being is still the absolute Essence itself rather than a part
of phenomenal reality. And yet it is capable of being considered a
part of phenomenal reality in the sense that it forms the starting-
point of all the subsequent ontological stages. It is no longer the
Essence per se in its metaphysical darkness.
The second stratum: Being is here ‘determined’ in itself by a kind
of all-comprehensive self-determination comprising all the active
determinations pertaining to the Divine aspect of Being (i.e., the
Divine Names) as well as all the passive determinations pertaining
to the creaturely or phenomenal aspect of Being. The Absolute at
this stage still remains One. The One is not yet actually split into
multiplicity; yet there is observable a faint foreboding of self-
articulation. The Absolute, in other words, is potentially articulated.
The third stratum: this is the stage of Divine Unity (al-ahadiyah
al-ilahlyah) or that of Allah, where all the active ( fa'iliy ) and
effective ( mu’aththir ) self-determinations are realized as an integral
whole.
The fourth stratum: this is the stage at which the Divine Unity
(3rd stage) is split into independent self-determinations, i.e., the
Divine Names.
The fifth stratum: this stage comprises in the form of unity all the
self-determinations of a passive nature ( infi‘aliy ). It represents the
154 Sufism and Taoism
unity of the creaturely and possible things of the world of becoming.
The sixth stratum: here the unity of the preceding stage is dis-
solved into actually existent things and properties. This is the stage of
the ‘world’. All the genera, species, individuals, parts, accidents,
relations, etc., become actualized at this stage.
As we see, this description by al-Qashani of the Divine self-
manifestation as a multi-strata structure presents the phenomenon
of tajalli in its static, i.e., non-temporal, aspect. Ibn ‘Arabi himself
prefers to present the same thing in a much more dynamic way. He
distinguishes two major types of tajalli to which we have often
referred in the preceding; namely, the ‘most holy emanation’ ( al -
fayd al-aqdas ) and the ‘holy emanation’ ( al-fayd al-muqaddas) .
It is to be remarked that Ibn ‘Arabi uses the Plotinian term
‘emanation’ (fayd) as a synonym of tajalli. But ‘emanation’ here
does not mean, as it does in the world-view of Plotinus, one thing
overflowing from the absolute One, then another from that first
thing, etc. in the form of a chain. ‘Emanation’, for Ibn ‘Arabi, simply
means that the Absolute itself appears in different, more or less
concrete forms, with a different self-determination in each case. It
means that one and the same Reality variously articulates and
determines itself and appears immediately in the forms of different
things.
The first type of ‘emanation’, the ‘most holy emanation’, corres-
ponds, as we have seen, to what is described by a famous Tradition
in which the Absolute per se , i.e., the absolutely Unknown-
Unknowable, desires to leave the state of being a ‘hidden treasure’
and desires to be known. Thus we see that the ‘most holy emana-
tion’ is for the Absolute a natural and essential movement.
The ‘most holy emanation’ represents the first decisive stage in
the self-manifestation of the Absolute. It is the stage at which the
Absolute manifests itself not to others but to itself. It is, in modern
terminology, the rise of self-consciousness in the Absolute. It is
important to remark, further, that this kind of self-manifestation
has occurred from eternity. It is, as Nicholson says, ‘the eternal
manifestation of the Essence to itself’. 2
The self-manifestation of the Absolute to itself consists in the
forms of all the possible existents making their appearance in poten-
tia in the Consciousness of the Absolute. Another way of expressing
the same idea is to say that the Absolute becomes conscious of itself
as potentially articulated into an infinity of existents. The important
point here lies in the word ‘potentially’ or in potentia. It indicates
that the Consciousness of the Absolute being split into plurality is
an event occurring only in the state of possibility; that the Absolute
is not yet actually split into many, and, therefore, still maintains its
original Unity. It is, in other words, a state in which the potential
The Self-manifestation of the Absolute 155
Many are still actually One. In contradistinction to the real Unity in
which there is not even a shadow of the Many, i.e., the Unity of
ahadlyah , this Unity which is potentially plurality is called
wahidlyah or Oneness.
Since the Many in the plane of Oneness are Many as the content
of the Consciousness of the Absolute (Divine ‘Knowledge’ as the
theologians call it), they are, philosophically, pure intelligibles, and
not real concrete existents. They are nothing more than ‘recipients’
(< qawabil ) for existence. They are those that would be real existents
if they receive existence. In this sense the Many in this plane are
‘possible existents’ (mawjudat mumkinah) or ‘existents in potentia'
(mawjudat bi-al-quwwah ). 3
On this level, there is as yet nothing existent in actuality. The
world itself is not existent. Yet there are dimly discernible the
figures of the would-be things. I say ‘dimly discernible’; this is
merely an imaginary picture of this ontological situation supposedly
seen from outside. In reality and in themselves, these figures are the
content of the Consciousness of the Absolute, and as such, nothing
can possibly be more solidly definite and distinct. They are ‘realities’
(haqa’iq) in the full sense of the word. They are in themselves far
more real than what we regard as ‘real’ in this world. They look dim
and hazy from our point of view, because they belong to the world of
the Unseen ( ghayb ). These realities as intelligibilia are called by Ibn
‘Arab! ‘permanent archetypes’ ( a'yan thabitah) of which details will
be given in the next chapter.
The word ‘emanation’ (fayd) is, as remarked above, completely
synonymous for Ibn ‘Arabi with ‘self-manifestation’ (tajalli). And
he calls the ‘ most holy emanation’ also ‘essential self-manifestation’
(tajalli dhatiy). This latter term is defined by al-Qashani as follows: 4
The essential self-manifestation is the appearance of the Absolute
under the form of the permanent archetypes which are ready to
receive existence and whose domain is the Presence (i.e., ontological
level) of Knowledge and Names, i.e., the Presence of Oneness
( wahidlyah ). By this appearance the Absolute descends from the
presence of Unity (ahadlyah) to the Presence of Oneness. And this
is the ‘most holy emanation’ of the Absolute, which consists in that
the pure Essence not yet accompanied by any Names manifests itself
(in the plane of the Names). So there can be no plurality at all (in
actuality) in this self-manifestation. It is called ‘most holy’ because it
is holier than the self-manifestation which occurs in the visible world
as actualization of the Names, which therefore occurs in accordance
with the ‘preparedness’ of each locus.
The second stage of the self-manifestation, the ‘holy emanation -
also called ‘sensuous self-manifestation’ (tajalli shuhudiy) - means
156
Sufism and Taoism
that the Absolute manifests itself in the infinitely various forms of
the Many in the world of concrete Being. In common-sense lan-
guage we might say that the ‘holy emanation’ refers to the coming
into being of what we call ‘things’ , including not only substances, but
attributes, actions, and events.
From the particular point of view in Ibn ‘ Arabi, the ‘holy emana-
tion’ means that the permanent archetypes, which have been
brought into being by the ‘most holy emanation’ leave the state of
being intelligibles, diffuse themselves in sensible things, and thus
cause the sensible world to exist in actuality. In plain Aristotelian
terminology, it means the ontological process of the transformation
of things in potentia into corresponding things in actu. This is clearly
a deterministic ontology, because, in this world-view, the actual
form in which everything exists in the world is an ultimate result of
what has been determined from eternity. As al-Qashani says: s
The sensuous self-manifestation which occurs through the Names
follows the ‘preparedness’ of the locus in each case. This kind of
self-manifestation is dependent upon the ‘recipients’ which are no
other than the loci in which the Names become manifested. In this
respect it is completely different from the essential self-
manifestation, because the latter is not dependent upon anything
whatsoever.
The relation between these two forms of self-manifestation is dis-
cussed by Ibn ‘Arabi in an important passage of the Fusus. In this
passage he happens to be talking about the coming into being of the
‘heart’ (qalb). But we are entitled to replace it by anything else and
thus to understand it as a general theoretical explanation of the two
forms of self-manifestation . 6
God has two forms of self-manifestation: one is self-manifestation in
the Unseen and the other in the visible world.
By the self-manifestation in the Unseen He gives the ‘preparedness’
which will determine the nature of the heart (in the visible world).
This is the essential self-manifestation whose reality is the Unseen.
And this self-manifestation in the Unseen is (that which constitutes)
the He-ness which rightly belongs to Him (as the objectifying projec-
tion of Himself toward the outside), as is witnessed by the fact that
He designates Himself by (the pronoun of the third person) ‘He ’. 7
Thus God is ‘He’ eternally, everlastingly.
Now when the ‘preparedness’ is actualized for the heart, there occurs
correspondingly in the visible world the sensuous self-manifestation.
The heart, on its part, perceives it, and assumes the form of that
which has manifested itself to it.
We may summarize all this in a general theoretical form as follows.
The first self-manifestation of the Absolute brings into being the
permanent archetypes which are the self-manifesting forms of the
The Self-manifestation of the Absolute
157
Divine Names, i.e., the ontological possibilities contained in the
Absolute. These archetypes are ‘recipients’ waiting for concrete
existentiation. They provide loci for the second type of self-
manifestation. And each locus ( mahall ) has a definite ‘prepared-
ness’ which, as an immediate effect of the first self-manifestation of
the Absolute, is eternal and unalterable. Even the Absolute cannot
alter or modify it, because it is a form in which the Absolute
manifests itself. Thus the Absolute, in making each ‘recipient’ a
locus of its second (sensuous) self-manifestation, determines itself
in strict accordance with the eternal ‘preparedness’ of the ‘reci-
pient’. The Absolute in this way takes on indefinitely various forms
in its sensuous self-manifestation. And the totality of all these forms
constitute the phenomenal world.
Such a description is liable to suggest that there is an interval of
time between the first and the second self-manifestation. In reality,
however, there is no relation of priority and posteriority between
the two. Everything occurs at one and the same time. For, in the
very moment in which ‘preparedness’ arises on the part of a thing (in
truth, however, every ‘preparedness’ is already in existence from
eternity because the first type of self-manifestation has been going
on from eternity,) the Divine Spirit flows into it and makes it appear
as a concretely existent thing. As we have remarked at the outset,
the relation between the two kinds of self-manifestation is a tem-
poral phenomenon, being at the same time a non-temporal or
trans-temporal structure. In this latter sense, the self-manifestation
in the Unseen and the self-manifestation in the visible world are
nothing but two basic constituent elements of Being.
The Divine procedure (concerning the self-manifestation) is such
that God never prepares any locus but that it (i.e., that locus) receives
of necessity the working of the Divine Spirit, a process which God
describes as ‘breathing into’ it. And this refers to nothing else than
the actualization, or the part of the locus thus formed, a particular
‘preparedness’ for receiving the emanation, that is, the perpetual
self-manifestation that has been going on from eternity and that will
be going on to eternity . 8
Notes
1. p. 239. Cf. Chapter I, where al-Qashani gives a slightly different explanation of
the matter.
2. R.A. Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, Cambridge, 1921, p. 155, N. 1.
3. Fuy., p. 10/49.
158
Sufism and Taoism
4. p. 10.
5. pp. 10-11.
6. Fu$., pp. 145-146/120.
7. In the Qoran God frequently speaks in the third person, referring to Himself as
‘He’ instead of T.
8. Fu$., p. 10/49.
XII Permanent Archetypes
The concept of ‘permanent archetype’ (‘ ayn thabitah, pi. a‘yan
thabitah) has a number of important facets. So, in order that we
might fully elucidate its essential structure, it must be considered
analytically from different points of view. Although most of these
different aspects of the ‘permanent archetype’ have been referred
to in the course of the preceding chapters, some of them having
been discussed at considerable length and others more or less
incidentally touched upon, we shall deal with them all in the present
chapter in a more systematic way.
I The Intermediary Nature of the Archetypes
That which we know best about the archetypes is their ontologically
intermediate status. Briefly stated, the plane of the archetypes
occupies a middle position between the Absolute in its absoluteness
and the world of sensible things.
As a result of this peculiar ontological position, the archetypes
have the double nature of being active and passive, that is, passive in
relation to what is higher and active in relation to things that stand
lower than themselves. Their passivity is expressed by the word
qabil (pi. qawabil ) which Ibn ‘ Arabi often uses in his description of
the archetypes. They are ‘recipients’, receptive and passive in so far
as they are nothing but potentialities in the Divine Essence. Their
nature is passively determined by the very inner structure of the
Essence. But considered in themselves, they are of a self-
determining nature and exercise a determining power over the
possible things of the world. They are each the eidetic reality {‘ayn)
of a possible thing. And all the possible things become actualized in
the phenomenal world each according to the requirement of its own
permanent archetype.
As we have remarked earlier , 1 the Absolute must ‘breathe out’
because of the intense inner compression of Being. It is in the very
nature of the Absolute that it should externalize itself. The
160 Sufism and Taoism
Absolute, in this respect, is not a static ‘One’, but a dynamic ‘One’
with a natural propensity for self-externalization and self-
articulation. Outwardly and actually it is unquestionably ‘One’, but
inwardly and potentially it is Many.
It is important to note that this self-externalization of the Abso-
lute is done according to certain fixed patterns at both the first and
the second stage of tajalli. The Absolute, at the first stage of tajalli,
articulates itself not haphazardly but through certain definite chan-
nels. These channels have been fixed from eternity by the very inner
structure of the Absolute. Theologically, they are the Divine
Names. And the permanent archetypes are the essential forms
(suwar) of the Divine Names. Since, moreover, all this is an occur-
rence within the Divine consciousness, the archetypes are realities
(haqa’iq) eternally subsistent in the world of the Unseen.
And these realities definitely determine the form of the second
stage of the self-manifestation, i.e., the self-manifestation of the
Absolute in the concrete individual things in the external world.
Here again the Absolute manifests itself in the phenomenal world
not in haphazard forms; the forms in which it manifests itself are
determined by the eternal realities that have been produced by the
first tajalli. If we suppose, for example, that there were in the plane
of the archetypes nothing but Horse and Man, there would be in our
world only horses and men, nothing else.
The archetypes are, in this sense, double-faced. On the one hand,
they are essentially determined by the Absolute, because they owe
their particular existence to the latter. But, on the other, they
positively determine the way in which the Absolute actualizes itself
in the phenomenal world. As to this determining force of the
archetypes, details will be given presently. Here it is sufficient to
note that the intermediary nature of the archetypes is clearly
observable in the peculiarity which has just been mentioned.
The second important point in which the intermediary nature of the
archetypes stands out with utmost clarity is their ‘being non-
existent’ ( ma‘dum ).
The essences of the possible things (i.e., the permanent archetypes)
are not luminous because they are non-existent. Certainly they do
have permanent subsistence ( thubut ), but they are not qualified by
existence, because existence is Light . 2
The fact that Ibn ‘Arab! designates the archetypes by calling them
‘the essences of the possible things’, though in itself an important
statement, is not relevant to our present concern. 3 Rather, we
should note here his judgment that the archetypes are ‘non-
existent’. Similarly in another passage he says: 4
Permanent Archetypes 161
The archetypes are essentially characterized by non-existence
(‘ adam ). Surely they are ‘permanently subsistent’ {thabitah), but they
are permanently subsistent only in the state of non-existence. They
have not even smelt the fragrance of existence. Thus they remain
eternally in that state (i.e., non-existence) despite the multiplicity of
the forms (which they manifest in the existent things).
Ibn ‘ Arabi judges the archetypes to be ‘ non-existent’ because in this
particular context he understands the word ‘existence’ ( wujud ) in
the sense of ‘external existence’. Seen from the viewpoint of exter-
nal or phenomenal existence, the archetypes are not existent,
although they are ‘permanently subsistent’. The ‘permanent subsist-
ence’ ( thubut ) is different from external existence. Symbolically, the
archetypes are ‘dark’. They are dark because they are not yet
illumined by the bright daylight of existence. Existence as Light
belongs only to the individual things that exist concretely and
externally.
It is patent, then, that it is not Ibn ‘Arabi’ s intention to assert that
the archetypes are non-existent in an absolute sense. We have
already observed that the archetypes are permanent ‘realities’ that
subsist in the Divine Consciousness. They do exist in the same sense
in which concepts are said to exist in the human mind. He only
means to say that the archetypes do not possess a temporally and
spatially determined existence. And in this very particular sense,
the Divine Names, too, must be said to be non-existent. ‘The Names
in their multiplicity are but relations which are of a non-existent
nature’. 5
Thus we see that it is not strictly exact to regard the archetypes as
non-existent. More exact it is to say they are neither existent nor
non-existent. And, in fact, Ibn ‘Arab! himself explicitly says so in a
short, but exceedingly important article to which incidental refer-
ence was made in an earlier place. 6 It is to be noted that in this
passage he takes up a more philosophical position than in his Fusu$
in dealing with the problem of the archetypes.
The third thing 7 is neither qualified by existence nor by non-
existence, neither by temporality nor by eternity ( a parte ante). But it
has always been with the Eternal from eternity. . . .
It is neither existent nor non-existent. . . . But it is the root (i.e., the
ontological ground) of the world. . . . For from this third thing has the
world come into being. Thus it is the very essential reality of all the
realities of the world. It is a universal and intelligible reality subsist-
% ing in the Mind. It appears as eternal in the Eternal and as temporal in
the temporal. So, if you say that this thing is the world, you are right,
fl And if you say that it is the Absolute, the Eternal, you are equally
right. But you are no less right if you say that it is neither the world
nor the Absolute, but something different from both. All these
statements are true of this thing.
162
Sufism and Taoism
Thus it is the most general Universal comprising both temporality
(huduth) and eternity (qidam). It multiplies itself with the multiplic-
ity of the existent things. And yet it is not divided by the division of
the existent things; it is divided by the division of the intelligibles. In
short, it is neither existent nor non-existent. It is not the world, and
yet it is the world. It is ‘other’, and yet it is not ‘other’.
The main point of this argument is that this ‘third thing’ is the world
in potentiality, but that, from the viewpoint of the world as a real
and concrete existent, it is not the world, but rather non-Being and
the Absolute.
Then Ibn ‘Arabi proceeds to examine the problem from the
standpoint of Aristotelian philosophy and identifies this third thing
which can neither be said to exist nor not to exist with the hayula or
Prime Matter , 8
The relation of this thing . . . with the world is comparable to the
relation of wood with (various things fabricated out of wood, like) a
chair, wooden case, pulpit, litter etc., or to the relation of silver with
(silver) vessels and objects made of silver like collyrium-cases, ear-
rings, and rings.
The comparison makes the nature and essence of this (third) thing
clear. Take, then, only the relation here suggested (between wood
and pieces of furniture made of wood) without, however, picturing in
your mind any diminishing in it (i.e., in the third thing) as you picture
actual diminishing in the wood when a writing-desk is taken out of it.
Know that wood itself is a particular form assumed by ‘wood-ness’.
(Do not picture in your mind a piece of wood, but) concentrate your
attention upon the intelligible universal reality which is ‘wood-ness’.
Then you will see that ‘wood-ness’ itself neither diminishes nor is
divided (by your actually fabricating real objects out of wood). On
the contrary, ‘wood-ness’ always remains in its original perfection in
all the chairs and desks without ever diminishing. Nor does it increase
a bit in spite of the fact that in a wooden desk, for example, there are
many realities gathered together besides the reality of ‘wood-ness’,
like that of ‘oblong-ness’, that of ‘square-ness’, that of ‘quantity’ etc.,
all of them being therein in their respective perfection. The same is
true of any chair or pulpit.
And the ‘third thing’ is precisely all these ‘realities’ in their respective
perfection. So call it, if you like, the reality of realities, or hayula
(Greek hyle), or Prime Matter, or the genus of all genera. And call
these realities that are comprised by this third thing the ‘primary
realities’ or ‘high genera’.
One special point is worthy of notice in this connection. Ibn ‘Arabi
here observes the intermediary nature of the archetypes not only in
their being neither existent nor non-existent, but also in their being
neither ‘temporal’ nor ‘eternal’. So it is wrong, or at least an over-
simplification, to say that Ibn ‘Arab! takes up the position that ‘the
world is eternal ( qadim )’ 9 because the archetypes are eternal.
Permanent Archetypes
163
M
Surely the archetypes are ‘eternal’ in a certain sense precisely
because they represent the intermediary stage between the Abso-
lute and the phenomenal world. But they are ‘eternal’ only secon-
darily and derivatively in the sense that they, as the content itself of
the Divine Consciousness or Knowledge, have been connected
(muqarin) with the Absolute from eternity. Their eternity is in this
sense essentially different from the eternity of the Absolute.
Generally speaking, and particularly in cases of this kind, the true
nature of anything intermediary is impossible to describe ade-
quately by language. Thus one is forced to resort, as Ibn ‘Arabi
actually does, to a clumsy expression, like ‘it is neither eternal nor
temporal, but it is, on the other hand, both eternal and temporal’ . If
from the whole of this complex expression we pick up only the
phrase, ‘(it is) eternal’ and draw from it the conclusion that Ibn
‘Arabi maintained the doctrine of the eternity of the world , 10 we
would be doing him gross injustice.
In a passage of the Fu$us, in connection with the problem of the
absolute inalterability of the cause-caused relationship in this
world, Ibn ‘Arab! discusses the ‘eternity’ -‘temporality’ of the
archetypes in the following way . 11
There is absolutely no way of making the causes effectless because
they are what is required by the permanent archetypes. And nothing
is actualized except in the form established for it in the archetypal
state. For ‘there is no altering for the words of God’ (X, 64). And the
‘words of God’ are nothing other than the archetypes of the things in
existence. Thus ‘eternity’ is ascribed to the archetypes in regard to
their permanent subsistence, and ‘temporality’ is ascribed to it in
regard to their actual existence and appearance.
These words clarify the intermediary state peculiar to the
archetypes between ‘eternity’ and ‘temporality’.
II The Archetypes as Universals
As we have noticed in the preceding section, the archetypes in Ibn
‘ArabFs thought are, theologically, ‘realities’ in the Knowledge of
God, i.e., intelligibles existing permanently and eternally in the
Divine Consciousness alone. But from the point of view of scholas-
tic philosophy, they are Universals standing over against Particu-
lars. And the relation of the archetypes to the world is exactly the
ontological relation of Universals to Particulars. The problem of
how the Divine self-manifestation is actualized in the realm of
external existence through the fixed channels of the archetypes is
nothing other than the problem of the individuation of Universals.
164
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Permanent Archetypes
165
We must note that this aspect on Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s philosophy is to a
considerable extent Platonic. In any event, the permanent
archetypes, in this particular aspect , remind us of the Ideas of Plato.
There is, in his Fu$u$, an important passage where he develops
this problem scholastically . 12 There he deals with the philosophical
aspect of Divine Attributes such as Knowledge, Life, etc . 13 It will be
clear by what has preceded that his theory of Attributes is identical
with the theory of archetypes.
We assert that the universal things ( umur kulliyah, i.e., Universals
corresponding to Platonic Ideas), although they have no actual exis-
tence in themselves, are unquestionably (existent as) intelligibles and
objects of knowledge, in the mind (i.e., primarily in the Divine
Consciousness, and secondarily in the human minds). They remain
‘interior’ ( batinah ) and never leave the state of invisible existence 14
(i.e., the state of existence in the plane of the Unseen).
The passage is paraphrased by al-Qashani as follows : 15
The ‘universal things’, that is, those things that are essentially non-
material ( mutlaqah ) such as Life and Knowledge, have a concrete
existence only in Reason, while in the outer world they have an
invisible existence. This is because existence in the outer world is the
very same non-material intelligibles as determined by concrete, indi-
vidual conditions. But (even when it is actualized in the outer world)
a non-material Universal still remains in the state of being an intellig-
ible and still stands under the name ‘Interior’. A Universal never
exists in the outer world in its universality, but only in a concretely
determined form. And in this latter capacity only does a Universal
come under the name ‘Exterior’.
Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to argue : 16
But (i.e., although their existence is invisible) Universals have a
powerful and positive effect on everything that has a concrete indi-
vidual existence. Rather, the individualized existence - I mean, all
individual existents are nothing other than Universals. And yet Uni-
versals in themselves never cease to be pure intelligibles. Thus they
are ‘exterior’ in respect to their being concrete existents, but they are
‘interior’ in respect to their being intelligibles. So every concrete
thing that exists has its origin in the (realm of) these ‘universal
matters’ which have the above-mentioned peculiarity, namely, that
they are inseparably connected with Reason and that they can never
come to exist in the plane of concrete existence in such a way as to
cease to be pure intelligibles. This basic situation does not change
whether a particular individual existent (in which a Universal is
actualized) happens to be something temporally conditioned (e.g.,
ordinary material objects) or something beyond the limitations of
time (e.g., higher Spirits). For a Universal bears one and the same
relation to both temporal and non-temporal things.
1
The relation between Universals and Particulars is not as one-sided
as this passage might suggest; it has also an aspect in which Particu-
lars do exercise a determining force upon Universals. A Universal,
as we have just seen, remains eternally the same as it appears in
individual particulars, say, abed. But since each one of these
particulars has its own peculiar ‘nature’ (f abVah ), the Universal
must necessarily be affected by a b c d as it is actualized in them. The
Universal, in other words, becomes tinged in each case with a
particular coloring.
The ‘universal matters’, on their part, are also positively affected by
the concrete existents in accordance with what is required by the
individual realities of the latter.
Take for example the relation of ‘knowledge’ to ‘knower’, and ‘life’
to ‘living being’. ‘Life’ is an intelligible reality, and ‘knowledge’ is an
intelligible reality, both being different and distinguishable from one
another. Now we say concerning God that He has Life and Know-
ledge, so He is Living and He is a Knower. Likewise, we say concern-
ing an angel that he has ‘life’ and ‘knowledge’, so he is ‘living’ and he
is a ‘knower’. Lastly, we say concerning man that he has ‘knowledge’
and ‘life’, so he is ‘living’ and a ‘knower’.
(Throughout all these cases) the reality of ‘knowledge’ is one, and the
reality of ‘life’ is one. The relation of ‘knowledge’ to ‘knower’ and of
‘life’ to ‘living’ is equally one. And yet we say concerning the Know-
ledge of God that it is eternal, while concerning the ‘knowledge’ of
man we say that it is temporal. See what a positive effect has been
produced upon the intelligible reality (‘knowledge’) by the particular
attribution. See how the intelligibles are connected with the concrete
individual existents. Just as ‘knowledge’ affects the substrate in which
it inheres to make it deserve the appellation ‘knower’, the particular
substrate to which ‘knowledge’ is attributed affects the ‘knowledge’
in such a way that it becomes temporal in a temporal being and
eternal in the eternal being. Thus both sides affect each other and are
affected by each other . 17
As to the ontological status of Universals, Ibn ‘Arabi says that they
are ‘non-existent’ , meaning thereby that they are not endowed with
concrete individual existence in the material world. But, of course,
as we know already, they are not sheer ‘nothing’; they do have a
particular kind of existence, i.e., non-material, intelligible
existence.
A Universal becomes actualized in an individual thing and natur-
ally becomes tinged with a special coloring peculiar to the locus. But
since in such a case it is not individualized in itself, it does not
become qualified by the properties of distinction and divisibility
which are characteristic of individual things. While, therefore, the
relation between a Particular and a Particular is a solid one, being
based on the strong tie of concrete physical existence, the relation
V'
166 Sufism and Taoism
between a Universal and a Particular, although far more essential
than the former relation, is weaker because it is an essentially
‘non-existentiaP, i.e., intelligible relation.
It is patent that these ‘universal matters’, although they are intellig-
ibles, are non-existent in terms of concrete physical existence, but are
only existent as an invisible (but real) force (affecting the concrete
individual things.) When, however, they enter into actual relation
with individual existents, they also are affected by the latter. They do
accept the positive effect (exercised by the individual existents)
except that they do not thereby become physically distinct and
divided. For this is absolutely impossible to occur (to a Universal).
For it remains as it is in all individuals which are qualified by it - like,
for example, ‘humanity’ ( insaniyah ‘being-a-man’) appearing in each
single individual of the species of man - being itself never particular-
ized, never becoming multiple despite the multiplicity of individuals,
and never ceasing to be intelligible.
Thus it is clear that there is a close reciprocal tie between things
possessed of a concrete existence (i.e., Particulars) and things that
are deprived of a concrete existence (i.e., Universal). And yet the
Universal are in the nature of ‘non-existence’. So the reciprocal tie
existing between concrete things and concrete things is more easily
conceivable, because in this case there is always a third term which
connects the both sides together: I mean, concrete existence. In the
former case, on the contrary, there is no such connecting link, and the
reciprocal tie subsists here without a connecting link. Naturally, the
relation with such a link is stronger and more real . 18
Ill Necessity and Possibility
As we have seen already, Ibn ‘Arab! often refers to the permanent
archetypes as ‘essences of the possible things’ ( a‘yan al-mumkinat )
meaning thereby the essential realities of the possible things. The
word mumkinat or ‘possible things’ points, on the face of it, to
concrete individual existents in the world. This is justified in so far as
the concrete existents of Particulars are essentially ‘possible’
because they do not have in themselves the principle of existence.
On the other hand, however, they are not ‘possible’ but rather
‘necessary’ in so far as they exist in actuality in definitely fixed
forms. From this point of view, what are essentially ‘possible” are
the archetypes. For the archetypes, as has been made clear in the
preceding section, remain in themselves ‘intelligible’ without being
individualized.
There are some among the thinkers, says Ibn ‘Arab!, who,
‘because of the weakness of their intellect’ deny the category of
‘possibility’ ( imkan ) and assert that there are only two ontological
Permanent Archetypes 167
categories: ‘necessity by itself’ ( wujiib bi-al-dhat ) and ‘necessity by
(something) other (than itself)’ ( wujub bi-al-ghayr ). However, he
goes on to say, those who know the truth of the matter admit the
category of ‘possibility’, and know that ‘possibility’, though it is
after all a kind of ‘necessity by other’, does possess its own peculiar
nature which makes it the third ontological category. 19
Explicating this idea of his Master, al-Qashani analyzes the con-
cept of ‘possible’ ( mumkin ) as follows. 20 All existents are divisible
into two major categories according to the relation which the reality
of a thing bears to existence: (1) the thing whose reality by itself
requires existence, and (2) those whose reality by itself does not
require existence.
The first is the ‘necessary by itself’ or the Necessary Existent. The
second is further divided into two categories: (1) those whose very
nature requires non-existence, and (2) those whose nature by itself
requires neither existence nor non-existence. The first of these is the
category of the ‘impossible’ , while the second is the ‘possible’ . Then
he says:
Thus the ‘possible’ is an ontological dimension ( hadrah , lit. ‘Pres-
ence’) peculiar to the plane of Reason, a state before external exis-
tence, considered in itself. Take, for example, ‘black’. In itself it is
only in the plane of Reason, requiring neither existence nor non-
existence. But in the outer world it cannot but be accompanied either
by the existence of a cause or by the absence of cause, there being no
third case between these two.
And when the cause is present in its complete form, the existence of
the thing (the ‘possible’) becomes ‘necessary’. Otherwise, its non-
existence is ‘necessary’ due to non-existence of a complete cause. (In
the first case, it is ‘necessary by other’, while in the second case) it is
‘impossible by other’. Thus we see that the ‘possible’ in the state of
real existence is a ‘necessary by other’ . But in itself and in its essence,
i.e., apart from its actual state of existence, it is (still) a ‘possible by
itself’.
The definition of the ‘possible’ by al-Qashani, namely, that it is an
ontological state in which a thing finds itself previous to external
existence, makes it patent that a Universal is essentially and in itself
a ‘possible’ , for a Universal in itself is an ‘existent in Reason’ , that is,
a pure intelligible, before it goes into the state of external existence.
His explanation also makes it clear that a Universal, when it
becomes particularized and enters into the domain of external
existence in the form of an individual, obtains two features. In its
essence, it is still a ‘possible’ even in the state of external existence,
but it is a ‘necessary by other’ in so far as it is now existent externally
and has thereby what we might call an ontic necessity. Such is the
real nature of everything that is called ‘temporal’ ( hadith or
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Sufism and Taoism
muhdath ) , 21 And that which causes this ontological transformation,
i.e., that which brings out an ‘essentially possible’ into the sphere of
external existence and changes it into an ‘accidentally necessary’
can be nothing other than the ‘essentially necessary’, the Absolute.
There can be no doubt that a temporally originated thing ( muhdath )
is definitely something brough into existence (by an agent), so it has
an ontological need ( iftiqar , lit. ‘poverty’) towards an agent that has
produced it. This is due to the fact that, such a thing being essentially
‘possible’, its existence must come from something other than itself.
The tie which binds such a thing to its originator is a tie of ontological
need.
That (agent) to which a ‘possible’ owes its existence in such an
essential way can be nothing other than something whose existence is
necessary in itself, and which does not owe its existence to anything
else and has, therefore, no need of anything else. It must be this thing
that - by itself - gives existence to all temporal things so that the latter
are essentially dependent upon it.
Since, however, the coming into existence of the ‘possible’ is what is
required essentially by the ‘necessary’, the former acquires (in this
respect) a ‘necessity’ from the latter. And since, moreover, the
dependence of the ‘possible’ on the (‘necessary’) from which it comes
into existence is essential, the ‘possible’ must necessarily appear in
the likeness of the ‘necessary’. And this likeness extends to every
name and attribute possessed by the ‘possible’, except one single
thing: the essential necessity ( wujub dhatiy), for this last thing can
never come to a temporally produced thing. Thus it comes about that
a temporal thing, although it is a ‘necessary’ existent, its ‘necessity’ is
not its own but is due to something other than itself . 22
IV The Absolute Power of the Archetypes
The archetypes are ‘permanent’ or ‘permanently subsistent’
(thabitah), i.e., they have been fixed once for all in the eternal past,
and are, therefore, absolutely unalterable and immovable. ‘There is
no altering for the words of God’ (X, 64). This absolute unalter-
ableness of the archetypes restricts in a certain sense even the
activity of the Absolute. This may sound blasphemous at first, but in
reality it is not so. For, theologically speaking, it is the very Will of
God that has given them this unalterableness, and in a terminology
more characteristic of Ibn ‘Arabi, they are no other than inner
determinations of the Absolute itself.
It is not for the Divine Will to change what has been determined
at the stage of the archetypes. And it is unthinkable that God should
will such a thing. The Qoranic statement concerning the disbeliev-
ers: ‘but if He so willed, He would have guided you aright all
together’ (XVI, 91) might seem to imply that it is quite possible that
Permanent Archetypes
God should will just the contrary of what has actually happened,
i.e., the contrary of what has been determined on the level of the
archetypes. This, however, is due, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, to a very
simple misunderstanding. The particle law meaning ‘if’ (in the
clause ‘if He so willed’ fa-law shaa) is a grammatical device for
expressing a supposition of something which is actually impossible.
Thus the Qoranic verse suggests rather the absolute impossibility of
God’s wishing to guide aright the disbelievers. 23
We established in the preceding section that the archetypes are
‘possibles’. But in the light of what we have just seen about the
immovable fixity of the archetypes, we must admit also that their
‘possibility’ is of a very particular nature. A ‘possible’ is a thing
which is capable of becoming either a or its contradictory, non -a.
Thus, to take an example directly relevant to the Qoranic verse just
mentioned, a man as a ‘possible’ is capable of becoming either a
‘believer’ or a ‘disbeliever’, that is, of receiving in actuality either
the ‘guidance’ of God or ‘going astray from the Way’. In reality,
however, it is determined from the very beginning whether the thing
will be actualized as a or as non-a. If it happens to be determined in
the direction of a, for instance, even God cannot change its course
and actualize it as non-a.
A ‘possible’ is in itself capable of receiving either something or its
contradictory, on the level of rational reasoning. But as soon as it is
actualized as either of the two logically possible things, (we come to
know that) that was the thing for which the ‘possible’ was destined
when it was in the archetypal state. ...
Thus (it is clear in the case of those disbelievers referred to in the
above-quoted Qoranic verse that) God actually did not ‘will’ that
way, so that He did not guide aright all those people. Nor will He ever
‘will’ that way. ‘If-He-wills’ will be of no avail. For is it at all imagin-
able that He should do so? No, such a thing will never come to pass.
For His Will goes straight to its objects (in accordance with what has
been determined from eternity) because His Will is a relation which
strictly follows His Knowledge, and His Knowledge strictly follows
the object of Knowledge. And the object of Knowledge is you and
your states (i.e., the individual thing and its properties as they have
been immovably fixed in the state of archetypal permanence). It is
not the Knowledge that influences its object, but rather it is the object
of Knowledge that influences the Knowledge, for the object confers
what it is in its essence upon the Knowledge . 24
God knows each individual thing in its eternal essence, and exer-
cises His Will on the basis of that Knowledge. But, as we already
know, God’s exercising His Will is the same as His bestowing
existence. So, since God’s bestowal of existence is done in this way
on the basis of His Knowledge about the eternal essence of each
170 Sufism and Taoism
. thing, the existence bestowed upon individual things must necessar-
ily assume a different form in each case.
But there is also another aspect to the matter. The existence itself
which God bestows upon the things is, in so far as it is existence,
always one and the same. Existence qua existence can never differ
from one case to another. God bestows upon all things one and the
same existence, but the individual ‘recipients’ receive it in different
ways, each according to its own particular nature, and actualize it in
different forms. Ibn ‘Arab! describes this aspect of the matter by
saying: God does nothing more than bestowing existence; it is men
who determine and delimit it individually, and give it particular
coloring, each according to his archetype.
‘There is not even one among us but has his own determined position’
(XXXVII, 164). This (i.e., the ‘determined position’) refers to what
you were in the state of archetypal subsistence according to which
you have come into being. You can look at the matter in this way
when you affirm that you do have existence. But even if you affirm
that existence belongs to the Absolute, not to you, still you have
unquestionably a determining power upon the existence coming
from the Absolute. Of course, once you are a real existent, your
determining power has undoubtedly a part to play in it, though
properly speaking the ultimate Determiner is the Absolute.
In this respect, then, to the Absolute belongs only the act of directing
existence toward you, while the actual determination of it belongs to
you. So do not praise except yourself, do not blame except yourself.
There remains for the Absolute only the praise for having given (you)
existence. For that definitely is the act of the Absolute, not yours. 25
This way of thinking cannot but raise a number of crucial problems
within the framework of Islamic thought. Most noteworthy of them
is the repercussion it produces in the field of moral ideas.
All men are just as they are, according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, because they
have been so determined by their own permanent archetypes from
eternity. No one in the world, whether he be good or bad, a believer
or a disbeliever, goes against the Will of God. Taking the example of
one who disobeys the Apostle of God, ‘contender’ {munazV), Ibn
‘Arab! argues: 26
He who contends against him (i.e., the Apostle of God) is not thereby
deviating from his own reality in which he was in the archetypal state
when he was still in the state of non-existence. For nothing comes
into being except that which he had in the state of non-existence, i.e.,
archetypal subsistence. So (by struggling in opposition to the Apostle
of God) he is not stepping over the boundaries set by his reality, nor
does he commit any fault on his (predetermined) road.
Thus calling his behavior ‘contending’ (niza‘) is merely an accidental
matter which is a product of the veils covering the eyes of ordinary
Permanent Archetypes
171
people. As God says: ‘But the majority of men do not know. They
know only the apparent surface of the present world, while being
completely neglectful of the Hereafter’ (XXX, 6-7). Thus it is clear
that it (i.e., regarding their behavior as ‘contending’) is nothing but
an inversion (i.e., one of those things which the people whose eyes
are veiled turn upside down).
This argument on the ‘contender’ applies to every phenomenon in
the world. Everything, whether good or bad from the human point
of view, is what it is in accordance with what has been definitely and
immovably determined from eternity. Everything, in this sense,
goes the way prepared beforehand by the Divine Will, and nothing
can deviate from it.
If the distinction between good and bad is but an accidental matter,
and if everything occurs as it has been determined by its own
archetype, the doctrine of the reward for the good and the chastise-
ment for the bad, which is one of the most basic articles of faith in
Islam, must necessarily be gravely affected. Here follows the pecul-
iar interpretation by Ibn ‘Arab! of the problem of ‘reward and
punishment’ ( thawab-‘iqab ). 27
The rise of the distinction between good and bad (from the
religious point of view) is a phenomenon which occurs only at the
level upon which human beings live a social life in a religious
community. He who, at this level, is regarded as morally responsible
is called by the Law a mukallaf meaning ‘one who is charged with
responsibilities’.
Now when a mukallaf acts in the light of the Law, either he
‘obeys’ its injunctions or ‘disobeys’ and ‘rebels’ against it. It is a
truism or even a tautology to say that in the former case the man is
mufi‘, i.e., one who is obedient to God. But the important point is
that, in Ibn ‘ ArabF s view, in the second case he is no less obedient to
God than in the first. For even in the second case, the man acts as he
does simply according to the dictates of his permanent archetype,
which, as we know, is a direct manifestation of the Divine Will.
Of course, when a man ‘disobeys’ God, there is no other way for
Him than either forgiving him or punishing him. But the remarkable
fact about this is that God, on His part, ‘obeys’ the man, and acts
according to the dictates of his actions. The ‘obedience’ ( inqiyad )
occurs here, as Bali Effendi remarks, on both sides. And this, Ibn
‘Arab! says, is the meaning of ‘religion’ {din) in the sense of islam
( = inqiyad ‘obedience’) as well as in the sense of jaza ‘requital’.
Religion, indeed, is ‘requital’, he says. When a man ‘obeys’ God,
He requites him with ‘what pleases’ him, while when he ‘disobeys’,
God requites him with ‘what displeases’ him. Requital with what is
pleasing is called ‘reward’, and requital with what is displeasing or
172 Sufism and Taoism
painful is called ‘punishment’. Subjectively, there is naturally a
serious difference between ‘reward’ and ‘punishment’, and the dif-
ference is keenly felt by the man who obtains ‘reward’ and ‘punish-
ment’ respectively. Objectively, however, there is no fundamental
difference between the two. For in both cases, God is just acting in
‘obedience’ to the requirement of the archetype. A certain
archetype necessarily requires a certain action on the part of a man,
and that action necessarily requires, on the part of God, either
‘reward’ or ‘punishment’.
Thus when a man obtains something good (i.e., 'reward’), he himself
is the one who gives it to him. And when he obtains something bad
(i.e., 'punishment’), it is no other than himself that gives it to him.
Nay, he is the one who is bountiful ( mun'im ) to him, and he is the one
who is his own chastiser ( mu‘ adhdhib ) . So let him praise only himself,
and let him blame only himself. ‘And God possesses the irrefutable
argument’ (VI, 149) in His Knowledge about men, because Know-
ledge follows its objects.
There is, however, a still deeper understanding of the problems of
this kind, which is as follows. All the ‘possible’ things, in effect, have
their root in non-existence. (What is usually regarded as their ‘exis-
tence’) is nothing but the existence of the Absolute appearing in
various forms of the modes of being peculiar to the ‘ possible’ things in
themselves and in their very essences. And this will make you under-
stand who is the one who really enjoys and who is the one who really
suffers. (That is to say, he who is really pleased by the reward and
really pained by the punishment is not the man, but the Absolute
which manifests itself in the particular form of the man according to
his archetype, which, again, is no other than a state of the Absolute
itself.) You will also understand thereby what really is the consequ-
ence of every state (or action) of the man. (That is to say, the reward
or punishment, as the consequence of every action of the man is in
reality a self-manifestation of the Absolute in a particular form
determined by that action.) Properly speaking, any consequence (of
an action) is simply ‘iqab which is to be understood in the (etymologi-
cal) sense of ‘what follows or results’ (‘ aqaba ). ‘Iqab in this sense
comprises both a good consequence and a bad consequence, except
that in the conventional usage of Arabic, only a bad consequence is
called ‘iqab (in the sense of ‘punishment’), while a good consequence
is called thawab ‘reward’.
If the true meanings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘reward’ and ‘punishment’
are what we have just seen, what, then, is the significance of God’s
raising among men ‘apostles’ whose function is generally thought to
be bidding people do good and avoid evil in order to attain happi-
ness? It is to be expected that in the particular context of Ibn
‘Arabi’s theory, the conception of ‘apostle’ ( rasul ) should turn out
to be radically different from the ordinary one.
Permanent A rche types 173
Comparing the apostles to physicians, Ibn ‘Arab! explicates his
idea about apostleship as follows: 28
Know that, just as a physician is said to be a ‘servant of Nature’
( khadim al-(abi‘ah ), so the apostles and their successors are com-
monly said to be the ‘servants of the Divine Command’, (i.e., It is
generally held that the apostles are physicians of the souls, whose
function it is to keep the souls in good health and, in case the souls
happen to be ill, to bring them back to their normal state.)
In reality, however, the apostles are servants of the ontological
modes of the possible things (i.e., their real function is to ‘serve’, that
is, to try to bring out exactly what is required by the essences of the
possible things in their archetypal states). But this service of theirs is
itself part of their own ontological modes ( ahwal ) which are peculiar
to them in their state of archetypal subsistence. See how marvellous
this is.
Note, however, that the ‘servant’ to be sought after here, (whether
a servant of Nature or a servant of an ontological mode of a possible
thing) must remain within the boundaries which the object of his
service (i.e., either a sick person or an ontological mode) determines,
either by the actual state or by language, (i.e., A physician cures his
patient either according to the observed bodily state of the patient or
according to what the patient verbally asks for).
A physician would be entitled to be called (unconditionally) a ‘ser-
vant of Nature’ only if he consistently acted to help promote Nature,
(but actually no physician is supposed to do such a thing, as will be
evident from the following consideration). A physician (is usually
called for in those cases in which) Nature has produced in the body of
his patient a special state for which the patient is called ‘ill’ . Now if the
physician in such a situation (unreservedly) ‘served’ Nature, the
illness of the patient would thereby simply be increased. So (instead
of helping it) he tries to repel and keep off Nature for the sake of
health by producing in the patient another bodily state which is just
the opposite of his present state, although, to be sure, ‘health’ itself
belongs to Nature, too.
Thus it is clear that the physician is not a ‘servant of Nature’ (i.e., he
does not serve Nature consistently in all cases without distinction).
He is only a ‘servant of Nature’ in the sense that he brings the body of
his patient back to health by altering his present bodily state by
means of Nature. He serves Nature in a very particular way, not in a
general way.
The physician must not serve and promote Nature in all circum-
stances without discrimination. When, for example, Nature has pro-
duced an unhealthy state like diarrhea, he must try to restrain the
activity of Nature, and to produce a healthy state. But, since the
healthy state thus produced is also part of Nature, he is, by produc-
ing it, serving after all the same Nature. And this analogy elucidates
the function of the apostle who is the physician of the souls.
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Sufism and Taoism |
Thus the physician serves Nature and does not serve Nature. Like-
wise, the apostles and their successors serve and do not serve the
Absolute (i.e., they serve the Divine Command not in all its aspects,
but only in its beneficial aspect). $
This means that the apostle is a servant of the Divine Command
only, and not a servant of the Divine Will. The Divine Command
does not necessarily coincide with the Will. On the contrary, there
often occurs discrepancy between the two. For the Command is |
issued regardless of whether it will be obeyed or not, that is, whether
what is commanded will actually occur or not, while the Will is
absolute, what is willed being of such a nature that it necessarily %
occurs. In those cases in which there is discrepancy between the
Command and the Will, the apostle serves the Command, not the
Will. If he served the Will, the apostle, instead of trying to curb evil, ^
would rather positively promote the evil-doers, and he would not
advise them to stop doing evil. But strangely enough, if the occurr-
ence of ‘evil’, when it does actually occur, is due to the Will, the
admonishing act of the apostle against it is also due to the Divine t
Will.
In a similar way, the effect of a ‘miracle’ will also appear to be far
less powerful than is commonly imagined. For no matter how many
miracles may be performed, what is determined by the archetypes
can never be altered. The apostles are possessed of a special
spiritual power called himmah 29 which enables them to perform 5
miracles. But whether they do exercise this supernatural faculty or |
not, the result will ultimately be the same, because the actual course
of events will never deviate from what has already been determined
by the archetypes.
The apostles know very well that when a miracle is performed in the
presence of the (disbelieving) people, some of them turn believers on S
the spot, while some others recognize it but do not show any assent to
it, acting unjustly, haughtily, and out of envy. There are even some
who class it as magic and hypnotism. All the apostles are aware of
this, and know that no one becomes a believer except when God has
illumined his heart by the Light of belief, and that, if the person does
not look at (a miracle performed) with this light which is called
‘belief’, the miracle is of no avail to him. This knowledge prevents
them from exercising their himmah in search of miracles, because
miracles do not have an effect uniformly on all the spectators and
their hearts.
To this refers the saying of God concerning the most perfect of the
apostles and the most knowledgeable of all men: ‘Verily thou dost
not guide aright whomever thou desirest to guide, but it is God who
guides whomever He wishes.’ (XXVIII, 56) . . . In addition to this He
says in the same place: ‘but He is best aware of those who are guided
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175
aright' (XXVIII, 56), that is to say, of those who have imparted to
God - through their own permanent archetypes, while still in the
state of non-existence - the knowledge that they would be guided
aright. All this because God has so decreed that the Knowledge
should follow its object in every case, and a man who was a believer in
the archetypal permanence and in the state of non-existence should
come into existence exactly according to that fixed form: God knows
of every man that he will come into existence in such-and-such a
form. And this is why He says: ‘but He is best aware of those who are
guided aright’, 30
The gist of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s argument is given by al-Qashani in a more
logical form, as follows : 31
A perfect knowledge (possessed by the apostles) of the reality of the
things necessarily requires that they should behave with humble
modesty in the presence of God and that they should not display the
power of disposing things at will nor exercise their himmah upon
anything. For he who really knows the truth knows that nothing at all
comes into being except that which has been in the Eternal Know-
ledge. Everything that has been known (by the Absolute) to occur
cannot but occur, and anything that has been known not to occur can
never occur.
The whole matter is thus reduced ultimately to a relation between an
Agent who knows what is in potentiality in the recipient, and a
recipient which does not receive except that which is in its essential
and natural ‘preparedness’. And if such is the case, upon what is an
apostle to exercise his himmah ? What is the use of his exercising the
himmah ? For anything whose actual occurrence or non-occurrence is
known from the very beginning can in no way be altered by his
himmah. The himmah cannot even advance or retard the exact point
of time which is assigned to the thing from eternity.
Thus the recipient does not receive except that which the Agent
knows from the beginning that it will receive, while the Agent, on His
part, does nothing except that which the recipient essentially is to
receive. This because the archetypes strictly require by themselves
from eternity to eternity what will actually happen to them when they
come out into existence, while the Agent-Knower knows only that
(i.e., that which is determined by the archetypes).
V The Mystery of Predestination
As we have repeatedly pointed out in the preceding, the way in
which each thing receives existence from the Absolute is strictly
determined by its own ‘preparedness’. The determining power of
the ‘preparedness’ ( isti‘dad ) is supreme and even the Absolute must
follow what it requires . 32
Now the thesis of the absoluteness of the determining power of
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the ‘preparedness’ is naturally and essentially connected with the
problem of predestination. The problem of predestination was
raised and discussed as something of a vital importance from the
earliest period of Islam under the key-terms qada and qadar. Ibn
‘Arab! takes up the same problem and discusses it from his particu-
lar viewpoint in terms of the theory of the archetypes.
Know that the ‘pre-determination’ (qada) is a decisive judgment
(hukm, or decree) of God concerning the things. God’s decisive
judgment concerning things is given in strict accordance with His
Knowledge of the latter themselves and their properties. And God’s
Knowledge about the things is based on what is given by the very
essences of the things.
And the ‘allotment’ (qadar) is the specification of the appointed time
at which each of the things should actually occur in accordance with
its archetypal state without any alteration. But the qada itself, when
it decides upon the destiny of each thing, does so only in accordance
with its archetype. And this is the mystery of the qadar. ...
Thus, the Judge (hakim) who issues a decree turns out in reality to be |
acting in obedience to the demand of the very thing upon which He
makes the decision in accordance with the requirement of its essence.
In this sense, the thing upon which the decision is made according to
its essence determines the Judge so that He should decide upon it in
strict accordance with what it requires. And, in fact, every ‘judge’
who makes a decision upon something becomes determined (lit.:
decided) by the object on which he makes a decision as well as by the
ground on which he makes the decision, be the ‘judge’ who he may
(i.e., whether he be the Absolute or a human being ). 33
Everything, as we already know, has its essential constitution
irrevocably determined in the archetypal state of non-existence.
God knows it from eternity as it essentially is. And on the basis of
the requirement of this perfect Knowledge God makes a decisive
judgment concerning the thing. And this judgment is the qada d 4
The qadar specifies and determines further what has been
decided by the qada . The specification is done in terms of time. In
other words, every state to be actualized in a thing is determined by
the qadar concretely as to the definite time at which it is to occur.
The qada does not contain any time determinations. It is the qadar
that assigns to every event its peculiar time. And once determined in
this way, nothing can occur even a minute earlier or later than the
assigned time.
Al-Qashani makes an interesting remark on the relation between
the qada and the qadar in reference to the Tradition. It is related
that the Prophet once passed under a wall which was about to fall
down. Somebody gave him warning against it and asked, ‘Do you
flee from the qada ’ of God?’ To this the Prophet replied, ‘I flee from
the qada’ to the qadarV The falling down of the wall may have been
Permanent Archetypes 1 ''
a matter already decided upon, i.e., qada . But, even if the falling
down of the wall was in itself an absolutely inescapable thing, the
question as to when it would actually occur was not part of the
qada’ . So there was at least room for the Prophet to escape being
crushed by the falling wall by having recourse to the qadar of the
wall.
The relation between the qada ’ and the qadar has been described
here in such a way that it will naturally suggest to our mind that the
former precedes the latter. This description should not be regarded
as final and ultimate, for there is a deeper aspect to the whole
matter.
We have just said that the qadar is a ‘further’ specification of the
qada ’ in terms of time. In reality, however, God determines the
qada’ of a thing in accordance with His Knowledge, which, in its
turn, follows in every detail the essential structure of the object of
the Knowledge. And the object of the Knowledge is, as we have
seen above, the permanent archetype of the thing. And most natur-
ally, the specification of time - or, for that matter, all the possible
specifications of the thing - is part of the archetype. 35 In this sense,
the qadar itself is determined by the archetype. Or we might even
say that the qadar is the permanent archetype. 36
There is, however, a subtle difference between the two. The
permanent archetype in itself is a Universal transcending the level
of time; it is an intelligible in the Divine Consciousness. When a
Universal is about to go into the state of actual existence and is
about to be particularized in the form of an individual thing, it
becomes first connected with a particular point of time and thereby
becomes temporally specialized. An archetype in such a state is
called qadar. It is, in other words, an archetype in a state where all
preparations have been completed for being actualized as a con-
crete existent. Since God, on His part, knows all the conditions of
the archetypes, He knows also that such-and-such an archetype is in
a fully prepared state for being actualized. And, based on this
Knowledge, He judges that this archetype will be actualized as
such-and-such a particular thing. This judgment or decree is the
qada’. Thus we see that there is a certain respect in which the qadar ,
instead of being preceded by the qada’ , does precede the qada and
determines it.
However this may be, it is certain that qadar is an extremely
delicate state in which an archetype is about to actualize itself in the
form of a concretely existent thing. To know qadar, therefore, is to
peep into the ineffable mystery of Being, for the whole secret of
Being extending from God to the world is disclosed therein. Ibn
‘Arab! remarks that ‘the mystery of qadar is one of the highest
knowledges, which God grants only to (a small number of) men who
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are privileged with a perfect mystical intuition’ . If a man happens to
obtain the true knowledge of qadar, the knowledge surely brings
him a perfect peace of mind and an intolerable pain at the same
time . 37 The unusual peace of mind arises from the consciousness
that everything in the world occurs as it has been determined from
eternity. And whatever may happen to himself or others, he will be
perfectly content with it. Instead of struggling in vain for obtaining
what is not in his capacity, he will be happy with anything that is
given him. He must be tormented, on the other hand, by an intense
pain at the sight of all the so-called ‘injustices’, ‘evils’, and ‘suffer-
ings’ that reign rampant around him, being keenly conscious that it
is not in his ‘preparedness’ to remove them from the world.
Ibn ‘Arab! ends this passage by expressing a deep admiration
for the supreme dominion of the qadar over the entire world of
Being . 38
The reality of the qadar extends its sway over the Absolute Being (in
the sense that the Absolute is decisively influenced by the ‘prepared-
ness’ of each thing when the Absolute decides its qada’) as well as
over the limited beings (in the sense that no being is given anything
beyond what has been determined by its own archetype). Nothing
can be more perfect than the qadar, nothing can be more powerful
nor greater than it, because of the universality of its effect, sometimes
extending to all things and sometimes limited to particular things.
There is another passage in the Fusus, in which Ibn ‘Arab! pursues
further the problem of the knowledge of the qadar. This time he
attempts a classification of men into several degrees based on the
extent to which they know about the qadar.
As we have seen above, to know something about the qadar is
nothing other than knowing something about the permanent
archetypes. But how can man know the truth about the archetypes?
The archetypes are a deep mystery, the true reality of which is
known only to the Absolute, because it is the inner structure of the
Divine Consciousness.
Thus it comes about that the majority of people are simply
ignorant of the archetypes, and consequently, of the qadar. These
people constitute the lowest degree on the scale. They know
nothing about the determining force of the archetypes, i.e., about
the significance of the qada and qadar. Because of their ignorance,
they ask and implore God to do for them this and that; they naively
believe that by the power of prayer they can change the eternally
fixed course of events.
Higher than this degree is the degree of people who are aware of
the unalterableness of the archetypal determinations. They do not
ask for things against or beyond what they know is determined.
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179
These people are restrained from asking (God) by their knowledge
that God has already unalterably decided their qada’. So they are
content with having prepared their places for accepting whatever will
come from Him. They have already abandoned their egos and all
their selfish motives . 39
Among people of this kind there are some who know more in
detail that the determining power of the qada’ and qadar is the
determining power of the ‘preparedness’ of their own permanent
archetypes. They know, so to speak, the inner structure of the qada ’
and qadar. These people constitute the third degree of men in terms
of their knowledge about the mystery of Being.
This kind of man knows that God’s Knowledge concerning every-
thing about him completely coincides with what he was in the state of
archetypal subsistence prior to his coming into existence. And he
knows that God does not give him except the exact amount deter-
mined by the Knowledge about himself with which his archetypal
essence has furnished Him. Thus he knows the very origin of God’s
Knowledge about him.
There is no higher class among the people of God. They are the most
‘unveiled’ of all men, because they know the mystery of the qadar .* 0
But Ibn ‘Arab! divides this highest class further into two groups,
higher and lower. The lower degree is represented by those who
know the mystery of the qadar in a broad and general way. The
higher degree is represented by those who know it in all its concrete
details.
In another place , 41 Ibn ‘Arab! explains the same distinction be-
tween the higher and the lower degree of the highest class of ‘know-
ers’ in terms of ‘preparedness’ and ‘receiving’ ( qabiil ). The higher
people are those who come to know the ‘receiving’ by knowing first
the ‘preparedness’ by the experience of ‘unveiling’ . Once you know
your ‘preparedness’ itself in its integrity, you are in a position to
look over from above the whole field of the ‘receiving’, and nothing
of what you will be receiving (i.e., what will be happening to you)
will be unknown to you any longer. You are, in other words, the
master of your own destiny. In contrast to this, the lower people
come to know their own ‘preparedness’ by experiencing first the
‘receiving’. Only after taking cognizance of what actually has hap-
pened to them do they realize that they have such-and-such a
‘preparedness’ . So the knowledge they obtain of their destiny, being
conditioned by what actually happens, is necessarily partial.
Besides, as al-Qashani points out, the knowledge thus obtained is
always liable to be mistaken because the process involves inference
(istidlal) .
Concerning this distinction within the higher degree Ibn ‘Arab!
remarks : 42
180 Sufism and Taoism
He who knows his own qadar in concrete details is higher and more
complete than the one who knows his qadar only in a broad and
general way. For the former knows what is in the Knowledge of God
concerning him. He obtains his knowledge in one of the two possible
ways: either (1) by God’s instructing him according to the very
knowledge about him which his archetypal essence has first furnished
Him with, or (2) by his permanent archetype being directly revealed
to him together with all the infinite states that unfold themselves from
it. This kind of man is higher because his position in regard to his
knowledge about himself is the same as that of God’s Knowledge
about him, for both derive from one and the same source (i.e., his
permanent archetype).
This important passage may be clarified if we interpret it as
follows.
Everything in the world is eternally and permanently determined
by its own archetype. The inner structure or content of that
archetype, however, is an impenetrable mystery because it is part of
the Divine Consciousness. But there is only one small aperture, so
to speak, through which man can have a peep into this unfathom-
able mystery. That aperture is the self-consciousness of man. Very
exceptionally, when the spiritual force of a man is unusually ele-
vated in the experience of ‘unveiling’, he may be given a chance of
witnessing directly the content of his own archetype. And in such a
case, his knowledge about his own archetype is the same as God’s
Knowledge about him, in the sense that both derive from one and
the same source. And by knowing his own archetype, not externally
but internally, he takes a peep at the great mystery of the qadar.
However, this does not mean that the Knowledge of God and the
knowledge of a highest ‘knower’ are exactly identical with each
other in every respect. For the knowledge of a man about his own
archetype is conditioned by the actual forms or states in which
the archetype is manifested. Though he looks into the content of his
archetype with an unusual penetration of insight through and
beyond the actual forms it assumes, he has no access to the
archetype as it was in the original state prior to existence.
(It is true that there occurs in the experience of ‘unveiling’
identification of the human knowledge with God’s Knowledge), but
if we consider this phenomenon from the side of the man, the whole
matter turns out to be a special favor on the part of God who has
prepared all this for him from eternity. And (the greatest wonder
consists in the fact that) this special favor which God bestows upon
him is itself part of the very content of his archetype.
The man who experiences the ‘unveiling’ comes to know the whole
content of his archetype when God lets him have a peep into it. But
‘God lets him have a peep into it’ means only that God allows him to
observe (with unusual clarity and penetration) the states of his
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archetype (as actualized in existence). For it is not in the capacity of
any creature at all - even in such a (privileged) state in which God
allows him to have an insight into all the forms of his permanent
archetype in the state in which it receives existence - to gain the same
insight as God Himself into the archetypes in their state of non-
existence, because the archetypes prior to existence are but essential
relations having no definite form at all. 43
From this we must conclude that although there is a certain respect
in which a man’s knowledge about his archetype becomes identical
with God’s Knowledge about it in that both derive from one and the
same source, there is also a fundamental difference between the two
in that the human knowledge about an archetype concerns it only in
the state of existence while God’s Knowledge concerns it both
before and after its existence. Furthermore, even this partial
identification of the human knowledge with the Divine Knowledge
is due to a special 1 concern’ of God with the particular man in whom
it realizes.
The only way possible by which man can hope to get this kind of
insight into the archetypes is, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, the experi-
ence of ‘unveiling’ . Apart from ‘unveiling’ nothing, not even Divine
Revelation to prophets, can give a knowledge of the inner structure
of the archetypes. But this does not mean that the experience of
‘unveiling’ reveals the whole secret of this problem. Ibn ‘Arabi is
very reserved concerning this point. He merely says that in
extremely special cases, the people of ‘unveiling’ can come to know
through their experience something of the mystery (ba‘d al-umur
min dhalik ). 44 The true reality of the qadar in its entirety is the
deepest of all secrets into which God alone can penetrate, because it
concerns the very delicate ontological moments at which the Divine
act of ‘creation’ comes into actual relation with its objects. And in
this depth, ‘There can be no “immediate tasting” ( dhawq ), no
self-manifestation, no “unveiling” except for God alone’.
Compared with Ibn ‘Arabi, al-Qashani is extremely daring in that
he admits straightforwardly that in the case of the mystics of the
highest degree there is even the possibility of knowing the reality of
the qadar in an absolute way.
There is in these words of our Master a clear suggestion that it is not
impossible nor forbidden for a man to try to have an insight (into the
secret of the qadar) through the experience of ‘unveiling’ and ‘illumi-
nation’ (tajalli) It is possible for God to let anybody He likes gain
an insight into ‘something’ of the mystery in a partial way.
Is it possible for a man to gain an unconditional insight into it? No, he
can never do that in so far as he is a man. However, when a
man becomes annihilated (i.e., in the mystical experience of
182 Sufism and Taoism
‘self-annihilation’ fana’) and loses his name and his personal identity
to such a degree that there remains in him no trace of his I-ness and
his own essence, thus losing himself completely, then it is possible
that he gains an insight into the Reality through the Reality in so far
as he himself is the Reality. Of course such a thing never happens
except to a man of the most perfect ‘preparedness ’. 46
A man who is allowed to have an insight into the depth of the qadar
through ‘immediate tasting’ and ‘unveiling’, whether the insight he
gains be partial (as Ibn ‘Arabi suggests) or total and absolute (as
al-Qashani states), is not an ordinary man. We are in the presence of
a Perfect Man, a problem with which we shall be occupied in
Chapter XV of the present work.
VI The Mutual ‘Constraint’ between God and the World
We have seen in the preceding that, in the world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi,
the power of the ‘preparedness’ belonging to each of the archetypes
is absolutely supreme, so supreme that no force, not even God
Himself, can reduce it. Indeed, it is impossible for God even to
desire to change its fixed form.
Ibn ‘Arabi describes this fact in terms of the concept of reciprocal
taskhir between the Absolute and the world. The word taskhir , or its
verbal form sakhkhara, means in ordinary Arabic, in the field of
human relations, that a person endowed with a strong power
humbles and overwhelms another and constrains the latter to do
whatever he wants him to do. Thus here again Ibn ‘Arab! uses an
extremely daring expression which might look simply blasphemous
to common sense, and states that as the Absolute ‘constrains’ the
world, so the world, on its part, ‘constrains’ the Absolute.
The idea that God governs the world, things and men, with His
absolute power and ‘constrains’ everything to do whatever He
wants it to do is something natural in Semitic monotheism and does
not raise any difficulties; but its reverse, i.e., the idea that the world
‘constrains’ God, is beyond the comprehension of common sense.
This idea is understandable and acceptable only to those who know
thoroughly the basic structure of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s philosophy and who,
therefore, are able to see what he really means by this apparently
blasphemous expression. To put it in a nutshell, he means that each
thing determines existence in a particular way as required by its own
‘preparedness’, or that the self-manifestation of the Absolute is
actualized in each thing in a definite form in strict accordance with
the requirement of the archetype. Thus formulated, the idea turns
out to be one which is already quite familiar to us. But this does not
mean that the idea of taskhir discloses nothing new to our eyes. In
Permanent Archetypes 183
fact the ontological core itself of Ibn ‘Arabi’s entire philosophizing
is surprisingly simple and solidly immovable; it is the different
angles from which he considers it that constantly move and change,
revealing at every step a new aspect of the core. Every new angle
discloses some unexpected aspect of it. As he goes on changing his
perspective, his philosophy becomes molded into a definite form.
This process itself is, in short, his philosophy. The concept of taskhir
is one of those crucial perspectives.
As we have already observed, there are, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, a
number of degrees distinguishable among the beings of the world.
And the general rule is that a higher order exercises taskhir over a
lower order. And this not only applies to the relation between
genera and species, but the same phenomenon occurs even among
members of one and the same species. A man, for example, subju-
gates and subordinates another.
This is made possible in the particular case of man by the fact that
man has two different aspects: (1) ‘humanity’ (insaniyah) and (2)
‘animality’ (hayawaniyah) . In the first aspect, man is ‘perfect’
( kamil ), and the Arabic word for man in this sense is insan. The
second aspect represents the material and animal side of man, and
the Arabic word for man in this sense is bashar. 41 And the attribute
proper to this aspect of man is ‘imperfect’ or ‘defective’ ( naqi $ ).
In the first aspect, all men are equal to each other; there is no
difference of orders or degrees among them, and, therefore, taskhir
cannot occur on this level. In the second aspect, on the contrary,
there is actually the ‘higher’ -‘lower’ relation among men in terms of
wealth, rank, dignity, intelligence, etc. Naturally, on this level, a
‘higher’ man subjugates a ‘lower’ man. 48 To this we must add that
the ‘animality’ of man and the ‘animality’ of the animals, though
both are the same qua ‘animality’, are different in rank, the former
being superior to the latter. Thus the ‘animality’ of man subjugates
and constrains the ‘animality’ of the animals.
The animality of man maintains its control over the animality of the
animals, because, for one thing, God has made the latter naturally
subservient to the former, but mainly because animal in its ontologi-
cal root (a$/) is non-animal. This is why animal surpasses man in the
amount of taskhir it suffers. For a non-animal (i.e., inanimate, which
happens to be the ontological root of animal) possesses no will; it is
completely at the mercy of one who controls it at will . 49
Thus Ibn ‘Arabi shows at the outset the descending order of
taskhir. man -» animal — »• non-animal. Animal vis-a-vis man dis-
closes its ontological ‘root’ which is non-animal. Thus, although
man himself is also an animal, his animality is superior to the
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animality of animal, because non-human animal in the presence of
human animal stands naked, so to speak, in its non-animal root, and
behaves toward the latter as a non-animal devoid of will-power. But
an animal taken as a full-fledged animal, and not in its non-animal
root, is quite different from this.
But animal (not in its root but as an actual being) has will and acts in
pursuit of aims. So it comes about that an animal displays obstinate
refusal to obey in some cases when one tries to subjugate it. If the
animal in question happens to possess the power to manifest this
refusal, it does manifest it in the form of restiveness. But if it happens
to lack that power or if what a man wants it to do happens to coincide
with what it wants to do, then the animal obeys with docility the will
of the man.
Similarly a man standing in the same position (as animal vis-a-vis
man) to another man acts in obedience to the will of the latter
because of something - wealth, for instance - by which God has
raised the rank of the latter over the former. He acts this way because
he wishes to obtain (part of) the wealth, which in certain cases is
called ‘wages’ . To this refers the Qoranic verse: ‘And We have raised
some of the people above others by degrees so that they might force
one another to servitude’ (XLIII, 32). If (of two men) one is subju-
gated and constrained by the other who is his equal (as a member of
the same species ‘man’), it is only because of his ‘animality’, not
‘humanity’, for two equals qua equals remain opposed to each other
(and there can be no taskhir between them). Thus the higher of the
two in terms of wealth or social status subjugates the lower, acting
thereby on the basis of his ‘humanity’, while the lower is subjugated
by the former either from fear or covetousness, acting on the basis of
his ‘animality’, not ‘humanity’. For no one can subjugate anybody
who is equal to him in every respect. Do you not see how the beasts
(that are so docilely subjugated by men) show among themselves a
fierce and determined opposition to each other because they are
equal?
This is why God says: ‘And We have raised some of the people above
others by degrees’, . . . and taskhir occurs precisely because of these
different degrees. 50
Ibn ‘ ArabI distinguishes between two kinds of taskhir. One of them
is what has just been described. It is called ‘constraining by will’
(taskhir bi-al-iradah ). It refers to a descending order of taskhir, in
which a higher being constrains a lower, and which is quite a natural
phenomenon observable everywhere in the world of Being.
In contrast to this, the second is an ascending order of taskhir, in
which a lower being subjugates and constrains a higher being. In this
phenomenon, ‘will’ ( iradah ) has no part to play. A lower being does
not and can not constrain a higher one by exercising his will. Rather
the higher being is constrained by the very natural state in which the
lower being is found. It is therefore called ‘constraining by the state
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185
(or situation)’ (taskhir bi-al-hal ). Here the ‘constraining’ occurs by
the mere fact that the lower and the higher happen to be in a certain
relationship with each other. The difference between the two kinds
of taskhir is explained by Ibn ‘Arabi in the following way : 51
The taskhir is of two kinds. The first is a taskhir which occurs by the
will of the ‘constrained ( musakhkhir ) who subdues by force the
‘constrained’ (musakhkhar) . This is exemplified by the taskhir exer-
cised by a master over his slave, though both are equal in ‘humanity’ .
Likewise the taskhir exercised by a Sultan over his subjects in spite of
the fact that the latter are equal to him as far as their ‘humanity’ is
concerned. The Sultan constrains them by virtue of his rank.
The second kind is the taskhir by the ‘state’ or ‘situation’, like the
taskhir exercised by the subjects over their king who is charged with
the task of taking care of them, e.g., defending and protecting them,
fighting the enemies who attack them, and preserving their wealth
and their lives, etc. In all these things, which are the taskhir by the
‘state’, the subjects do constrain their sovereign. 52 In reality, how-
ever, this should be called taskhir of the ‘position’ (martabah ) , 53
because it is the ‘position’ that compels the king to act in that way.
Some kings (just ignore this and) act only for their own selfish
purposes. But there are some who are aware that they are being
constrained by their subjects because of their ‘position’ . The kings of
this latter kind know rightly how to estimate their subjects. And God
requites them for this with the reward worthy to be given only to
those who really know the truth of the matter. The reward which such
people obtain is for God alone to give because of His being involved
personally in the affairs of His servants. Thus, in this sense, the whole
world acts by its very ‘state’ as a ‘constrained who constrains the One
who is impossible (on the level of common sense) to be called ‘con-
strained’. This is the meaning of God’s saying: ‘Every day He is in
some affair’ (LV, 29).
This makes clear that the proposition: ‘the Absolute is “con-
strained” by the creatures’ - a proposition which is unimaginable on
the level of common sense - has no other meaning for Ibn ‘ Arab!
than that the Absolute perpetually manifests itself in the affairs
(shu’un, i.e., various states and acts) of the creatures and confers
upon them all kinds of properties in accordance with the require-
ments of their ‘preparedness’. According to his interpretation, the
Qoranic verse: ‘Every day He is in some affair’ refers to this fact,
meaning as it does, ‘every day (i.e., perpetually) the Divine “He”
(i.e., He-ness) is manifesting itself in this or that mode of being in
the creatures, according to the requirement of the “preparedness”
of each’.
Thus, from whatever angle he may start, Ibn ‘Arabi ultimately
comes back to the central concept of ‘self-manifestation’. And the
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problem of taskhir in this context is reduced to that of the self-
manifestation of the Absolute being determined variously in accor-
dance with the natural capacities of the individual existents. We
may express the same thing, still within the framework of Ibn
‘Arabi’s world-view, by saying that the permanent archetypes, or
the eternal potentialities, must obey the strictly necessary and
unchangeable laws laid down by themselves, when they become
actualized in individual things. Taskhir is after all the supreme
power exercised by the ‘preparedness’ of each thing.
God’s self-manifestation varies according to the ‘preparedness’ of
each individual locus. Junayd 54 was asked once about the mystical
knowledge ( ma'rifah ) of God and the ‘knower’ (‘ arif ). He replied.
‘The color of water is the color of its vessel’ . This is, indeed an answer
which hits the mark, for it describes the matter as it really is. ss
Water has no color of its own; it is rather colored by the color of
the vessel which contains it. This metaphor implies that the Abso-
lute has no particular form to which we might point as the Form of
the Absolute. The truth of the matter is that the Absolute manifests
itself in infinitely various forms according to the particularities of
the recipients. And the receptive power of the latter plays a decisive
role in ‘coloring’ the originally ‘colorless’ Absolute. The Divine
Name, the ‘Last’ ( al-dkhir ) expresses this aspect of the Absolute.
The ‘Last’, i.e., One whose place is behind all, refers to that particu-
lar aspect of the Absolute in which it ‘follows’ the inborn capacity
(or ‘preparedness’) of everything. Taken in this sense, the taskhir of
God by the creatures is something quite natural, particularly in the
philosophical system of Ibn ‘Arabl. But it is not for everybody to
understand the problem in this way.
A man who has but ‘a feeble intellect’, Ibn ‘Arabi says, cannot
tolerate the dictum that God is ‘ constrained’ . Such a man misunder-
stands the concept of the Omnipotence of God, and sets against this
dictum another dictum that God can do everything, even impossible
things. And by this he imagines that he has ‘purified’ ( tanzih ) God
from weakness and disability.
Some of the thinkers whose intellect is feeble, being misled by the
conviction that God is able to do whatever He wants to do, have come
to declare it possible for God to do even those things that flatly
contradict Wisdom and the real state of things. 56
VII Gifts of God
We know already that the self-manifestation of the Absolute
means, among other things, bestowal of Being. Being or existence is
Permanent Archetypes 187
in this sense a precious gift bestowed by God upon all beings. Ibn
‘Arab! discusses the nature of the archetypes from this particular
point of view and emphasizes here again the decisive part played by
them. In fact, the theory of the Divine gifts occupies a considerably
important place in his philosophy, and he develops in the Fusus a
very detailed analysis of this problem.
He begins by classifying the gifts of the Absolute. 57
Know that the Divine gifts and favors, which appear in this world of
Becoming through the medium of men or without their medium, are
of two kinds: (1) ‘essential gifts’ (‘atdyd dhatiyah) and (2) 'gifts
given through the Names f atdyd asmaiyah). The distinction be-
tween these two kinds is clearly discerned by the people of ‘immedi-
ate tasting’.
There is also (another way of classifying the Divine gifts, according to
which three kinds of gifts are distinguished:) (1) gifts that are given in
response to an act of asking (on the part of the creatures) concerning
some particular thing. This occurs when, for example, a man says, ‘O
my Lord, give me such-and-such a thing!’ The man specifies a par-
ticular thing which he desires; he does not think of anything else. (2)
Gifts that are given in response to a non-specified asking. This occurs
when a man says without any specification, ‘(My Lord,) give me what
Thou knowest to be beneficial to any part of my being, whether
spiritual or physical. (3) Gifts that are given independently of any act
of asking (on the part of the creatures), whether the gifts in question
be ‘essential’ or ‘through the Names’.
The theory of the Divine gifts that underlies the first of these two
classifications is nothing else than the theory of the self-
manifestation of the Absolute considered from a somewhat new
point of view. The Essence ( dhat ) of the Absolute, as we saw above
in dealing with the concept of ontological ‘breathing’, pervades and
runs through all beings. From the specific point of view of the
present chapter, this means that the Absolute gives its own Essence,
as it were, as a gift to all beings. Likewise, the Attributes (or Names)
of the Absolute are manifested in the attributes of all beings. This
would mean that the Absolute has given its Attributes as gifts to the
creaturely world. It is to be remarked that both these gifts corres-
pond to the (3) of the second classification mentioned above.
These gratuitous gifts are given by God to all, regardless of whether
they ask for them or not. In common-sense understanding, a gift is
generally given by God when someone asks Him to give it to him. In
the second classification given above, Ibn ‘Arab! divides the ‘asking’
into specified and non-specified.
Whether in a specified form or in a non-specified form, however,
when a man asks anything of God, he is completely under the sway
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of his own ‘preparedness’ . What he obtains as a result of his asking is
determined by his ‘preparedness’. Even the fact itself that he asks
for anything is determined by his ‘preparedness’.
If everything is predetermined in this way, and if nothing at all can
ever happen except that which has been predetermined, why do
people ask anything of God? In answering this question, Ibn ‘ Arabi
divides ‘those who ask’ ( sa’ilun ) into two categories, and says: 58
The first category is formed by those who are urged to ask by their
natural impatience, for man is by nature ‘very impatient’ (XVII, 11).
The second are those who feel urged to ask because they know that
there are in the hands of God certain things which are predetermined
in such a way that they shall not be obtained unless asked for. A man
of this sort thinks, ‘It may be that the particular thing which we ask
God to give happens to belong to this kind’ . His asking, in this case, is
a kind of precaution taken for any possibility in the matter. (He takes
such an attitude) because he knows neither what is in the Knowledge
of God nor what the ‘preparedness’ (i.e., his own ‘preparedness’ and
that of the thing he is asking for) will cause him to receive. For it is
extremely difficult to know concerning every single moment what the
‘preparedness’ of an individual will give him in that very fraction of
time. Besides, if the asking itself were not given by the ‘prepared-
ness’, he would not even ask for anything. Those, of the people of the
(constant) ‘presence’ (with God), 59 who cannot attain to such a
(comprehensive) knowledge of their own ‘preparedness’, can at least
attain to the point at which they obtain a knowledge of their ‘pre-
paredness’ at every present moment. For due to their (constant)
‘presence’, they know what the Absolute has just given them at that
moment, being well aware at the same time that they have received
precisely what they have received because of their ‘preparedness’.
These people are subdivided into two classes: 60 ( 1) those who obtain
knowledge about their own ‘preparedness’ judging by what they have
received, and (2) those who know on the basis of (their knowledge
of) their own ‘preparedness’ what they are going to receive. And this
last represents the most perfect knowledge conceivable of the ‘pre-
paredness’ within this class of people.
To this class also belong those who ask, not because of their natural
impatience (the first category) nor because of the possibility (of the
thing they want being dependent upon their asking (the second
category), but who ask simply in obedience to God’s Command as
expressed by His words: ‘Call upon Me, and I shall respond to you’
(XL, 60).
Such a man is a typical ‘servant’. He who asks in this way has no
personal intention toward anything, specified or non-specified. His
sole concern is to act in obedience to whatever his Master commands
him to do. So if the objective situation (coming from the archetype)
demands asking, he does ask out of sheer piety, but if it demands him
to leave everything to God’s care and to keep silence, he does keep
silence. Thus, Job and others (like him) were made to endure bitter
Permanent Archetypes 189
trials, but they did not ask God to remove the sufferings with which
He tried them. But later, when the situation demanded them to ask,
(they asked God,) and God did remove their sufferings from them.
Thus there are recognizable three categories of ‘those who ask’,
each category being characterized by a particular motive from
which they ask and by a particular way of asking. But whatever the
motive and whatever the way, there seems to be practically no open
space for the act itself of asking to be effective. For as we observe at
the outset, everything is determined from eternity and the act of
asking cannot possibly produce even a slight change in the strictly
predetermined course of events. Indeed, man’s asking for some
‘gift’ from God and God’s granting him his wish are also predeter-
mined. As Ibn ‘Arabi says: 61
Whether the request is immediately complied with or put off depends
upon the qadar which God Himself has decided from eternity. 62 If the
asking occurs exactly at its determined time, God responds to it
immediately, but in case its determined time is to come later, whether
in this world or in the Hereafter, God’s compliance with the request is
also deferred. Note that by compliance (or response) here I do not
mean the verbal response consisting in God’s saying, ‘Here I am!’ 63
What we have just dealt with concerns the situation in which man
positively asks of God something, in a specified or non-specified
way. And we have noticed the supreme determining power exer-
cised by the ‘preparedness’ and qadar in such cases.
We turn now to the problem of gifts that are given independently
of any positive act of asking on the part of man. Since this represents
the self- manifestation of the Absolute in its typical form, it will be
clear even without any further explanation that the nature of the
particular thing that receives a gift of this kind (i.e., the nature of the
locus of the self-manifestation) exercises a decisive influence upon
the whole process. Our main concern will be, therefore, with an
analysis of the way Ibn ‘Arabi deals with the problem on the level of
theoretical thinking.
He begins by pointing out that the word ‘asking’ in this particular
case means specifically verbal asking. Otherwise, everything is ‘ask-
ing’ in some form or another in a broad sense. So by the phrase:
‘gifts that are not due to asking’, he simply means, he says, those
gifts that are given independently of verbal asking.
Non-verbal ‘asking’ is divided into two kinds: (1) ‘asking by
situation’ ( su’al bi-al-hal ), and (2) ‘asking by preparedness’ ( su’al
bi-al-istV dad ). Of these two kinds Affifi gives the following explana-
tion. 64 The ‘asking by situation’ is reducible to the second type of
non-verbal asking, because the objective situation of a thing or a
person asking for something depends ultimately on the nature of the
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‘preparedness’ of that thing or person. When a man is ill, for
example, his situation or state ‘asks for’ something (e.g., being
cured), but the illness itself is due to the ‘preparedness’ of that
particular man. The ‘asking by preparedness’ concerns this or that
attribute pertaining to existence, which the very nature of each
existent asks for. This is the only kind of ‘asking’ to which the
Absolute responds in the real sense of the word. Thus if something
has been predetermined from eternity that it should be such-and-
such, and if the nature of that thing actually demands it as it has been
predetermined, the demand is immediately satisfied. Everything
that happens in this world of Being happens only in this way.
To this Affifi adds the remark that this puts the determinist
position of Ibn ‘ Arabi beyond all doubt. Only it is not a mechanical
material determinism but is rather close, he says, to the Leibnizian
concept of pre-established harmony.
However this may be, Ibn ‘Arab! himself explains his position in
his peculiar way. Here follows what he says about this problem. 65
As regards (gifts) that are not due to asking, it is to be remarked that I
mean by ‘asking’ here only the verbal expression of a wish. For
properly speaking, nothing can do without ‘asking’ in some form or
other, whether by language or situation or ‘preparedness’. (The
‘asking by situation’ may be understood by the following analogy .) 66
An unconditioned praise of God is not possible except in a verbal
form. As to its inner meaning, (praise of God) is necessarily con-
ditioned by the situation which urges you to praise Him. And (the
situation) is that which conditions you (and determines your praise)
through a Name denoting an action or a Name denoting ‘puri-
fication’. As to the ‘preparedness’, man is not (ordinarily) aware of
it, he is only aware of the situation, for he is always conscious of the
motive (from which he praises God), and that motive is precisely
(what I mean by) ‘situation’. Thus ‘preparedness’ is the most con-
cealed of all (grounds of) ‘asking’.
Let us first elucidate what is exactly meant by the analogy of
‘praising’. Man praises God (in Arabic) by saying verbally al-hamd
li-Allah (i.e., ‘praise be to God!’). 67 Everybody uses the same for-
mula. The formula itself in its verbal form remains always uncon-
ditioned. But if we go into the psychology of those who cry out
al-hamd li-Allah! and analyze it in each particular case, the person
A, for example, is thinking of his own bodily state of health and says
al-hamd li-Allah as an effusion of his thankfulness for his health, 68
while the person B praises God by the same formula because he is
keenly conscious of the greatness and eternity of 69 God. Thus the
motive, or the concrete situation, which drives man to use the same
formula differs from case to case. This particular motivating situa-
tion is called hal, ‘situation’, or ‘state’.
Permanent Archetypes 191
Now if we transpose this relation between the varying motives
and the use of the same formula to the context of Divine gifts, we
can easily grasp the basic structure of the latter. Everything in the
world is always ‘asking’ of the Absolute an ontological ‘gift’ accord-
ing to the requirement of its own ‘preparedness’ . This general form
or pattern is everywhere the same. However, if we take each single
unit of time and analyze minutely its content, we find that the
‘asking’ assumes at every moment a unique form according to
the concrete situation peculiar to that particular moment. This is
the requirement of the ‘situation’.
The requirements of the ‘situations’, therefore, are concrete
details within the ‘preparedness’ , and are ultimately reducible to the
latter. Subjectively, however, i.e., from the standpoint of a particu-
lar man, he is clearly conscious of his own ‘situation’, while he is
ordinarily unconscious of his ‘preparedness’. A sick man, for
instance, asks for health because he feels pain. He is conscious of the
motive from which he is making urgent supplication for health. But
he is not conscious of the ‘preparedness’ which concerns his very
existence and which dominates everything about himself.
The ‘preparedness’ for ordinary men is after all an insoluble
mystery. So the ‘asking by preparedness’, although it is the most
powerful of the above-mentioned three kinds of ‘asking’, turns out
to be the ‘most concealed’ of all.
Reference has been made to the close relation that exists between
the theory of ‘gifts’ and the theory of self-manifestation. In fact both
are, as we have observed above, but one thing considered from two
different perspectives. I would like to bring the present section to a
close by discussing a particular point which emerges when we put
these two perspectives together in one place.
At the outset of this section we saw Ibn ‘Arabi dividing the ‘gifts’
into two major classes: ( 1) essential gifts and (2) gifts given through
the Names. As to the first of these two classes, the word ‘essential’
(dhatiyah) itself will be enough to suggest that it has something to do
with the self-manifestation of the Essence ( dhat ).
In effect, ‘the essential gifts’ are, from the viewpoint of tajalli , a
self-manifestation of the Divine Essence. It is to be noticed, how-
ever, that it is a particular kind of essential self-manifestation which
is designated by the term ‘holy emanation’. It is not what is desig-
nated by the term ‘the most holy emanation’. 70 Ibn ‘Arab! is evi-
dently thinking of this distinction when he says: 71
Self-manifestation does not occur from the Essence except in the
particular form determined by the locus in which it (the Essence) is
manifested. No other way of (essential self-manifestation) is poss-
ible. So the locus sees nothing else than its own form as reflected in
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the mirror of the Absolute. It never sees the Absolute itself. It is
utterly impossible for it to see the Absolute although it is conscious
that it is perceiving its own form in no other (place) than (the mirror
of) the Absolute.
The intended meaning of this passage is explicated by al-Qashani in
the following way : 72
There can be no self-manifestation coming from the pure attribute-
less Essence, because the Essence in its attributeless aspect does not
manifest itself to anybody (or anything). Indeed, that which manif-
ests itself is the Essence in its aspect of Mercifulness ( rahmaniyah ) 73
. . . , while the Essence qua Essence does not make self-
manifestation except to itself. Toward the creatures, the self-
manifestation is done exclusively according to the ‘p re P are dness’ of
the locus in each case.
And this kind of self-manifestation is, as Bali Efendi rightly
remarks, nothing other than the ‘holy emanation’. It is the self-
manifestation of the Absolute, the direct source of which is the
Presence (i.e., ontological level) of the all-comprehensive Name
(which comprises all the Names or Attributes gathered together
into a unity).
Bali Efendi, in the same place, explains with utmost lucidity the
relation between this ‘holy emanation’ and the ‘essential gifts’ and
‘the gifts given through the Names’:
The self-manifestation whose source is the Essence and which takes a
particular form according to the form of its locus is the ‘holy emana-
tion’. (This latter is divided into two kinds).
(1) When the locus is of such a nature that it receives the self-
manifestation of the Essence from the Presence of the comprehen-
sive Name, the Essence manifests itself (in that locus) directly from
the Presence of the comprehensive unity of all Names. This kind of
self-manifestation is called ‘Divine 74 self-manifestation’, and the
result of it are the ‘essential gifts’.
(2) But when the (locus) is of such a nature that it receives the
self-manifestation of the Essence from the particular Presence of one
particular Name, the Essence manifests itself from that particular
Presence. This is what is called the ‘self-manifestation through an
Attribute or a Name’ , and there result from it the ‘gifts given through
the Names’.
Notes
1. See Chapter IX on Divine Mercy.
2. Fus., p. 114/102.
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Permanent Archetypes
3. The point will be discussed later under III of the present chapter.
4. Fus., p. 63/76.
5. ibid.
6. Insha’ al-Dawa’ir, ed. Nyberg, pp. 16-17.
7. The first thing is the Absolute, the second is the world, and the third in the order of
description is the archetype.
8. op. cit., p. 19.
9. The English word ‘eternal’ in this context must always be strictly understood in
the sense of ‘eternal a parte ante' . The dictum: ‘the world is eternal’ means, therefore,
that ‘the world has no temporal beginning’, which would seem flatly to contradict the
Qoranic teaching of the ‘creation’ of the world.
10. ‘Ibn ‘ Arabi upheld the thesis of the eternity of the world ( qidam al-'alam) with
no less definiteness than the Peripatetic Philosophers’ - Affifi, Fus., Com., p. 314-
11. Fus., p. 263/211.
12. Fus., p. 16/51.
13. The Attributes dealt with here are only those that are analogically common to
the Absolute and the creatures. The Attributes like Eternity (a parte ante) and
Eternity (a parte post) are naturally excluded from consideration, because they are
never actualized in the creaturely world.
14. I rea d:fa-hiya bafinah la tazul ‘an al-wujud al-ghaybiy . The last word in the Affifi
edition is al-‘ayniy, ‘individual and concrete’. What Ibn ‘Arabi means is clearly that
the Universals, even when they are actualized in the concrete things, remain in their
original state of being ‘interior’.
15. p. 16.
16. pp. 16-17/51-52.
17. pp. 16-17/51-52.
18. Fus., PP- 17-18/52-53.
19. Fus., 43/67.
20. p. 43.
21. The first term hadith, grammatically an active form, represents the thing as
something ‘coming into temporal existence’, while the second, muhdath, which is a
passive form, represents it as something ‘which has been brought into temporal
existence’.
22. Fus., P- 18/53.
23. Fus., P- 18/53.
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Sufism and Taoism
24. Fun., pp. 75-76/82.
25. Fay., pp. 76-77/83.
26. Fay., pp. 157-158/128.
27. Fay., pp. 104-105/95-96.
28. Fay., pp. 107-108/97-98.
29. For details about himmah see Chapter XVII.
30. Fay., pp. 159-160/130-1.
31. p. 160.
32. This conception which might strike common sense as blasphemous will be found
to be not at all blasphemous if one but reflects that the ‘preparedness’ of a thing which
is said to exercise such a tremendous power is after all nothing but a particular
ontological mode of the Absolute. One must remember that, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s thought,
the whole thing is ultimately an inner drama which is eternally enacted within the
Absolute itself. All the other seemingly ‘blasphemous’ expressions which we are
going to encounter presently like ‘God obeys the creatures’, ‘The world forces God
to compulsory service etc., must be understood in terms of this basic framework.
33. Fun., pp. 161-162/131-132.
34. So there is practically no positive part played by the Absolute in this process
except that the archetypes themselves are the manifested forms of the ontological
modes of the Absolute.
35. Fun., PP- 162-163/132.
36. In effect, al-Qashanl in a passage of his commentary simply identifies the qadar
with the archetype, cf. p. 163.
37. Fun., P- 163/132.
38. Fun., p- 163/132-133.
39. Fun., P- 30/60.
40. Fun., pp. 30-31/60.
41. p. 42/67.
42. Fun., p. 31-32/60-61.
43. Fun., P- 32/61.
44. Fus . , pp. 165-166/133-134.
45. Here the word tajalli, which usually means the self-manifestation of the Abso-
lute, is used to designate the reverse side of this phenomenon, i.e., the same tajalli as
reflected in the individual consciousness of a mystic.
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Permanent Archetypes
46. p. 167.
47. usually translated as ‘mortal’.
48. For the explanation just given I am indebted to Affifi, Fun., Com., p. 286.
49. Fun., P- 243/192-193.
50. Fun., p. 244/193-194.
51. ibid.
52. In the same way, a child exercises taskhir with his ‘state’ over his parents.
53. because, properly speaking, what ‘constrains’ the king is not so much the ‘state’
of his subjects as the ‘position’ of kingship.
54. Junayd (d. 910 A.D.), one of the greatest names in the early phase of the
historical development of Sufism.
55. Fun., P- 280/225.
56. Fun., P- 42/67.
57. Fun., P- 27/58.
58. Fun., P- 28/59.
59. The people of the presence ( ahl al-hudur), al-Qashani says, are ‘those who see
whatever happens to them as coming from God, whether it (actually) occurs through
others or through themselves, and who do not recognize anything other than God as
the cause of any effect or anything existent.’ - p. 29.
60. This problem has been dealt with earlier in (V) of the present chapter.
61. Fun., P- 29/60.
62. This corresponds to the Qoranic conception that everything has a ‘clearly stated
term’ ( ajal musamma).
63. Whenever a man calls upon God in supplication, God responds by saying, ‘Here
I am!’ ( Labbayka ) This verbal response ( ijabah bi-al-qawl ) is always immediate. But
not always so is His response by action ( ijabah bi-al-fil ) which is the actualization of
what the man has asked for.
64. Fun., Com., p. 22.
65. Fun., P- 30/60.
66. The analogy which Ibn ‘Arabi offers, however, is not easy to understand due to
his peculiar way of expressing himself. The meaning of the passage will be explicated
in the paragraph immediately after the quotation.
67. Strictly speaking, al-hamd li- Allah is an exclamatory descriptive sentence mean-
ing ‘all praise belongs to God (and to God alone)’.
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68. This is expressed by Ibn ‘Arab! by saying that ‘the praise is done through a Name
denoting an action’, e.g.. Guardian (hafiz), All-giving ( wahhab ) etc.
69. This corresponds to the case in which a man praises God ‘through a Name
denoting purification (tanzih)' , Most Holy ( qaddiis ), Eternal-Everlasting ( alladhi
lam yazal wa-la yazal) etc.
70. On this basic distinction see Chapter XI.
71. Fwy., p. 33/61.
72. pp. 32-33.
73. See Chapter IX.
74. ilahiy, i.e., the self-manifestation that occurs on the level of ‘God’. As we have
seen earlier, ‘God’ or Allah is the all-comprehensive Name.
XIII Creation
I The Meaning of Creation
‘Creation’ ( khalq ) is unquestionably one of the concepts upon
which stands the Islamic world-view. It plays a prominent role in all
aspects of the religious thought of Islam. In theology, for example, it
constitutes the very starting-point of all discussions in the form of
the opposition between the ‘temporality’ ( hudiith ) and ‘eternity a
parte ante ’ ( qidam ). The world is an ‘originated’ (or ‘temporally
produced’) thing because it is the result of Divine creation. And this
conception of the world’s being ‘originated’ ( muhdath ) forms the
basis of the entire system of Islamic theology.
In the world-view of Ibn ‘ ArabI, too, ‘creation’ plays an import-
ant part as one of the key-concepts. The creative word of God,
‘Be!’ (kun) has a decisive meaning in the coming-into-being of all
beings. As we have seen, however, the most basic concept of Ibn
‘Arabi’s ontology is self-manifestation, and the world of Being is
after all nothing but the self-manifestation of the Absolute, and no
event whatsoever occurs in the world except self-manifestation. In
this sense, ‘creation’ which means the coming-into-being of the
world is naturally identical with self-manifestation.
But we would make a gross mistake if we imagine that since the
ontology of Ibn ‘Arab! is based on self-manifestation and since
there is nothing but self-manifestation, ‘creation’ is after all, for
him, a metaphor. To think that Ibn ‘Arab! used the term ‘ creation’
making a concession to the established pattern of Islamic thought,
and that he merely described self-manifestation in a more tradi-
tional terminology, is to overlook the multilateral nature of his
thought.
One of the characteristic features of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought is its
manifoldness. In the presence of one important problem, he usually
develops his thought in various directions and in various forms with
the help of rich imagery. This, I think, is due largely to the unusual
profundity and fecundity of his experience which always underlies
his thinking. The depth and richness of mystical experience
demands, in his case, multiplicity of expression.
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The theory of ‘creation’ which we are going to examine is not to
be considered as a mere religious metaphor, or some esoteric teach-
ing disguised in traditional theological terminology. ‘Creation’ is to
him as real as ‘self-manifestation’ . Or we might say that one and the
same fundamental fact existing in his consciousness has two differ-
ent aspects, one ‘creation’, and the other ‘self-manifestation’.
The first thing which attracts our attention about his theory of
‘creation’ is the important part played by the concept of ‘triad’ or
‘triplicity’, thalathiyah. This marks it off from the theory of ‘self-
manifestation’ .
The starting-point is as usual the Absolute. The ontological
ground of existence is, as we already know, the One-Absolute. But
the One, if considered in its phenomenal aspect, presents three
different aspects. They are: (1) the Essence not qua Essence in its
absoluteness, but in its self-revealing aspect), (2) the Will or iradah
(here the Absolute is a ‘Wilier’, murid), and (3) the Command or
amr 1 (here the Absolute is a ‘Commander’, amir).
These three aspects in the order given here represent the whole
process of ‘creation’. The process may be briefly described as fol-
lows. First, there arises in the One- Absolute self-consciousness - or
Knowledge (‘ ilm ) - and the permanent archetypes appear in the
Divine Consciousness. This marks the birth of the possible Many.
And thereby the Presence of the Essence (i.e., the ontological level
of the Absolute qua Absolute) descends to the Presence of Divinity
(ilahiyah, ‘being God’).
Then, in the second place, there arises the Will based on this
Knowledge to bring out the archetypes from the state of non-
existence into the state of existence. Then, on the basis of this Will,
the Command - ‘Be!’ (kun) - is issued, and thus the world is
‘created’.
Having these preliminary remarks in mind, let us read the passage
in which Ibn ‘Arabi describes the process. 2
Know - may God assist you in doing so! - that the whole matter (i.e.,
‘creation’) in itself has its basis in the ‘singleness’ ( fardiyah ). But this
‘singleness’ has a triple structure ( tathlith ). For the ‘singleness’ starts
to appear only from ‘three’. In fact ‘three’ is the first single (i.e., odd)
number.
What Ibn ‘Arab! wants to convey through these laconic expressions
may be made clear if we explain it in the following way. He begins by
saying that the very root of ‘creation’ is the ‘singleness’ of the
Absolute. It is important to remark that he refers here to the
Absolute as ‘single’ ( fard ), not as ‘One’. In other words, he is not
speaking of the Absolute as Absolute in its essential absoluteness.
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199
We are here at a lower stage at which the Absolute has self-
consciousness or Knowledge.
According to Ibn ‘Arabi, ‘one’ is not a number at all; it is the
principle and ‘birth-place’ of all numbers from ‘two’ onwards, but it
is not itself a number. ‘One’ is absolutely above all relations; it is
naturally above the concept itself of number.
‘Single’ is not like that. Outwardly it is ‘one’, but in its inner
structure it is not ‘one’ , because the concept of singleness contains in
itself the concept of ‘other’. It is ‘one’ in so far as it is other than
others. In this sense, ‘single’ is internally divisible and divided,
because we cannot represent it without at the same time represent-
ing - negatively, to be sure - the idea of otherness. In this sense it is
‘one’ composed of more than one unit. And ‘three’ is the smallest,
i.e., first, ‘single’ number in the infinitely extending series of num-
bers - which makes it particularly appropriate for functioning as the
starting-point of the Divine act of creation.
And from this Presence of Divinity (i.e., the ontological plane where
the Absolute is no longer One but Single endowed with an inner
triplicity) the world has come into existence. To this God refers when
He says: ‘ Whenever We decide (lit. ‘will’ the existence of) something,
We only say to it, ‘Be!’, and it comes into existence’ (XVI, 40). Thus
we see (the triplicity of) the Essence, the Will, and the Word. 3
Anything would not come into existence if it were not for (1) the
Essence and (2) its Will - the Will which is the drive with which the
Essence turns towards bringing something in particular into exis-
tence-and then (3) the WordBe!’ uttered to that particular thing at
the very moment when the Will turns the Essence in that direction. 4
The passage just quoted describes the structure of the triplicity on
the side of the Agent, i.e., the Absolute. But the triplicity on the part
of the Creator alone does not produce any effect. In order that the
creative activity of the Absolute be really effective, there must be a
corresponding triplicity also on the part of the ‘receiver’ (qabil), i.e.,
the thing to be created. Creation is actualized only when the active
triplicity perfectly coincided with the passive triplicity.
(The moment the creative Word of God is uttered) there arises in the
thing to be created, too, a singleness having a triplicity. And by this
triplicity alone does the thing, on its part, become capable of being
produced and being qualified with existence. The triplicity in the
object consists of (1) its thing-ness ( shay’iyyah ), (2) its hearing
( sama ‘ ), and (3) its obeying ( imtithal ) the Command of the Creator
concerning its creation. So that the (creaturely) triad corresponds
with the (Divine) triad.
The first (1) is the permanent archetypal essence of the thing in the
state of non-existence, which corresponds to the Essence of its
Creator. The second (2) is the hearing of the Command by the thing,
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which corresponds to the Will of its Creator. And the third (3) is its
obedient acceptance of what it has been commanded concerning its
coming into existence, which corresponds to the (Creator’s) Word
‘Be!’ Upon this, the thing actually comes into being.
Thus the ‘bringing-into-being’ ( takwin , or ‘production’) is to be
attributed to the thing (created). For if the thing had not in itself the
power of coming into being when the Word (‘Be!’) is uttered, it
would never come into existence. In this sense it is the thing itself that
brings it into existence from the state of non-existence. 5
It is remarkable that a special emphasis is laid here in the process of
creation on the ‘power’ (quwwah) of the thing to be created. A thing
is not created ih a purely passive way, that is, mechanically and
powerlessly, but it participates positively in its own creation. This is
another way of looking at the supreme power of the ‘preparedness’ ,
which we have discussed in the preceding chapter.
When God decides to bring something into existence, He simply
says to it ‘Be!’ And the thing, in response, comes into existence. In
this process, the coming-into-being ( takawwun ) itself is an act of
that thing, not an act of God. This conception is explained by
al-Qashani in the following terms : 6
The coming-into-being, that is, the thing’s obeying the Command,
pertains to nothing else than the thing itself, for it (i.e., coming-into-
being) is (as Ibn ‘ Arabi says) in the power of the thing; that is to say, it
is contained potentially in the thing, concealed. This is why God (in
the above-quoted Qoranic verse) ascribes it (i.e., coming-into-being)
to the thing, by saying, ‘and it comes into existence’. 7 This sentence
means that the thing (upon hearing the Word) immediately obeys the
order and comes into existence. And the thing is capable of doing so
simply because it is already existent in the Unseen (i.e., potentially),
for the archetypal subsistence is nothing other than a concealed inner
mode of existence. Everything that is ‘inward’ has in itself the power
to come out into ‘outward’ existence. This is due to the fact that the
Essence (designated by the) Name ‘Inward’ ( ba(in ) is the same
Essence (designated by the) Name ‘Outward’ ( zahir ), and because
the ‘receiver’ ( qabil ) is (ultimately) the same as the ‘Agent’ ( fa‘il ).
Such is the original theory of ‘creation’ put forward by Ibn ‘Arabi.
He affirms very emphatically that the ‘production’ {takwin) is to be
ascribed to the thing produced, not to be Absolute. Such a position
will surely be criticized by ordinary believers as considering God
powerless’ (‘ ajiz ). But, as I have repeatedly pointed out, this posi-
tion is not at all blasphemous in the eyes of those who really know
the structure of Ibn ‘Arab? s world-view. Surely, in this world-view,
the things (creatures) are described as being so positively powerful
that they leave but a limited space for the direct activity of the
Absolute. On a deeper level, however, those things that are provi-
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201
sionally considered as independently existent are nothing but so
many particularized, delimited forms of the Absolute, and all are
involved in an ontological drama within the Absolute itself; all are a
magnificent Divina Commedia.
The idea of ‘production’ (the last stage of the ‘creation’) being
ascribable to the things and not to the Absolute is further explained
by Ibn ‘Arab! in the following way : 8
God states categorically that the ‘production’ pertains to the (cre-
ated) thing itself, and not to God. What pertains to God in this matter
is only His Command. He makes His part (in the creative process)
clear by saying: ‘Whenever We decide (the existence of) something.
We only say to it “Be!”, and it comes into existence’ (XVI, 40). Thus
the ‘production’ is ascribed to the thing though, to be sure, the latter
acts only in obedience to the Command of God. And (we must accept
this statement as it is because) God is truthful in whatever He says.
Besides, this (i.e., the ascription of the ‘production’ to the thing) is
something quite reasonable, objectively speaking.
(This may be illustrated by an example.) Suppose a master who is
feared by everybody and whom nobody dares to disobey commands
his slave to stand up by saying to him, ‘ Stand up!’ {qum)\ the slave will
surely stand up in obedience to the command of the master. To the
master pertains in the process of the slave’s standing up only his
commanding him to do so, while the act of standing up itself pertains
to the slave; it is not an act of the master.
Thus it is clear that the ‘production’ stands on the basis of triplicity; in
other words, three elements are involved on both sides, on the part of
the Absolute as well as on the part of the creatures.
It will be evident, then, that in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought, the principle of
creatio ex nihilo holds true. But what makes his thesis fundamen-
tally different from the ordinary Islamic creatio ex nihilo is that the
nihil, for Ibn Arabi, is not a total unconditional ‘non-existence’ , but
non-existence in the particular sense of something being as yet
non-existent as an empirical or phenomenal thing. What he regards
as nihil is ‘existence’ on the level of the intelligibles, or - which
comes to the same thing - in the Consciousness of God. Ontologi-
cally, his nihil is the ‘possible’ ( mumkin),i.e ., something that has the
power (or possibility) to exist. The ordinary view which makes
creation a sort of Divine monodrama has its origin in the ignorance
of the positive power to be attributed to the ‘possibles’ . All things, in
Ibn ‘ Arabi’s view, have enough power to come out from the conce-
alment into the field of existence in response to the ontological
Command of God.
Thus the creaturely world is possessed of ‘efficiency’ ( fa' illy ah ).
And the things that constitute this would participate actively and
positively in the creation of themselves.
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Sufism and Taoism
Looking at an artisan who is engaged in molding things out of
clay, one might make a superficial observation that the clay has no
positive ‘efficiency’ of its own, and that it lets itself molded into
whatever form the artisan likes. In the view of such a man, the clay
in the hands of an artisan is sheer passivity, sheer non-action. He
overlooks the important fact that, in reality, the clay, on its part,
positively determines the activity of the artisan. Surely, the artisan
can make quite a considerable variety of things out of clay, but
whatever he may do, he can not go beyond the narrow limits set by
the very nature of the clay. Otherwise expressed, the nature of the
clay itself determines the possible forms in which it may be actual-
ized. Somewhat similar to this is the positive nature of a thing in the
process of ‘creation’.
The same observation, however, clearly shows that, although the
things do possess ‘efficiency’, the latter is after all secondary, not
primary. Herein lies the fundamental difference between God and
the world. ‘As women are by nature a degree lower than men’, the
creatures are a degree lower than the Absolute. The things, with all
their positive powers and capacities, have no essential priority.
As women are a degree lower than men according to God’s saying:
‘and men are a degree above them (i.e., women)’ (II, 228), the things
that have been created in the image (of God) are naturally a degree
lower than the One who has brought them into being in His image, in
spite of the fact that their forms are God’s Form itself.
And by that very degree which separates God from the world, God is
completely independent (i.e., has absolutely no need) of the whole
world, and is the primary Agent. As for the ‘form’, it is but a
secondary agent and has no essential priority which pertains only to
the Absolute. 9
II The Feminine Element in the Creation of the World
In the last part of the preceding section reference has incidentally
been made to the idea that women are by nature a degree lower than
men. This, however, should not be taken to mean that Ibn ‘ArabI
considers the role played by the feminine in the process of world
creation quite secondary, let alone unimportant. On the contrary,
the entire creative process, in his view, is governed by the principle
of femininity.
The starting-point of his thinking on this problem is furnished by
a famous Tradition which runs: ‘Of all the things of your world,
three things have been made particularly dear to me, women,
perfumes, and the ritual prayer, this last being the “cooling of my
eye” (i.e., a source of my highest joy)’ . In this Tradition, Ibn ‘ArabI
Creation
203
observes, the number ‘three’ - triplicity again! - is put in the
feminine form ( thalath ), in spite of the fact that one of the three
things here enumerated ( tib ‘perfume’) is a masculine noun. Ordi-
narily, in Arabic grammar, the rule is that, if there happens to be
even one masculine noun among the things enumerated, one treats
the whole as grammatically masculine, and uses the numeral in the
masculine form ( thalathah , for example, instead of thalath , meaning
‘three’).
Now in this Tradition, the Prophet intentionally - so thinks Ibn
‘ Arabi - uses the feminine form, thalath , and this, in his view, has a
very deep symbolic meaning. It suggests that all the basic factors
that participate in creation are feminine, and that the whole process
of creation is governed by the principle of femininity ( ta’nith ). Ibn
‘Arab! draws attention to the process by which a man (male) comes
into being : 10
The man finds himself situated between an essence (i.e., the Divine
Essence) which is his (ontological) source and a woman (i.e., his own
mother) who is his (physical) source. Thus he is placed between two
feminine nouns, that is to say, between the femininity of essence and
the real (i.e., physical) femininity.
The Essence ( dhat ), which is the original ground of all Being, is a
feminine noun. The immediate ontological ground of the forms of
all beings, i.e., the Divine Attributes, sifat (sg. sifah), is a feminine
noun. The creative power of God, qudrah is a feminine noun. Thus,
from whatever aspect one approaches the process of creation, one
runs into a feminine noun. The Philosophers ( falasifah ) who blindly
follow Greek philosophy assert that God is the ‘cause’ (' illah ) of the
existence of the world. This is a mistaken view, and yet it is
significant, Ibn ‘Arabi adds, that even in this wrong opinion about
creation, a feminine noun, ‘illah, is used to denote the ultimate
ground of the creation of the world.
The whole problem is dealt with by al-Qashani in a far more
scholastic way as follows : 11
The ultimate ground (or origin) of everything is called Mother
( umm ), because the mother is the (stem) from which all branches go
out. Do you not see how God describes the matter when He says:
‘And He created from it (i.e., the first soul, meaning Adam) its mate,
and out of the two He spread innumerable men and women’ (IV, 1).
As you see, the ‘wife’ (of Adam) was feminine. Moreover, the first
unique ‘soul’ from which she was created was itself feminine. 12
Just in the same way, the Origin of all origins over which there is
nothing is designated by a (feminine noun), haqiqah or ‘Reality’ . . .
Likewise the words designating the Divine Essence, 'ayn and dhat,
are feminine.
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Sufism and Taoism
*
Thus his (i.e., Muhammad's) intention in making (the femininity)
overcome (the masculinity) 13 is to draw attention to the special
importance of the femininity which is the very origin and source of
everything that spreads out from it. And this is true not merely of the
world of Nature but even of Reality itself.
In fact. Reality is the Father (ab) of everything in that it is the
absolute Agent (i.e., the absolutely Active, /57/). But Reality is also
the Mother (because of its passivity). It gathers together in itself both
‘activity’ ( fi‘l ) and ‘passivity’ ( infial ), for Reality is ‘passive’
( munfa‘il ) in so far as it manifests itself in the form of a ‘passive’ thing,
while in the form of the ‘active’ (Agent) it is ‘active’. The very nature
of Reality requires this unification of the ‘determination’ ( ta‘ayyun )
and ‘non-determination’ ( lata‘ayyun ). 14 Thus Reality is ‘determined’
by all determinations, masculine and feminine, on the one hand. But
on the other, it stands high above all determinations.
And Reality, when it becomes determined by the first determina-
tion, 15 is One Essence requiring a perfect balance and equilibrium
between ‘activity’ and ‘passivity’, between the exterior self-
manifestation (zuhiir) and the interior self-concealment ( butiin ). 16
And in so far as it is the ‘Inward’ (ba(in) residing in every form, it is
‘active’, but in so far as it is the ‘Outward’ ( zahir ), it is ‘passive’. . . .
The first determination, which occurs by (the Absolute’s) manifest-
ing itself to itself, attests to the fact that the Essence is absolute and
non-determined, for its self-determination (taayyun bi-dhati-hi )
must necessarily be preceded by non-determination ( la-ta‘ayyun ).
Likewise when Reality qua Reality is actualized in every determined
(i.e., concretely delimited) existent, its determination (also) requires
that it be preceded by non-determination. Nay, rather, every deter-
mined existent, considered in its reality apart from all consideration
of its actual delimitations, is an absolute (i.e., every determined
existent is in its ontological core an absolute - which is nothing but
the Absolute itself). A determined existent, in this sense, depends
upon the Absolute (which is inherent in it) and is sustained by it. So
everything is ‘passive’ in relation to that absolute (ontological)
ground, and is a locus of self-manifestation for it, while that ground is
‘active’ and remains concealed in the thing.
Thus everything is ‘passive’ considered from the point of view of its
being determined, but ‘active’ in itself, 17 considered from the point of
view of its being absolute. But the thing itself is essentially one. ... So
Reality, wherever it goes and in whatever way it appears, has (two
different aspects; namely), ‘activity’ and ‘passivity’, or ‘fatherhood’
( ubuwwah ) and ‘motherhood’ ( umumah ). And this justifies the
(Prophet’s having used) the feminine form.
The Absolute, which is the ultimate and real origin of ‘creation’,
has something feminine in it, as indicated by the feminine form of
the word ‘Essence’ ( dhat ). Furthermore, if we consider analytically
the ontological structure of the creative process, we find, even at its
first stage, the ‘first determination’, a feminine principle, the
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205
‘motherhood’, co-operating with a masculine principle, the ‘father-
hood’. The Divine Essence, in brief, is the Mother of everything in
the sense that it represents the ‘passive’ element which is inherent in
all forms of Being.
Ill Perpetual Creation
We turn now to one of the most interesting features of the theory of
creation peculiar to Ibn ‘ Arabl. This part of his theory is historically
of primary importance because it is a critique of the atomistic
philosophy of the Ash‘arite theologians. 18
We have already seen in connection with another problem that, in
Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s world-view, the self-manifestation of the Absolute is a
perpetual process whose major stages - (1) the ‘most holy emana-
tion’, (2) the ‘holy emanation’, and then (3) the appearance of
concrete individual things - go on being actualized one after
another like successive, recurrent waves. This ontological process
repeats itself indefinitely and endlessly. At every moment, and
moment after moment, the same eternal process of annihilation and
re-creation is repeated. At this very moment, an infinite number of
things and properties come into being, and at the next moment they
are annihilated to be replaced by another infinity of things and
properties.
Thus we cannot experience the same world twice at two different
moments. The world we actually experience is in perpetual flow. It
changes from moment to moment. But this continual and perpetual
change occurs in such an orderly way according to such definite
patterns that we, superficial observers, imagine that the same one
world is there around us.
Describing this perpetual flow of things in terms of the concept of
‘creation’ which is the central topic of the present chapter, Ibn
‘Arab! says that the world goes on being created anew at every
single moment. This he calls ‘new creation’ ( al-khalq al-jadid ). The
expression must not be taken in the sense of a ‘new’ creation to be
contrasted with the ‘old’, i.e., the earlier, creation of the world. The
word ‘new’ (jadid) in this context means ‘ever new’ or ‘which is
renewed from moment to moment’. The ‘new creation’ means, in
short, the process of everlasting and ever new act of creation.
Man, being endowed with self-consciousness, can have a real
living feel of this ‘new creation’ both inside and outside himself, i.e.,
both in his mind and in his body, by becoming conscious of ‘himself ,
which goes on changing from moment to moment without ever
stopping as long as he lives. However, ordinary people are not
206 Sufism and Taoism
aware of the process of ‘new creation’ even with regard to them-
selves.
Ibn ‘Arab! describes this process also as a ‘perpetual ascent’
(j taraqqi daim ). This is a very important point at which we can look
into the very basis of his idea of the ‘new creation’.
The wonder of all wonders is that man (and consequently, every-
thing) is in a perpetual process of ascending. And yet (ordinarily) he
is not aware of this because of the extreme thinness and fineness of
the veil 19 or because of the extreme similarity between (the success-
ive forms ). 20
That everything is involved in the process of the ever new crea-
tion means primarily that the Absolute is continually manifesting
itself in the infinity of ‘possible’ things. This is done by the ontologi-
cal ‘descent’ ( nuzul ) of the Absolute towards the lower levels of
Being, first to the archetypes and then to the ‘possible’. But the
same process of perpetual ‘descent’ is, when it is looked at from the
side of the ‘possible’ , turns out to be a perpetual process of ontologi-
cal ‘ascent’. Everything, in this sense, is perpetually ‘ascending’
towards the Absolute by the very same ‘descending’ of the latter.
The ‘ascent’ ( taraqqi ) of the things, in other words, is nothing but
the reverse side of the ‘descent’ of the Absolute towards them. The
things in the state of non-existence receiving the mercy of
the Absolute and obtaining thereby existence, produces, from the
standpoint of these things, the image of their ‘ascending’ toward
the original source of existence. Al-Qashanl paraphrases the above-
quoted passage in the following way: 21
One of the most miraculous things about man is that he is in a
perpetual state of ascent with regard to the modes of the ‘prepared-
ness’ of his own archetypal essence. For all the modes of the
archetypes are things that have been known to God (from eternity),
permanently fixed in potentiality, and God brings them out to actual-
ity incessantly and perpetually. And so He goes on transforming the
possibilities (isti‘ dadat , lit. ’preparednesses’) that have been there
from the beginningless past and that are (therefore) essentially
uncreated, into infinite possibilities that are actually created.
Thus everything is in. the state of ascending at this very moment
because it is perpetually receiving the endlessly renewed ontological
(wujudiyah) Divine self-manifestations, and at every self-
manifestation the thing goes on increasing in its receptivity for
another (i.e., the next) self-manifestation.
Man, however, may not be conscious of this because of his eyes being
veiled, or rather because of the veil being extremely thin and fine. But
he may also become conscious of it when the self-manifestations take
on the forms of intellectual, intuitive, imaginative, or mystical
experiences.
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207
The concept of ‘new creation’, thus comprising the ontological
‘descent’ and ‘ascent’, is a point which discloses most clearly the
dynamic nature of the world-view of Ibn ‘ Arabi. In this world-view,
nothing remains static; the world in its entirety is in fervent move-
ment. The world transforms itself kaleidoscopically from moment
to moment, and yet all these movements of self-development are
the ‘ascending’ movements of the things toward the Absolute-One,
precisely because they are the ‘descending’ self-expressions of the
Absolute-One. In one of the preceding chapters dealing with the
coincidentia oppositorum, we have already considered the same
phenomenon from a different point of view. There we saw how the
One is the Manifold and the Manifold is the One. In fact the
‘descent’ and ‘ascent’ describe exactly the same thing.
(As a result of the ‘new creation’ , we are constantly faced with similar
forms, but of any two similar forms) one is not the same thing as the
other. For in the eyes of one who recognizes them to be two similar
things, they are different from one another. Thus a truly perspicaci-
ous man discerns Many in the One, while knowing at the same time
that the Divine Names, in spite of their essential diversity and multi-
plicity, point to one single Reality, for the Names are nothing but
multiplicity posited by the reason in Something which is essentially
and really one.
Thus it comes about that in the process of self-manifestation the
Many becomes discernible in one single Essence. This may be com-
pared to the Prime Matter which is mentioned in the definition of
every form. The forms are many and divergent, but they all go back in
reality to one single substance which is their Prime Matter . 22
In this passage, Ibn ‘Arabi seems to be speaking of the horizontal
similarity-relationship between the concrete beings. He emphasizes
the particular aspect of the ‘new creation’ in which the concretely
existent things in the phenomenal world are after all infinitely
various forms of the Divine self-manifestation, and are ultimately
reducible to the One. But the same applies also to the vertical, i.e.,
temporal, relation between the ever new creations. In what is seem-
ingly one and the same thing, the ‘new creation’ is taking place at
every moment, so that the ‘one and the same thing’, considered at
two successive moments, is in reality not one and the same, but two
‘similar’ things. And yet, despite all this, the thing maintains and
never loses its original unity and identity, because all the new and
similar states that occur to it succesively are eternally determined by
its own archetype.
These two aspects of the ‘new creation’, horizontal and vertical,
are brought to light by al-Qashani in his commentary on the passage
just quoted. 23
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Sufism and Taoism
A truly perspicacious man discerns a multiplicity of self-
determinations in the one single Essence which appears in an infinite
number of ‘similar’ forms. All the Divine Names like the Omnipo-
tent, the Omniscient, the Creator, the Sustainer, etc., point in reality
to one single Essence, God, despite the fact that each of them has a
different meaning from the rest. This shows that the divergence of the
meanings of the Names is merely an intelligible and mental multiplic-
ity existing in what is called the ‘essentially One’, that they are not a
really and concretely existent multiplicity. Thus the self-
manifestation in the forms of all the Names is but a multiplicity
discernible within one single Essence. The same is true also of the
events that take place successively (in ‘one and the same thing’). All
the successive self-manifestations that are similar to each other are
one in reality, but many if taken as individual self-determinations.
(The Master) illustrates this with the example of the Prime Matter
( hayula ). You mention the Prime Matter in defining any substantial
Form. You say, for example, ‘Body ( jism ) is a substance having
quantity’, ‘Plant ( nabat ) is a body that grows up’, ‘Stone ( hajar ) is a
body, inorganic, heavy, and voiceless’, ‘animal ( hayawan ) is a body
that grows up, has sense perception, and moves with will’, ‘Man
( insan ) is a rational animal’. In this way, you mention ‘substance’ as
the definition of ‘body’, and you mention ‘body’ - which is ‘substance’
(by definition) - in the definitions of all the rest. Thus all are traced
back to the one single reality which is ‘substance’.
This fact can be known only by mystical vision, and is never dis-
closed to those who understand everything through rational think-
ing. Thus it comes about that the majority of men, including the
Philosophers, are not aware of the phenomenon of the ‘new crea-
tion’. They do not see the infinitely beautiful scene of this kaleido-
scopic transformation of things.
How splendid are God’s words concerning the world and its per-
petual renewal with each Divine breath which constitutes an ‘ever
new creation’ in one single reality. (But this is not perceived except
by a few), as He says in reference to a certain group of people -
indeed, this applies to the majority of men - ‘Nay, they are in utter-
confusion with regard to the new creation.’ (L, 15). 24 These people
(are in confusion with regard to it) because they do not know the
(perpetual) renewal of the things with each Divine breath. 25
Al-Qashani describes the scene of this perpetual renewal of the
things as he sees it in his philosophico-mystical intuition in the
following terms : 26
The world in its entirety is perpetually changing. And every thing (in
the world) is changing in itself from moment to moment. Thus every
thing becomes determined at every moment with a new determina-
tion which is different from that with which it was determined a
moment ago. And yet the one single reality which is attained by all
Creation
209
these successive changes remains forever unchanged. This is due to
the fact that the ‘one single reality’ is nothing but the reality itself of
the Absolute as it has taken on the ‘first determination’, and all the
| forms (i.e., the successive determinations) are accidents that occur to
i it successively, changing and being renewed at every moment.
t ; But (ordinary) people do not know the reality of this phenomenon
|| and are therefore ‘in utter confusion’ regarding this perpetual pro-
cess of transformation which is going on in the universe. Thus the
Absolute reveals itself perpetually in these successive self-
manifestations, while the world is perpetually being lost due to its
annihilation at every moment and its renewed birth at the next
moment.
Al-Qashani goes a step further and asserts that this perpetual ‘new
creation’ not only governs the concrete existents of the world, but
that even the permanent archetypes are under its sway. The
archetypes in the Divine Consciousness appear and disappear and
then appear again, repeating the same process endlessly as innum-
erable lamp-lights that go on being turned on and put out in every
successive moment. He says : 27
The ontological emanation ( al-fayd al-wujudiy ) and the Breath of
the Merciful are perpetually flowing through the beings of the world
as water running in a river, forever being renewed continuously.
In a similar way, the determinations of the Absolute-Existence in the
form of the permanent archetypes in the eternal Knowledge (i.e.,
Divine Consciousness) never cease to be renewed from moment to
moment. (And this happens in the following way). Thus, as soon as
the first ontological determination leaves an archetype in a place, at
the next moment the next determination is attached to it in a different
place. This is nothing other than the appearance of an archetype
belonging in the sphere of Divine Knowledge in the second place
following its disappearance in the first place, while that archetype
itself remains forever the same in the Knowledge and in the world of
the Unseen.
It is as if you saw millions of lights flickering against the background
of an unfathomable darkness. If you concentrate your sight on any
one of these illumined spots, you will see its light disappearing in the
very next moment and appearing again in a different spot in the
following moment. And the Divine Consciousness is imagined as a
complicated meshwork formed by all these spots in which light goes
on being turned on and extinguished at every moment endlessly.
This is indeed an exceedingly beautiful and impressive image. But
Ibn ‘Arabi himself in his Fu$iis does not seem to describe the
permanent archetypes in this way in terms of the ‘new creation’ . The
‘new creation’ he speaks of in this book concerns the concrete things
of the sensible world.
210
Sufism and Taoism
Let us return to Ibn ‘ Arab! and analyze his concept of ‘ new creation’
as he develops it in relation to his atomistic philosophy. He finds in
the Qoranic account of the miracle of Bilqis, Queen of Sheba, an
admirable illustration of this incessant annihilation and re-creation
which is going on in the world of Being. The account is found in the
Qoran, XXVII, 38-40.
Once Solomon asked those who were there in his presence, jinn
and human beings, whether any of them could bring him the throne
of the Queen. Thereupon one of the jinn said ‘I will bring it to thee
before thou risest from thy place!’ But a man ‘who had knowledge
of the Scripture’ 28 said, ‘I will bring it to thee before thy gaze returns
to thee (i.e., in the twinkling of an eye)’ . And he did bring the throne
on the spot from the far-off country in South Arabia and set it in
front of Solomon.
How could he accomplish this miracle? Ibn ‘Arab! says that the
man simply took advantage of the ‘new creation’ . The throne of the
Queen was not transported locally from Sheba to the presence of
Solomon. Nobody, in fact, can carry any material object from one
place to a distant place in the twinkling of an eye. Nor did Solomon
and his people see the throne in hallucination. Rather the throne
which had been with Bilqis was annihilated and, instead of been
re-created in the same place, was made to appear in the presence of
Solomon. This is, indeed, a miraculous event, in the sense that a
thing disappeared and in the next moment appeared in a different
place. From the viewpoint of the ‘new creation’, however, such an
event is not at all an impossibility. For, after all, it is nothing but a
new throne being created in an entirely different place.
The superiority of the human sage over the sage of the jinn consists in
the (deeper knowledge possessed by the former concerning) the
secrets of the free disposal of anything at will and the particular
natures of things. And this superiority can be known by the amount
of time needed. For the ‘return of the gaze’ towards the man who
looks is faster than the standing up of a man who stands up from his
seat. . . . For the time in which the gaze moves to an object is exactly
the amount of time in which the gaze gets hold of the object however
great the distance may be between the man who looks and the object
looked. At the very moment the eye is opened, its gaze reaches the
sphere of the fixed stars. And at the very moment the perception
stops, the gaze returns to the man. The standing up of a man from his
seat cannot be done so quickly.
Thus Asaf b. Barakhiya was superior to the jinn in his action. For the
moment Asaf spoke, he accomplished his work. And Solomon saw at
the same moment the throne of Bilqis. The throne was actually
placed in his presence in order that no one should imagine that
Solomon perceived (from afar) the throne in its original place with-
out its being transferred.
Creation
211
In my opinion, however, there can be no local transference in one
single moment. There occurred (in Solomon’s case) simply a simul-
taneous annihilation and re-creation in such a manner that no one
could perceive it, except those who had been given a true knowledge
(of this kind of thing). This is what is meant by God’s saying: ‘Nay,
they are in utter confusion with regard to the new creation’. And
there never occurs even a moment in which they cease to see what
they have seen (at the preceding moment). 29
Now if the truth of the matter is as I have just described, the moment
of the disappearance of tire throne from its original place coincided
with the moment of its appearance in the presence of Solomon as a
result of the ‘new creation’ occurring with every Breath. Nobody,
however, notices this discrepancy (between two moments of the ‘new
creation’).
Nay, the ordinary man is not aware of it (i.e., the ‘new creation’) even
with regard to himself. Man does not know that he ceases to exist and
then comes to existence again with every single breath. 30
As we see, Ibn ‘Arab! here writes that man ceases to exist at every
moment and then ( thumma ) comes to existence again. But he
immediately adds the remark that the particle thumma, meaning
‘then’ or ‘after that’ , should not be taken as implying a lapse of time.
You must not think that by the word thumma I mean a temporal
interval. This is not correct. The Arabs use this word in certain
particular contexts to express the priority in causal relationship. 31 . . .
In the process of ‘the new creation with each Breath’ , too, the time of
the non-existence (i.e., annihilation) of a thing coincides with the
time of the existence (i.e., re-creation) of a thing similar to it (i.e., the
thing that has just been annihilated). This view resembles the
Ash‘arite thesis of the perpetual renewal of the accidents ( tajdid
al-a'rai ).
In fact, the problem of the transportation of the throne of Bilqis is of
the most recondite problems understandable only to those who know
what I have explained above about the story. In brief, the merit of
Asaf consisted only in the fact that (thanks to him) the ‘re-creation’ in
question was actualized in the presence of Solomon. . . .
When Bilqis (thereafter came to visit Solomon and) saw her own
throne there, she said: ‘It is as though ( ka’anna-hu ) it were (my
throne)’ (XXVII, 42). (She said ‘as though’) because she knew the
existence of a long distance (between the two places) and because she
was convinced of the absolute impossibility of the throne’s having
been locally transported in such a (short) period of time. Her answer
was quite correct in view of the above-mentioned idea of the ‘renewal
of creation’ in similar forms. And in reality it was (i.e., it was the same
throne of hers in terms of its permanent archetype, but not as a
concrete individual thing). And all this is true, just as you remain
what you were in the past moments through the process of the
perpetual re-creation. 32
212
Sufism and Taoism
Quite incidentally, Ibn ‘Arab! mentions in the passage just quoted
the atomistic thesis of the Ash‘arite theologians and points out the
existence of a certain resemblance between his and their atomism.
But what is more important and more interesting for our purpose is
rather the difference between them which Ibn ‘ Arabi does not state
explicitly in this passage, but which he explains in considerable
detail in another part of the Fu$us.
The most salient feature of Ash‘arite atomism is the thesis of the
perpetual renewal ( tajdid ) of accidents. According to this theory, of
all the accidents of the things there is not even one that continues to
exist for two units of time. Every accident comes into being at this
moment and is annihilated at the very next moment to be replaced
by another accident which is ‘similar’ to it being created anew in the
same locus. This is evidently the thesis of ‘new creation’.
Now if we examine Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought in relation to this
Ash‘arite thesis, we find a striking similarity between them. Every-
thing is, for Ibn ‘Arabi, a phenomenal form of the Absolute, having
no basis for independent subsistence (qiwam) in itself. All are, in
short, ‘accidents’ which appear and disappear in the one eternal-
everlasting Substance (jawhar ). Otherwise expressed, the existence
itself of the Absolute comes into appearance at every moment in
milliards of new clothes. With every Breath of God, a new world is
created.
From the point of view of Ibn ‘Arabi, the atomism of the
Ash‘arites, though it is not a perfect description of the real structure
of Being, does grasp at least an important part of the reality.
Mentioning together with the Ash‘arites a group of sophists known
as Hisbaniyyah or Husbaniyyah, he begins to criticize them in the
following manner : 33
The Ash‘arites have hit upon the truth concerning some of the
existents, namely, accidents, while the Hisbanites have chanced to
find the truth concerning the whole of the world. The Philosophers
consider these people simply ignorant. But (they are not ignorant;
the truth is rather that) they both (i.e., the Ash‘arites and the Hisba-
nites) are mistaken.
First, he criticizes the sophists of the Hisbanite school. The Hisba-
nites maintain that nothing remains existent for two units of time,
that everything in the world, whether it be substance or accident, is
changing from moment to moment. From this they conclude that
there is no Reality in the objective sense. Reality or Truth exists
only subjectively, for it can be nothing other than the constant flux
of things as you perceive it in a fixed form at this present moment . 34
Though the Hisbanites are right in maintaining that the world as a
whole and in its entirety is in perpetual transformation, they are
Creation
213
mistaken in that they fail to see the real oneness of the Substance
which underlies all these (changing) forms. (They thereby overlook
the fact that) the Substance could not exist (in the external world) if it
were not for them (i.e., these changing forms) nor would the forms be
conceivable if it were not for the Substance. If the Hisbanites could
see this point too (in addition to the first point), their theory would be
perfect with regard to this problem. 3S
Thus, for Ibn ‘Arabi, the merit and demerit of the Hisbanite thesis
are quite clear. They have hit upon a part of the truth in that they
have seen the constant change of the world. But they overlook the
most important part of the matter in that they do not know the true
nature of the Reality which is the very substrate in which all these
changes are happening, and consider it merely a subjective con-
struct of each individual mind.
Concerning the Ash‘arites, Ibn ‘Arabi says : 36
As for the Ash‘arites, they fail to see that the world in its entirety
(including even the so-called ‘substances’) is a sum of ‘accidents’ , and
that, consequently, the whole world is changing from moment to
moment since no ‘accident’ (as they themselves hold) remains for two
units of time.
And al-Qashani : 37
The Ash‘arites do not know the reality of the world; namely, that the
world is nothing other than the whole of all these ‘forms’ which they
call ‘accidents’ . Thus they only assert the existence of substances (i.e.,
atoms) which are in truth nothing, having no existence (in the real
sense of the word). And they are not aware of the one Entity (‘ayn)
which manifests itself in these forms (‘accidents’ as they call them);
nor do they know that this one Entity is the He-ness of the Absolute.
This is why they assert (only) the (perpetual) change of the accidents.
According to the basic thesis of the Ash‘arite ontology, the world is
reduced to an infinite number of ‘indivisible parts’, i.e., atoms.
These atoms are, in themselves, unknowable. They are knowable
only in terms of the ‘accidents’ that occur to them, one accident
appearing in a locus at one moment and disappearing in the next to
be replaced by another.
The point Ibn ‘Arabi makes against this thesis is that these
‘accidents’ that go on being born and annihilated in infinitely var-
iegated forms are nothing but so many self-manifestations of the
Absolute. And thus behind the kaleidoscopic scene of the perpetual
changes and transformations there is always a Reality which is
eternally ‘one’ . And it is this one Reality itself that goes on manifest-
ing itself perpetually in ever new forms. The Ash‘arites who over-
look the existence of this one Reality that underlies all ‘accidents’
are, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, driven into the self-contradictory
214
Sufism and Taoism
Creation
215
thesis that a collection of a number of transitory ‘accidents’ that
appear and disappear and never remain for two moments constitute
‘things’ that subsist by themselves and continue to exist for a long
time.
This (i.e., the mistake of the Ash'arites) comes out clearly in their
definitions of things. In fact, when they define anything, their
definition turns the thing into (a collection of) accidents. And it is
clear that it is all these accidents enumerated in the definition that
constitute the very ‘substance’ and its reality which (they consider to
be) self-subsistent. However, even that substance (being a totality of
the accidents) must ultimately be an accident, and as such it is not
self-subsistent. Thus (in their theory) accidents which do not subsist
by themselves, when put together, produce something that subsists
by itself . 38
The passage is explicated by al-Qashani as follows. The Ash‘arites,
whenever they define something, define it as a whole ( majmiC ) of
accidents. Defining ‘man’ , for example, they say: ‘a rational animal’ .
The word ‘rational’ ( natiq ) means ‘possessed of reason’ ( dhu nu(q).
The concept of ‘being possessed of’ is a relation, and ‘relation’ is
evidently an accident. ‘Reason’ ( nutq ), on the other hand, being
something added to the essence of ‘animal’ , is also an accident. Thus
to say that man is ‘a rational animal’ is to say that man is ‘an animal
with two accidents’ . Then the Ash‘arites go on to define ‘animal’ by
saying that it is a ‘physical body that grows, perceives, and moves by
will’. The ‘animal’ turns in this way into a whole of accidents. And
the same procedure is applied to the definition of the ‘(physical)
body’ appearing in the definition of ‘animal’. As a result, ‘man’
ultimately turns out to be a bundle of accidents which are by
definition momentary and transitory. And yet this bundle itself is
considered to be something subsistent by itself, a substance.
The Ash‘arites, Ibn ‘Arabi continues, are not aware of the fact
that the very ‘substance’, which they consider a self-subsistent
entity, is of exactly the same nature as ‘man’, ‘animal’, and other
things; it is also a bundle of accidents.
Thus, in their theory, something (i.e., a bundle of accidents ) which
does not remain for two units of time remains (i.e., as a bundle of
accidents) for two units of time, nay, for many units of time! And
something which does not subsist by itself (must be said to) subsist by
itself, according to the Ash‘arites! However, they do not know that
they are contradicting themselves. So (I say that) these are people
‘who are in utter confusion with regard to the new creation ’. 39
Ibn ‘Arabi brings out the contrast between the ‘wrong’ view of the
Ash‘arites and the ‘true’ thesis upheld by the people of ‘unveiling’
by saying : 40
I
;
As to the people of ‘unveiling’, they see God manifesting Himself
with every Breath, no single self-manifestation being repeated twice.
They see also by an immediate vision that every single self-
manifestation gives rise to a new creation and annihilates a creation
(i.e., the ‘creation’ that has preceded), and that the disappearance of
the latter at every (new) self-manifestation is ‘annihilation’ whereas
‘subsistence’ is caused by what is furnished (immediately) by the
following self-manifestation.
Thus in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s thought, everything in the world (and therefore
the world itself) is constantly changing, but underlying this universal
flux of changing things there is Something eternally unchanging.
Using scholastic terminology he calls this unchanging Something
the ‘Substance’, the absolute substratum of all changes. In this
particular perspective, all things - not only the ‘accidents’ so called
but the ‘substances’ so called - are represented as ‘accidents’
appearing and disappearing at every moment. It is interesting to
observe how the theory of Divine self-manifestation becomes trans-
formed, when translated into the language of the scholastic philos-
ophy of ‘substance’ and ‘accident’.
Notes
1. It is also called Word ( qawl ).
2. Fus., pp. 139-140/115-116.
3. Reading: hadhihi dhat wa-iradah wa-qawl.
4. Fus., PP- 139-140/115-116.
5. Fus., p. 140/115-116.
6. p. 140.
7. The point is that God does not say in this verse fa-yukawwin (‘and He brings it
into existence’) but says fa-yakun (‘and it comes into existence’), the subject of the
sentence being the thing itself.
8. Fuy., P- 140/115-116.
9. Fus., P- 273/219.
10. Fus., P- 274/220.
11. pp. 274-275.
12. Although Adam is a man, he is, as a ‘soul’ ( nafs ), feminine.
13. The reference is to the above-quoted Tradition, in which the Prophet uses the
216 Sufism and Taoism
feminine numeral thalath in spite of the presence of a masculine noun among the
three things enumerated.
14. ‘Determination’ (or more strictly ‘being determined’) refers to the passive side
of the Absolute, i.e., the Absolute as manifesting itself in a concrete (determined)
thing. ‘Non-determination’ refers to the active side of the Absolute, i.e., the Abso-
lute as the absolute Agent.
15. The ‘first determination’ ( al-ta‘ayyun al-awwal) means the self-manifestation of
the Absolute to itself as a unifying point of all the Divine Names. The Absolute is
here the ‘one’ ( wahid ), and the ontological stage the wahidiyah , ‘Oneness’.
1 6. The Absolute qua One is potentially all beings but it is in actuality still one. So it
is neither in the state of pure exterior self-manifestation nor in that of pure interior
concealment, but it keeps, so to speak, a perfect balance between these two terms.
17. I read: [wa-fa‘il\ min nafci-hi, etc.
18. The idea presents a very important and interesting problem from the viewpoint
of comparative Oriental philosophy. See my ‘The Concept of Perpetual Creation in
Islamic Mysticism and Zen Buddhism’ (in Melanges offerts a Henry Corbin', ed.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr Tehran, 1977, pp. 115-148.
19. When you look at something through an extremely fine and transparent fabric
you do not become aware of the existence of the veil between you and the thing. The
‘veil’ here refers to the outward form shown by the act of ‘ascending’.
20. Fuy., p. 151-152/124.
21. p. 152.
22. Fuy., p. 152/124-125.
23. p. 152-153.
24. Ibn ‘Arab!, as he often does, is giving quite an arbitrary meaning to the Qoranic
verse. The actual context makes it clear beyond any doubt that God is here speaking
of Resurrection after death, which is conceived of as a ‘new creation’. The ‘new
creation’ does not certainly mean in this verse the ever new process of creation which
is Ibn ‘Arabfs thesis.
25. Fuy., p. 153/125.
26. p. 153.
27. pp. 195-196.
28. The Qoran does not give his name. Commentators assert that the man was a sage
whose name was Asaf b. Barakhiya.
29. This annihilation/re-creation is done so quickly that man does not notice any
discontinuum between the two units of time in his sense perception and imagines that
everything continues to be as it has been.
30. Fu$., pp. 195-196/155.
Creation
217
XIV Man as Microcosm
As I remarked earlier, the world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi stands on two
bases: one is the Absolute, and the other the Perfect Man. And all
through the preceding pages, we have been analyzing his ontologi-
cal world-view exclusively from the first angle. The remaining chap-
ters will be concerned with the analysis of the same world-view
looked at from the second point of view.
I Microcosm and Macrocosm
In setting out to discuss the concept of the Perfect Man ( al-insan
al-kamil) it is, I think of special importance to observe that Ibn
‘Arab! considers ‘man’ on two different levels. It is important to
keep this basic distinction in mind, because if we neglect to do so, we
shall easily be led into confusion.
The first is the cosmic level. Here ‘man’ is treated as a cosmic
entity. In popular terminology we might say that what is at issue on
this level is ‘mankind’ . In logical terminology, we might say that it is
‘man’ as a species. In any event, the question is not about ‘man’ as an
individual person.
‘Man’ on this level is the most perfect of all beings of the world,
for he is the Imago Dei. Here ‘man’ himself is perfect; ‘man’ is the
Perfect Man. The Perfect Man in this sense is ‘man’ viewed as a
perfect epitome of the universe, the very spirit of the whole world of
Being, a being summing up and gathering together in himself all the
elements that are manifested in the universe. ‘Man’ is, in short, the
Microcosm.
At the second level, on the contrary, ‘man’ means an individual.
On this level, not all men are equally perfect. There are, from this
point of view, a number of degrees among men. And only few of
them deserve the appellation of the Perfect Man. The majority of
men are far from being ‘perfect’.
The present chapter will be concerned with the Perfect Man as
understood in the first sense.
Man as Microcosm
219
As has just been remarked ‘man’ on the first of the two levels is an
epitome of the whole universe. He is, in this sense, called the
‘comprehensive being’ (al-kawn al-jami‘, lit. ‘a being that gathers
1 together’), that is, Microcosm.
; Concerning the birth of ‘ man’ as the ‘ comprehensive being’ , there
is at the very outset of the Fusus, a very famous passage. The
| passage is filled with technical terms peculiar to Ibn ‘Arabi, all of
I which have already been analyzed in the preceding chapters. Here
j> Ibn ‘Arabi describes the mysterious process by which the self-
;; manifestation of the Absolute is activated by the inner requirement
of the Divine Names, leading toward the creation of the world, and
in particular the creation of ‘man’ as the being who sums up in itself
all the properties that are diffused in the whole universe. The
passage begins with the following words: 1
i
i When the Absolute God, at the level of his Beautilul Names that
exceed enumeration, wished to see the (latent) realities of the Names
- or if you like, say. His inner reality itself - as (actualized) in a
‘comprehensive being' which, because of its being qualified by
‘existence’, contains in itself the whole universe, and (wished) to
make manifest to Himself His own secret through it (i.e., the ‘com-
jfv prehensive being') . . .
These opening words of the passage constitute a brief summary of
the ontology of Ibn ‘Arabi which we have been studying in detail in
the preceding. The argument may be explained as follows.
Ibn ‘Arabi begins by stating that the Divine Wish {mashlah) for
the creation of the world (and man in particular) did not arise from
the Absolute qua Absolute. The creative Wish arose due to the
essential inner drive of the Beautiful Names or Attributes. The
Absolute qua Absolute characterized by an absolute ‘indepen-
dence’ ( istighna ) does not require by itself and for itself any crea-
| tive activity. It is the Divine Names that require the existence of the
universe, the created world. It is in the very nature of the Divine
l Names to require the world, because they are actualized only by the
concrete existents, and without the latter they lose positive
significance.
Ibn ‘Arabi expresses this situation by saying: ‘The Absolute
wished to see the realities (a‘yan) of the Divine Names’, or ‘The
Absolute wished to see its own inner reality {‘ayn). The first formula
corresponds to what we already know as ‘ the holy emanation’ , while
the second corresponds to the ‘most holy emanation’. The distinc-
I' tion does not make much difference in this particular context,
f because ‘the holy emanation’ necessarily presupposes the ‘most
holy emanation’ , and the latter necessarily entails the former. What
Ibn ‘Arab! wants to say is that God had the mashVah to see Himself
220
221
Sufism and Taoism
as reflected in the mirror of the world, that He wished to see Himself
in the very manifestation-forms of His own Attributes.
The phrase, ‘because of its being qualified by existence’, gives an
answer to the question: How is it possible for the Absolute to see
itself by the creation of the universe as epitomized by Man? The
universe possesses ‘existence’. This ‘existence’ is not the absolute
Existence itself, but is a ‘relative existence’ ( wujud idafiy), i.e.,
‘existence’ as determined and delimited in various ways and forms.
But, however determined and delimited, the relative existence is,
after all, a direct reflection of the absolute Existence. It is the figure
of the Absolute itself as the latter is manifested in ‘possible’ exist-
ents, being determined and particularized by each of the loci of its
self- manifestation. The relative existence is - to use a favorite
metaphor of Ibn ‘Arab! - the absolute Existence as reflected in the
mirror of relative determinations.
An image in a mirror is not the object itself, but it does represent
the object. In this sense, the universe discloses the ‘secret’ ( sirr ) of
the Absolute. The word ‘secret’ in the above-quoted passage means
the hidden (i.e., absolutely invisible) depths of Existence, and cor-
responds to the phrase ‘the hidden treasure’ (kanz makhfiy ) in the
famous Tradition which we discussed earlier.
Ibn ‘Arab! sets out to develop his thought in terms of the metaphor
of the mirror. He begins by distinguishing between two kinds of
vision : 2
The vision which a being obtains of itself is different from the vision
of itself which it obtains in something else serving as a mirror for it.
The first of these two kinds of vision consists in a being seeing itself
in itself. And it goes without saying that the Absolute has vision of
itself in this sense. Here the Absolute needs no mirror. The Abso-
lute is ‘All-seeing by itself from eternity’, and nothing of itself is
concealed from its inner gaze.
But the Absolute has also an aspect in which it is an Essence
qualified by Attributes. And since the Attributes become real only
when they are externalized, it becomes necessary for the Absolute
to see itself in the ‘other’. Thus the ‘other’ is created in order that
God might see Himself therein in externalized forms.
The first thing which God created in order to see Himself therein
was the world or universe. Ibn ‘ Arabi calls the world in this particu-
lar context the Big Man {al-insan al-kabir ), i.e., Macrocosm . 3 The
most salient feature of the Big Man is that every single existent in it
Man as Microcosm
represents one particular aspect (Name) of God, and one only, so
that the whole thing lacks a clear delineation and a definite articula-
tion, being as it is a loose conglomeration of discrete points. It is, so
to speak, a clouded mirror.
In contrast to this, the second thing which God created for the
purpose of seeing Himself as reflected therein, namely, Man, is a
well-polished spotless mirror reflecting any object as it really is.
Rather, Man is the polishing itself of this mirror which is called the
universe. Those discrete things and properties that have been dif-
fused and scattered all over the immense universe become united
and unified into a sharp focus in Man. The structure of the whole
universe with all its complicated details is reflected in him in a clear
and distinctly articulated miniature. This is the meaning of his being
a Microcosm. Man is a Small Universe, while the universe is a Big
Man, as al-Qashani says . 4
The contrast between the universe and Man in the capacity of a
‘mirror’ which God holds up to Himself is described by Ibn ‘Arabi in
the following terms : 5
God makes Himself visible to Himself in a (particular) form that is
provided by the locus (i.e., the mirror) in which He is seen. Some-
thing in this way becomes visible to Him which would never be visible
if it were not for this particular locus and His self-manifestation
therein.
(Before the creation of Man) God had already brought into being the
whole universe with an existence like that of a vague and obscure
image having a form but no soul within. It was like a mirror that was
left unpolished. . . .
This situation naturally demanded the polishing up of the mirror of
the universe. And Man ( adam , i.e., the reality of Man) was (created
to be) the very polishing of that mirror and the very spirit of that
form.
The ontological meaning of the metaphor of the ‘unpolished mirror’
is explained by al-Qashani as follows : 6
Before Man, the Microcosm, was created, the universe (the Macro-
cosm) had already been existent due to the requirement of the Divine
Names, because it is in the nature of each Name to require singly the
actualization of its content, i.e., the Essence accompanied by an
Attribute, or an existence particularized by an Attribute, while
another Name asks for an existence particularized by another Attri-
bute. No single Name, however, requires an existence which would
unify all the Attributes together, for no Name has an essential unity
comprising all the Attributes in itself. Thus the universe has no
property of being a comprehensive locus for manifesting all the
aspects of existence in its unity.
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This fact that the universe was an ‘unpolished mirror’ required the
creation of Man who was meant to be the very polishing of the
mirror.
This is a very important statement for determining the cosmic
significance of Man. We might interpret it in terms of modern
philosophic thinking and say that what is symbolized by the ‘polish-
ing’ - or rather ‘the state of having been polished’ ( jala ’) - of the
mirror is the ‘consciousness’ of Man. All beings other than Man only
reflect, each one of them, singly, one aspect of the Absolute. It is
only when put together in the form of the universe that they consti-
tute a big whole corresponding to the Consciousness itself of the
Absolute. In this sense, the universe, certainly, is ‘one’, but, since
the universe lacks consciousness, it does not constitute real unity.
Man, on the contrary, not only synthesizes all the forms of the
Divine self-manifestation which are scattered over the world of
Being, but also is conscious of this whole. This is why a true com-
prehensive unity is established by Man, corresponding to the Unity
of the Absolute. Man is in this sense the Imago Dei. And because of
this peculiarity, Man can be, as we shall see presently, the ‘viceger-
ent’ of God on the earth.
On the correspondence just mentioned between the human
unity and the Divine Unity, al-Qashani makes the following
remark : 7
The Presence (i.e., the ontological level) of 'God' gathers together all
the Names without there being anything mediatory between them
and the Divine Essence. The ontological level of Man gathers them
together in a similar way. This can be understood from the following
consideration. Existence comes down first from the comprehensive
Unity of the Essence to the Presence of Divinity, and thence it
overflows into all the degrees of the ‘possible 1 things spreading more
and more in various forms until, when it reaches Man, it has already
been tinged with all the colors of the (ontological) grades.
Man becomes in this way an intermediate stage ( barzakh ) comprising
the properties both of necessity and possibility, as the Presence of
Divinity comprises both the Essence and all the Names.
The above quoted passage from the Fu$u$, together with this
explanatory remark by al-Qashani, makes it clear that the most
important significance of Man lies in his ‘comprehensiveness’
( jam‘iyah , lit. ‘gathering-ness’). Before we proceed with this prob-
lem, we must analyze further in detail the metaphor of the mirror.
A mirror reflects objects. Sometimes it reflects them as they really
are. But in many cases an object is reflected in a mirror more or less
changed or transformed.
Man as Microcosm
223
The image of a person appearing on the polished (surface of a) body
is nothing other than the person himself, except that the locus or the
Presence, in which he perceives the reflection of his own image, gives
back the image to him with a certain transformation 8 according to the
constitution of that Presence. In the same way, a big thing appears
small in a small mirror, oblong in an oblong mirror, and moving in a
moving mirror (i.e., running water).
Thus the mirror sometimes gives back the image of the person in
inversion, the inversion being caused by the particular constitution of
a particular Presence. But sometimes it gives back the very thing (i.e.,
the person who is looking) appearing in it, in such a way that the left
side (for example) of the reflected image faces the left side of the
person . 9 Sometimes, again, the right side (of the image in the mirror)
faces the left side (of the person) as is typical of what customarily
happens to (an image in) a mirror. Only by a ‘break of custom 1 does
the right side (for example) face the right side . 10
On the transforming effect of mirrors, Ibn ‘ Arabi says as follows in
another passage : 11
A mirror affects the images in a certain sense, but it does not affect
them in another sense. It does affect in that it gives back the image of
an object in a changed form as regards smallness, bigness, length, and
shortness. Thus it has a positive effect upon the quantities, and that
effect is properly due to it. On the other hand, however, (it has no
positive effect of its own in the sense that) all these changes caused by
the mirror are in the last resort due to the different sizes of the objects
reflected.
Even one and the same object is reflected in varying magnitudes in
mirrors of various magnitudes. Here we see clearly suggested the
idea that although each individual man, as a mirror of the Absolute,
reflects the Absolute and nothing else, the reflected images vary
from person to person according to the individual capacities of
different men. There is, however, as Ibn ‘Arabi adds, a certain
respect in which a man, the mirror, must be said to exercise no
positive, transforming effect upon the image of the Absolute, for all
transformations of the reflected image ultimately come from the
internal modifications of the Absolute itself
Man, unlike the rest of the creatures, actualizes in himself the
whole of the Divine Names in miniature, and is, in this sense, a
miraculous mirror which is able to reflect the original unity of the
Names as it is. But, on the other hand, men considered individually,
differ from each other in the ‘polishing’ of the cosmic mirror. Only
in the case of the highest ‘knowers’ does the human consciousness
reflect on its spotless surface the Absolute as it really is.
But by making these observations, we are already encroaching
upon the realm of the next chapter. We must turn our steps back and
continue our discussion of the nature of Man as Microcosm.
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Sufism and Taoism
II Comprehensiveness of Man
The ‘humanity’ (insaniyah) of Man on the cosmic level lies, as we
have already seen, in his ‘comprehensiveness’ ( jam‘iyah ). Man, as
Microcosm, contains in himself all the attributes that are found in
the universe. The Absolute, in this sense, manifests itself in Man in
the most perfect way. And Man is the Perfect Man because he is the
most perfect self-manifestation of the Absolute.
The following is a very important passage in which Ibn ‘Arab!
explains to us his concept of the Perfect Man on the cosmic level. 12
He takes the prophet Moses as an illustration. Moses, when he was
born, was put into a chest, and was thrown into the Nile. Ibn ‘ Arabi,
by explicating the symbolic meaning of this story, develops it into a
theory of the Perfect Man.
As regards the wisdom of Moses’ being put into a chest and thrown
into the great river, we must notice that the chest ( tabut ) symbolizes
the ‘human aspect (of man)’ ( nasut , i.e., the body) while the ‘great
river’ (yamm) symbolizes the knowledge which he acquires by means
of this body . 13 This Knowledge is acquired by him through the power
of thinking, and representation. These and similar powers of the
human soul can only function when the physical body is in existence.
So, as soon as the soul is actualized in the body and is commanded (by
God) to use and govern the body freely, God produces in the soul all
the above-mentioned powers as so many instruments by which the
soul might achieve the purpose - according to the Will of God - of
governing this ‘chest’ containing the invisible Presence (. sakinah ) 14 of
the Lord.
Thus (Moses) was thrown into the great river so that he might acquire
by means of these powers all kinds of knowledge. (God) let him
understand thereby the fact that although the spirit ( riih ) governing
(the body) is the ‘king’ (i.e., the supreme commander of the human
body), yet it cannot govern it at will save by means of the body. This is
why God furnished the body with all these powers existing in the
‘human aspect’ which He called symbolically and esoterically the
‘chest’.
The same holds true of the governing of the world by God. For He
governs the world at will only by means of it (i.e., the world), or by
means of its form . 15
God governs the world only by the world (by establishing certain
necessary relations among the things of the world): for example, the
child depends upon the generating act of the father, the generated
depend upon their generators, the conditioned upon their con-
ditions, the effects upon their causes, the conclusions upon their
proofs, and the concrete existents upon their inner realities. All these
belong to the world as a result of God’s disposal of the thing. Thus it is
clear that He governs the world only by the world.
I have said above: ‘or by means of its form’ , i.e., by means of the form
Man as Microcosm
==
225
of the world. What I understand here under the word ‘form’ (surah) is
the Most Beautiful Names by which He has named Himself and the
highest Attributes by which He has qualified Himself.
In fact, of every Name of God, which we have come to know, we find
the meaning actualized in the world and its spirit being active in the
world. So in this respect, too, God does not govern the world except
by the form of the world.
Thus Ibn ‘Arab! divides the governing (tadbir) of the world by the
Absolute into two kinds: (1) ‘by the world’ and (2) ‘by the form of
the world’ . The first has been illustrated by such necessary relations
as exist between the child and the father, the caused and the causes,
etc. Here God, so to speak, lets the world govern itself by putting
the things of the world in certain necessary relations. The second
kind is completely different from this. It consists in God’s making
His Names and Attributes, i.e., the eternal forms, govern and
regulate from inside the ever changing phenomenal forms of the
world. 16 This point is brought out with admirable clarity by al-
Qashani in his following remark on the just quoted passage of the
Fusiis. 11
What is meant by the ‘form of the world’ here is not its sensible
individual form. If it were so, it (i.e., the second type of governing)
would simply be reduced to the first type. . . .
What is really meant by it is the intelligible, specific form of the world,
which is nothing but the Most beautiful Names and its realities, i.e.,
the highest Attributes.
The (phenomenal) forms of the world are simply outwardly man-
ifested forms of the Names and Attributes. These latter are the real
inner forms of the world. All sensible things are but outward, indi-
vidualized forms; they are ever changing imprints and external
shapes, while the (inner forms) are permanent and everlasting, never
changing. The former are transitory forms, surface phenomena,
while the latter are the inner meanings and spirits of the former.
All the Names by which God has named Himself, such as Living,
Knowing, Willing, Powerful, are there in the world. All the Attri-
butes with which He has qualified Himself, such as Life, Knowledge,
Will, Power, are there in the world. Thus God governs the outside of
the world by its inside.
(So there are two types in God’s governing the world:) the first is the
governing exercised by some of the phenomenal forms of the world
over other phenomenal forms. The second is the governing of the
phenomenal individual forms by the internal specific forms. Both
types are the governing of the world by the world.
Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to argue:
This is why (the Prophet) said concerning the creation of Adam:
‘Verily God created Adam in His Form’, for Adam is an exemplar
synthesizing all the constituent elements of the Presence of Divinity,
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Sufism and Taoism
namely, the Essence, the Attributes, and the Actions. The expression
‘His Form’ means nothing but the Presence of Divinity itself.
Thus God has put into this noble epitome ( mukhtasar ), the Perfect
Man (as symbolized by Adam), all the Divine Names and the realities
of all things existing outside of him in the Macrocosm which (appar-
ently) subsists independently of him.
This passage explains the meaning of the ‘comprehensiveness’ of
Man. As we have seen above, the Perfect Man synthesizes in himself
all the things that exist in the universe, ranging from the four natural
elements to minerals, plants, and animals. But the important point
is that all these things do not exist in Man in their concrete indi-
vidual forms. They exist in him only as ‘ realities’ ( haqaiq ) , that is, in
their universality. Man gathers together in himself all the things of
the universe in the sense that he is a synthesis of the non-material
realities of the individual things. The Perfect Man is an epitome of
the Macrocosm only in this particular sense.
God in this way has made Man the Spirit ( ruh ) of the universe, and
made everything, high and low, subservient to him because of the
perfection of his (inner) form.
Thus it comes about that, as ‘there is nothing’ in the whole universe
‘but gives praises unto God’ (XVII, 44), so there is nothing in the
universe but is subservient to Man due to the essential merit of his
inner form. To this refers God’s saying: ‘thus He has made all that is
in the heavens and in the earth subservient unto you all together,
from Him’ (XXII, 65).
So everything in the universe is under the supreme dominion of Man.
But this fact is known only to those who know it - such a man is the
Perfect Man 18 - and those who do not know it do not know - such is
the Animal Man.
Outwardly considered, the fact that Moses was put into a chest, which
was then thrown into the great river, meant death, but inwardly, it
was for him deliverance from being killed. For, as a result, he gained
life, just as the souls are enlivened by knowledge and are delivered
from the death of ignorance.
The long passage which we have quoted explains the real nature of
the perfection of Man on the cosmic level. In the view of Ibn ‘ Arabi,
the perfection of Man and the high position assigned to him 19 are
due to his microcosmic nature, that is, his ‘comprehensiveness’.
And his ‘comprehensiveness’ consists in his reflecting and realizing
faithfully the Divine Comprehensiveness.
All the Names that are contained in the Divine Form 20 have been
manifested in the ontological dimension of Man. And the latter has
obtained through this (kind of) existence the (highest) rank of
integral comprehensiveness. 21
Man as Microcosm
227
As regards the Divine Comprehensiveness (al-jam‘iyah al-ilahiyah )
Ibn ‘Arabi gives the following explanation, dividing it into three
constituents . 22
(We can distinguish) in the Divine Comprehensiveness: (1) that
which must be attributed to God Himself (as represented by the
supreme Name Allah or God, comprehending within itself all the
Divine Names), (2) that which is ascribable to the Reality of realities,
and (3) that which - in this constitution (i.e. the bodily constitution of
Man which comprehends all the recipients of the world ranging from
the highest to the lowest - is ascribable to what is required by the
universal Nature.
The first of these three elements is evidently the Divine aspect of
Unity, i.e., the Divine Essence, not in its absoluteness but as
qualified by the Divine Name ‘God’. The second is the ontological
plane in which the permanent archetypes come into being, i.e., God
conceived as the highest creative Principle regulating and unifying
the archetypes. It is called the Reality of realities because through
this Reality all the realities of the world become actualized. The
third, the universal Nature (j tabVah kulliyah) is the ontological
region of ‘reality’ occupying the intermediary position between the
purely Divine and positively creative ‘reality’ of Divine Names and
the purely creaturely and essentially passive ‘reality’ of the physical
world, comprising within itself both these properties - positively
creative on the one hand, and passively receptive on the other.
From all this Ibn ‘Arabi comes to the following conclusion . 23
This being (i.e., the ‘comprehensive being’) is called Man and also a
Vicegerent ( khalifah ). 24 His being (named) Man is due to the com-
prehensiveness of his constitution, comprising as it does all the
realities. Furthermore (he deserves to be named Man - insan
because) he is to God as the pupil (insan) is to the eye as the
instrument of vision, i.e., seeing. Thus he is called insan because God
sees His creatures through man, and has Mercy upon them.
Man on the cosmic level, or the Perfect Man, is endowed with a
perfect ‘comprehensiveness’. And because of this ‘comprehensive-
ness’ by which he synthesizes in himself all the existents of the
universe not individually but in their universality, the Perfect Man
shows two characteristic properties which are not shared by any-
thing else. One is that he is the only being who is really and fully
entitled to be a perfect ‘servant’ ( [‘abd ) of God. All other beings do
not fully reflect God, because each actualizes only a single Divine
Name; they cannot, therefore, be perfect ‘servants’. The second
characteristic feature of the Perfect Man consists in his being in a
certain sense the Absolute itself. In the case of beings other than
human, we can say that the Absolute is the inner reality (‘ayn) of
228
229
Sufism and Taoism
them, but we cannot surely reverse the relation and say that they are
the inner reality of the Absolute, for they are but partial actualiza-
tions of the Divine Self. The following two verses by Ibn ‘Arab! put
these two characteristics of Man in a concise form . 25
Verily, we are real servants; verily, God is our Master.
Verily, we are His Self, and all this is implied when I say ‘Man’.
That is to say, we are ‘servants’ in the true sense of the word, because
we serve Him with an essential service, i.e., with the most com-
prehensive Unity which is realized on the ontological level of ‘God’,
while God with the whole of His Names is our Master, governing us,
administering our affairs. We are different in this respect from the
rest of beings, for they are His servants merely in certain aspects, and
God is their Master with some of His Names.
The Perfect Man is the inner reality of the Absolute because he
appears in the Form of the latter with its comprehensive unity. The
rest of the things, on the contrary, though the Absolute is the inner
reality of each one of them, are not the inner reality of the Absolute
because they are but loci of manifestation for some of the Names so
that the Absolute does not manifest itself in them in its essential
Form.
But when I say ‘Man’, meaning thereby the Perfect Man, i.e., Man
perfect in ‘humanity’, what is meant is the being in which the Abso-
lute manifests itself in its essential Form. Man, in this sense, is the
very reality of the Absolute.
Ibn ‘ ArabI considers, further, the ‘comprehensiveness’ of Man from
the point of view of the Inward-Outward opposition. In exact
correspondence to the distinction between the Divine Names
Inward and Outward, there is in Man also a distinction between the
‘inward’ and the ‘outward’, and he covers thereby the whole of the
universe.
You must know, further, that God describes Himself as being the
Inward and the Outward. He has correspondingly produced the
world of the Unseen and the world of sensory experience so that we
might perceive the Inward by our own ‘unseen’ element and the
Outward by our ‘sensible’ element. 26
Thus God has created two worlds, the inner and the outer, corres-
ponding to His own Inward and Outward, and has given Man, and
Man only, the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’. In this respect, Man alone is
the true Imago of the Absolute.
You must have understood by now the real nature of Adam, i.e., his
outward ‘form’, as well as the real nature of his spirit ( ruh ), i.e., his
inward ‘form’ . Adam is the Absolute (in view of his inward form) and
a creature (in view of his outward form). You know also the real
Man as Microcosm
nature of his (ontological) rank which, being a synthesis, makes him
entitled to be the Vicegerent (of God). 27
The position of Adam, i.e., the Perfect Man as understood in this
chapter, is ‘in the middle’ between the Absolute and the creatures.
He essentially reflects both, represents both, and is a ‘synthesis’
(majmu‘) of the two ‘forms’ . His ‘outward’ discloses the form of the
created world and its realities, while his ‘inward’ reveals the Form
itself of the Absolute and its essential Names. And because of this
‘synthesis’ and perfect ‘comprehensiveness’, his rank is higher than
that of angels.
Thus all the Names that are contained in the Divine Form are
manifested in the ontological dimension of Man. The latter has
obtained through this (kind of) existence the rank of integral com-
prehensiveness.
And this precisely was the ground on which God the Exalted refuted
the argument of the angels 28 . . . The angels were not aware of what
was implied by the constitution of this ‘vicegerent’ (of God on the
earth). Nor did they know the ‘essential service’ 29 required by
the Presence of the Absolute. For nobody can know concerning the
Absolute except that which his own essence allows him to know, and
the angels did not possess the ‘comprehensiveness’ of Adam. They
were not even aware of (the limitedness of) the Divine Names that
were (manifested) in themselves. So they were praising the Absolute
and sanctifying it simply through the (limited Names that they hap-
pened to have in themselves). They were not aware of the fact that
God has (other) Names about which no knowledge had been given
them. Consequently the angels were not praising Him through these
Names; nor were they sanctifying Him in the same way as Adam did.
Thus they were completely under the sway of what I have just
mentioned (i.e., their limited knowledge of the Names), and were
dominated by this (deficient) state of theirs.
Because of this (deficiency in their) constitution, the angels said (to
God when He was about to create Adam): ‘Art Thou going to place
on the earth one who will do harm therein?’ (II, 30). But ‘harm’ can
be nothing other than ‘opening up an argument (against God, instead
of accepting His words with docility and submission)’. It was exactly
what they themselves did (when they dared to put the above-
mentioned question to God). So what they said concerning Adam
was what they themselves were actually doing toward God. It is
evident, then, that, if their own nature had not been agreeable to this
particular behavior, they would not have said about Adam what they
said without being conscious (of the truth of the matter). Had they
but known their own selves, (i.e., their own essential constitution),
they would have known (the truth about Adam), and had they but
known (the truth) they would never have committed such a mistake.
In reality, however, they were not content with denigrating (Adam);
they went even further and boastfully claimed that they were praising
and sanctifying God. 30
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Sufism and Taoism
But Adam had in himself such Divine Names as were not represented
by the angels. The latter naturally could not praise God with those
Names, nor could they sanctify Him with them, as Adam did. 31
In the Qoran (II, 31) we read that ‘God taught Adam all the
Names’. This means, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, that Man represents
and actualizes all Divine Names. The angels, on the contrary, man-
ifest only some of the Names. But they are not aware of it.
The difference between the human and the angelic act of praising
God which is discussed here by Ibn ‘Arab! is also based on the
Qoranic verse which reads: ‘There is nothing (in the world) but
praises Him in adoration, but you do not understand their praise’
(XVII, 44).
The dictum that everything in the world is praising God has, for
Ibn ‘Arabi, a very special meaning. God manifests Himself in all
things, according to their peculiar capacities and within the limits
determined by the latter. This fact, when considered from the side
of the created things, is capable of being interpreted as the created
things manifesting the Divine Perfection ( kamal ) in variously
limited forms. This manifestation of the Divine Perfection by each
thing in its peculiar form is what is understood by Ibn ‘Arabi under
the word ‘praising’ ( tasbih ) or ‘sanctifying’ ( taqdis ).
Otherwise expressed, all things ‘praise and sanctify’ God by the
very fact that they exist in the world. But since each thing exists in its
own peculiar way, each thing praises and sanctifies God in a differ-
ent way from all the rest. And the higher the level of Being to which
a thing belongs, the greater and stronger is its ‘praising and sanctify-
ing’, because a higher being actualizes a greater number of Names
than those which belong to lower levels. In this respect, Man
occupies the highest position among all the beings of the world,
because he is a locus in which all the Names, i.e., all the Perfections
(kamalat) of God become manifested.
We must recall at this juncture what we have observed in an
earlier context about the essential indifference of Perfection
(kamal) to the commonly accepted distinction between good and
evil. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view, the distinction which is ordinarily
made in human societies between good and evil is of an entirely
conventional, relative, and secondary nature. Primarily, existence
itself is Perfection, and every ontological attribute is also a Perfec-
tion. Just as ‘obedience’ (to God) is a Perfection, ‘disobedience’ is a
Perfection, because the latter is in no less a degree than the former
an ontological attribute, i.e., a form of Being. The fact that ‘obedi-
ence’ is a Perfection has essentially nothing to do with its being
ethically ‘good’; ‘obedience’ is a Perfection because it is a locus in
which such Divine Names as the Merciful and the Bountiful are
Man as Microcosm
231
manifested. And ‘disobedience’ is a Perfection because it is a locus
in which suth Names as the Vindictive and the Chastiser are
manifested.
If we lose sight of this basic ontological fact, we cannot under-
stand why Ibp ‘ Arab! considers the position of Man higher than that
of angels. Fr^rn the standpoint of Ibn ‘Arabi, the nature (tabVah) of
angels is solely ‘spiritual’ (ruhiyah), while the nature of Man is
‘spiritual-bodily’ (ruhiyah-badaniyah) and thus comprises all the
attributes of Being, ranging from the highest to the lowest. And
because of this particularly, Man is superior to angels. 32
Regarding the highest position of Man in the hierarchy of Being,
Ibn ‘Arabi discerns a deep symbolic meaning in the Qoranic state-
ment that God created Adam ‘with both His hands’.
God jointed His two hands for (creating) Adam. This He did solely
by way of conferring upon him a great honor. And this is why He said
to Iblis (Satan): ‘What hinders thee from falling prostrate before that
which I have created with both My hands?’ (XXXVIII, 76). The
(joining of His two hands) symbolizes nothing other than the fact that
Adam join$ j n him two ‘forms’ : the form of the world and the form of
the Absolute. These two are the ‘hands’ of God.
Iblis, on th^ contrary, is but a part of the world, and this ‘gathering’
has not be^n given him. 33
In a different passage of the Fwyfiy, Ibn ‘Arab! returns to the idea of
God having created Adam with both His hands, and says: 34
God kneaded the clay of Man with both His hands, which are
opposed to each other, though, (in a certain sense), each one of His
two hands is a right hand (i.e., both are exactly equal to each other in
being powerful and merciful). In any case, there can be no doubt that
there is a difference between the two if only for the reason that they
are ‘two’, i.e., two hands.
Nature is not affected except by what is proportional to it, and Nature
itself is divided into pairs of opposition. That is why (it is said that
God created Adam) with both His hands.
And since He created Adam with both His hands, He named him
bashar, is because of His ‘touching’ ( mubasharah ) him directly with
the two haftds that are attributed to Him, the word ‘touching’ being
taken here in a special sense which is applicable to the Divine
Presence. 36 He did so as an expression of His special concern with this
human species. And He said to (Iblis) who refused to fall prostrate
before Adqrn: ‘What hinders thee from falling prostrate before that
which I have created with both My hands? Dost thou scornfully look
down’ upop one who is equal to thee, i.e., in being made of natural
elements, ‘or art thou of a higher order’ which, in reality, thou art not
- than elemental (‘unfurl) beings? 37 God means by ‘those of a higher
order’ (‘alfn) those (spiritual beings) who, due to their luminous
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Man as Microcosm
constitution, transcend, by their own essence, being ‘elemental’,
though they are ‘natural ’, 38
Man is superior to other beings of the ‘elemental’ species only by
being a bashar of clay (i.e., clay kneaded directly by the two hands of
God). Thus he is higher than all that have been created of elements
without having been touched by his hands.
So Man is in rank higher than all the angels, terrestrial and celestial,
although, according to the sacred texts, the archangels are superior to
the human species.
As a concrete example showing in the most perfect form possible
the ‘comprehensiveness’ of the Perfect Man, Ibn ‘Arab! discusses
Abraham (Ibrahim).
In Islam, Abraham is generally known as the ‘intimate friend of
God’ ( khatil Allah). Ibn ‘Arab! finds this phrase quite symbolic.
But we must remember also that he understands the word khalil in a
very special sense which is typical of his way of thinking.
The word khalil appearing in the phrase khalil Allah means in
ordinary understanding an ‘intimate friend’. 39 Ibn ‘Arabi explains
the word by a completely different etymology; he derives it from
takhallul which means ‘penetration’, ‘permeation’. The Perfect
Man is the one whom the Absolute penetrates and whose faculties
and bodily members are all permeated by the Absolute in such a
way that he thereby manifests all the Perfections of the Divine
Attributes and Names.
We have already discussed in an earlier context the problem of
Being running through ( sarayan ) all beings. The important point,
for our immediate purpose, is that this sarayan or ‘pervasion’,
although it is universal, differs in intensity or density from one thing
to another. The sarayan of Being reaches its highest degree in the
Perfect Man. And Being, that is, all the Perfections of the Absolute,
permeate Man and become manifested in him both inwardly and
outwardly. The title of honor of Abraham, khalil , symbolizes this
fact. Ibn ‘Arabi himself gives the following explanation on this
point: 40
(Abraham) is called khalil for no other reason than that he ‘perme-
ates’ , and comprises in himself, all (the qualities) by which the Divine
Essence is qualified 41 . . . just as a color ‘permeates’ a colored object
in such a way that the accident (i.e., the color) exists in all the parts of
the substance. The relation is different from that between a place and
an object occupying it. Or rather we should say that (Abraham is
called khalil) because the Absolute ‘permeates’ the existence of the
form of Abraham . 42
Here Ibn ‘Arabi distinguishes between two forms of ‘permeation’
{takhallul): (1) one in which Man (symbolized by Abraham) plays
the active role, Abraham appearing in the Form of the Absolute,
and (2) the other in which the Absolute plays the active role, the
Absolute appearing in the form of Abraham. The distinction was
explained in an earlier context from a somewhat different point of
view, when we discussed the idea of the bestowal of Being. What is
of particular importance in the present context is that in the second
type of ‘permeation’ the Absolute manifests itself in an individual-
ized form, determined by the latter in its Existence, so that in this
case creaturely attributes are ascribed to God, including even attri-
butes denoting ‘defects’.
Both these statements are right according to what God Himself
affirms, for each of these aspects has its own proper field in which it is
valid and which it never oversteps.
Do you not see that God appears assuming the attributes that are
peculiar to the temporal beings ? 43 He affirms this about Himself.
Thus He assumes even attributes of defects and attributes of a
blamable nature.
Do you not see (on the other hand ) 44 that the creatures appear
assuming the Attributes of the Absolute from the first Attribute to
the very last?
Thus all of them (i.e., all the Attributes of the Absolute) are necessar-
ily and rightly to be ascribed to the creatures just as the attributes of
the temporal beings are necessarily and rightly to be ascribed to the
Absolute.
All the Attributes of the Absolute are to be affirmed of the crea-
tures because the essential reality {haqiqah) of the latter is nothing
other than the Absolute appearing with its own Reality in their
forms, so that the Attributes of the Absolute are the attributes of
the creatures. In the same way, all the attributes of the temporal
beings are rightly to be affirmed of the Absolute, because these
attributes are so many states and aspects of the Absolute. If the very
existence of the temporal beings is the Existence of the Absolute as
manifested in them, how much more should this be the case with the
attributes of the temporal beings. 45
Regarding the structure of the phenomenon of ‘permeation’, Ibn
‘Arab! gives the following explanation: 46
Know that whenever something ‘permeates’ ( takhallala ) another, the
first is necessarily contained in the second. The permeater becomes
veiled by the permeated, so that the passive one (i.e., the permeated)
is the ‘outward’ while the active one (i.e., the permeater) is the
‘inward’ which is invisible. Thus it (i.e., the permeater) is food for the
other (i.e., the permeated), just as water permeates wool and makes
the latter bigger and more voluminous.
And when it is God that plays the part of the ‘outward’ , the creatures
are hidden within Him, and they become all the Names of God,
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namely. His hearing, His sight, etc., and all His relations and all His
modes of cognition. But when it is the creatures that play the role of
the ‘outward’, God becomes hidden in them, being inside of them,
and God (in this case) is the hearing of the creatures, their sight, their
hands and feet, and all their faculties.
Thus the ontological ‘permeation’ is completely reciprocal between
the Absolute and the world, and the Perfect Man represents this
reciprocal ‘permeation’ in its most perfect form. Abraham is a
typical example of this phenomenon.
Ill The Vicegerency of God
The Perfect Man is the ‘vicegerent’ (khalifah) of God on the earth,
or in the world of Being. Reference has been made earlier to this
concept in an incidental way. The present section will be devoted to
a more detailed and concentrated discussion of this problem.
The Perfect Man is entitled to be the ‘vicegerent’ of God because
of his ‘comprehensiveness’. This idea, which has been mentioned
more than once in what precedes, will furnish us with a good
starting-point for an analysis of the concept of vicegerency.
After having stated that Man alone in the whole world possesses
the unique property of ‘being comprehensive’ ( jam‘iyah ), Ibn
‘Arab! goes on to argue : 47
Iblis (Satan) was but a part of the world, having no such ‘comprehen-
siveness’. But Adam was a ‘vicegerent’ because of this ‘comprehen-
siveness’. If he had not appeared in the Form of God who appointed
him as His ‘vicegerent’ to take care of the things (i.e., the world and
everything in the world) in His stead, he would not have been His
‘vicegerent’. 48 If, on the other hand, he had not contained in himself
all the things of the world and all that was demanded of him by those
people over whom he had been commanded to exercise sovereign
power, (he would not have been His ‘vicegerent’). For the people
depended upon him, and he was naturally expected to take care of all
the needs of the people. Otherwise, he would not have been a
‘vicegerent’ governing them (in the place of the King).
Thus no one was entitled to be the ‘vicegerent’ except the Perfect
Man, for God created his ‘outward’ form out of all the realities and
forms of the world, 49 and his ‘inward’ form on the model of His own
Form. 50 This is why God says (in a Tradition): ‘I am his hearing and
his sight’ . It is to be remarked that God does not say: 1 1 am his eye and
his ear’. God distinguishes here between the two forms (i.e., the
outward form and the inward form).
The same holds true of everything existent in the world (i.e., just as
God appears in Adam in his form, so He appears in everything in
its peculiar form) in accordance with the requirement of the reality of
Man as Microcosm
235
each thing. However, nothing in the world possesses the ‘comprehen-
siveness’ which is possessed by the ‘vicegerent’. In fact he has
obtained (his vicegerency) only because of his ‘comprehensiveness’.
In another passage Ibn ‘ Arabi considers again the same problem of
‘vicegerency’ of Man based on the ‘comprehensiveness’ of his con-
stitution. This time he approaches the problem from a somewhat
different angle . 51
(The Perfect Man) is Man, temporally produced (in his body), but
eternal (i.e., having no temporal origin, with regard to his spirit),
something that grows up forever, the Word that distinguishes (bet-
ween possibility and necessity) and gathers (them) together. The
universe reached completion when he came into existence. He is to
the universe what the bezel is to the seal. He is (comparable to) the
place (of the seal) where there is engraved the device with which the
king seals his treasuries.
This is the reason why God has called him a ‘vicegerent’ , 52 because he
acts as the guardian of His creatures just as the treasuries (of the
king) are guarded by a seal. For as long as the royal seal is upon them,
no one dares to open them unless the king gives permission.
Thus God has appointed him as the ‘vicegerent’ in the guarding of the
universe. The universe will remain guarded as long as there is in the
universe the Perfect Man.
Do you not see that when he departs (from the present world) and the
seal of the treasuries is broken, there will not remain in the world that
which God has stored there, and all that are therein will come out and
will become confused one with another and everything will be trans-
ported to the Hereafter? And there (in the next world) he (i.e., the
Perfect Man) will again become a seal on the treasury of the Here-
after to remain there as the seal for ever and ever.
The whole world of Being, or the universe, is the ‘treasury’ of God,
and of God alone. And Man is a custodian and curator ( wakil )
whom God Himself has put in charge of the guardianship of the
treasury. This idea, which is the only right one concerning the
position of Man in the cosmic order, is according to Ibn ‘Arabi, an
idea peculiar to the ‘people of Muhammad’.
Unlike Noah who had called his people exclusively to tanzih ,
Muhammad called his people to both tanzih and tashbih . 53 He called
them to tanzih because the whole universe is a possession of God,
and of God alone. He called them to tashbih , emphasizing thereby
the human element in the created world, because God Himself has
put the administration of His own possession in the hands of Man as
His ‘vicegerent’. Man is not the real owner of the ‘treasury’, but he
has the status of its ‘ curator’ . 54 And Man owes this high status to the
fact that he is the only existent in the whole world of Being in whom
all the Attributes and Names of the Absolute are manifested.
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IV The Reality of Muhammad
The ‘Reality of Muhammad’ ( haqiqah Muhammad or al-haqiqah
al-muhammadiyah) , is one of the most important concepts in the
philosophy of Ibn ‘ Arabi. But since it has been dealt with in detail by
Affifi, as Ibn ‘ArabFs doctrine of the logos, in his Philosophy , 55 I
shall be content here with discussing it only as an aspect of the
problem of the Perfect Man.
All prophets, in Ibn ‘Arabi's view, are embodiments of the idea of
the Perfect Man. But the Islamic Prophet, Muhammad, occupies
among them a very special place. What is particularly important
about Muhammad is that he had been a cosmic being before he was
raised as an individual prophet at a certain moment of human
history in the Capacity of God’s Messenger to the Arabs. Ibn ‘Arabi
bases this conception on a well-known Tradition in which Muham-
mad describes himself as a being of a cosmic nature by saying: ‘I was
a prophet even while Adam was between clay and water’ , 56
Ontologically, Muhammad as a cosmic being who existed from
eternity corresponds to, or represents, the level of the permanent
archetypes; that is, the level of Being ‘which is neither existent nor
non-existent’, the intermediary stage ( barzakh ) between the abso-
lute Absolute and the world which is the outer self-manifestation of
the Absolute. This intermediary stage is divine in so far as it is
identified with the Divine Consciousness, but it is, at the same time,
essentially creaturely or human in that it has significance only as it is
related to the created world. The intermediary stage in this latter
aspect, i.e., considered in its human aspect, is the Reality
of Muhammad. And it is also the Perfect Man on the cosmic
level.
Thus understood, the Reality of Muhammad is not exactly the
permanent archetypes themselves. Rather, it is the unifying princi-
ple of all archetypes, the active principle on which depends the very
existence of the archetypes. Considered from the side of the Abso-
lute, the Reality of Muhammad is the creative activity itself of the
Absolute, or God ‘conceived as the self-revealing Principle of the
universe’ . 57 It is the Absolute in the first stage of its eternal self-
manifestation, i.e., the Absolute as the universal Consciousness.
It is also called ontologically, the ‘Reality of realities’ ( haqiqah
al-haqa’iq ). The ‘Reality of realities’ is ultimately nothing but the
Absolute, but it is not the Absolute in its primordial absoluteness; it
is the very first form in which the Absolute begins to manifest itself.
And this Divine Consciousness is reflected most faithfully by the
self-consciousness of the Perfect Man. The Perfect Man, in this
sense, is the outwardly manifested Consciousness of God. Thus the
Man as Microcosm
Prophet Muhammad on the cosmic level corresponds almost
exactly to the Plotinian First Intellect.
Muhammad, as the Perfect Man on the cosmic level, is the first of
all self-determinations ( ta‘ayyundt ) of the Absolute. Theologically,
it is the first ‘creature’ of God.
Basing himself on a Tradition: ‘the first thing which God created
was my Light’, Ibn ‘Arab! calls the Reality of Muhammad also the
‘Light of Muhammad’ ( al-niir al-muhammadiy). This Light had
been existent even before all the creatures came into existence. It is,
in this sense, ‘eternal (a parte ante)' ( qadim ), and ‘non-temporal
( ghayr hadith ). And this eternal Light went on being manifested in
successive prophets: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus etc.,
until it reached its final historical manifestation, the Prophet
Muhammad.
Since the Light was that which God created before anything else
and that from which he created everything else, it was the very basis
of the creation of the world. And it was ‘Light’ because it was
nothing else than the First Intellect, i.e., the Divine Consciousness,
by which God manifested Himself to Himself in the state of the
Absolute Unity. And the Light is in its personal aspect the Reality
of Muhammad.
Regarding Muhammad’s being the first self-determination of the
Absolute and his being, therefore, the most comprehensive and the
highest, al-Qashani writes : 58
(Muhammad was) the first self-determination with which the
Essence at the level of Unity determined itself before any other forms
of self-determination. So all the infinite self-determinations became
actualized through him. As we have seen above, all the self-
determinations (of the Absolute) are arranged in a hierarchy of
genera, species, kinds, and individuals, all being disposed in a vertical
order. So (Muhammad) comprises in himself all these self-
determinations without leaving anything. He is, in this sense, unique
in the whole world of Being; nothing can compete with him, because
nothing is found equal to him in the hierarchy. In fact, there is above
him only the Essence at the level of its absolute Unity, which trans-
cends all self-determinations, whether that of an attribute, name,
description, definition, or qualification.
Such being the case, it will be evident that Muhammad, as the
Logos, is the most perfect being within the species of man.
He was the most perfect being of the human species. This is why the
whole process of creation was commenced and finished through him.
4 He was a prophet even while Adam was between water and clay’ (as
the cosmic Logos), but later (i.e., in historical time) he was born
compounded of elements (i.e., in a bodily form) and proved to be the
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final seal of the prophets . . . (As an individual), Muhammad was the
most powerful proof of his Lord, because he had been given all the
‘words’ ( kalim ) which were the very contents of the names 59 (of all
the things of the world) which (the Lord taught) Adam. 60
As has been touched upon earlier in this section, Muhammad as the
first creature of the Absolute clearly corresponds to the First Intel-
lect of Plotinus, which is the ‘first emanation’ from the absolute
One. And in this aspect Muhammad is called by Ibn ‘Arab! the
‘Muhammadan Spirit’ (al-riih al-muhammadiy) .
In the world-view of Plotinus, the Nus, the first emanation from
the One, has two aspects: (1) it is ‘passive’ in relation to that from
which it has emanated, and (2) ‘active’ in relation to that which
emanates from itself. It is ‘passive’ toward the higher level of Being
and ‘active’ toward the lower level of Being.
In the particular context of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s philosophy, this Plotinian
‘passivity’ ( inftal ) changes into ‘servant-ness’ (‘ ubiidiyah ) and the
‘activity’ (fi‘l) becomes ‘Lordship’ ( rubublyah ). Thus the
‘Muhammadan Spirit’ stands in the position of ‘passivity’, i.e.,
‘servant-ness’, in relation to the Creator, i.e., the source of its own
appearance and manifestation, while in relation to the world it
shows a thoroughgoing ‘activity’, acting as it does as the first prin-
ciple of creation. Ibn ‘ Arab! explains this as follows in a mythopoe-
tic form: 61
Muhammad (i.e., the ‘ Muhammadan Spirit’) was created basically as
a ‘servant’. So he never dared raise his head seeking to be a master.
Nay, he kept humbly prostrating and never transgressing the state of
being ‘passive’, until, when God had produced from him all that He
produced, He conferred upon him the rank of ‘activity’ over the
world of (Divine) breaths.
Muhammad, in this respect, shows perfectly his ‘intermediary
nature’ (barzakhiyah) . He is a ‘servant’ and is ‘passive’ vis-a-vis the
Absolute, but he is a ‘lord’ and is ‘active’ vis-a-vis the world.
V The Perfect Man and God
The Absolute, in its self-revealing aspect, reaches perfection in the
Perfect Man. In the latter the Absolute manifests itself in the most
perfect form, and there can be no self-manifestation more perfect
than this. The Perfect Man, in this respect, is the Absolute, while
being at the same time a creature. We know already what Ibn ‘ Arabi
means when he says that Man is the Absolute. Man is the Absolute
because of his essential ‘comprehensiveness’, or because, as Ibn
‘Arab! says, God put into Adam, the human species, all of its
Man as Microcosm
239
Attributes, whether active of passive. After stating that God joined
both His hands ‘to knead the clay of Adam’ and created him in this
particular way, Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to say: 62
Then (i.e-., after having created Adam) God made him behold all that
He had put into him, and grasped the whole in His two hands: in the
one, He held the universe, and in the other, Adam and his offspring.
This passage is explicated by al-Qashanl in the following terms: 63
This means that God let the Real Man ( al-insan al-haqiqiy ) observe
all the Divine secrets (i.e., invisible realities which are actualized at
the ontological level of the all-comprehensive Name Allah) which He
had placed in him, then put together the whole of what He had
created and the whole of what He had placed in Adam, grasping them
with his both hands. He placed in His right hand, which is His
stronger hand, the reality of Adam and his descendants, i.e., all His
active Attributes and His (active) Names belonging to the higher
spiritual world, and in the left hand, which is the weaker hand, the
forms of the world, i.e., His passive (lit. receiving) Attributes and His
(passive) Names belonging properly to the physical world.
(This distinction between the right and the left hand as the stronger
and the weaker is not an essential one, for) each of the two hands of
the Merciful is in truth a right hand. (And, consequently, there is no
real distinction in terms of rank between the two kinds of the Attri-
butes) because the ‘receptivity’ ( qabiliyah ) with regard to the power
of ‘receiving’ is perfectly equal to the ‘positive activity’ (Ja‘iliyah )
with regard to the power of ‘acting’, the former being in no way
inferior to the latter.
Since Man in whom God has thus placed everything is His perfect
image, whatever can be predicated of Man can also be predicated, at
least in a certain sense, of God, And this is what is meant by the
dictum: Man is the Absolute.
Is there, then, no essential difference between Man as the Micro-
cosm, i.e., the Perfect Man and the Absolute? Of course, there is,
and a very essential one. The difference lies in the ‘necessity
( wujub ) of existence.
You must know that since, as we have said every temporal thing
appears in His Form, clearly God has so arranged that we should, in
trying to know Him, resort to studying carefully the temporal things.
Thus He Himself tells us (in the Qoran, XLI, 53) that He shows us
His signs in the temporal things, 64 so that we might infer from our
own states the state of God. And by whatever quality we may
describe Him, we ourselves are that very quality. The only exception
from this is the ‘essential necessity’ ( wujub dhatiy ) which is peculiar
to God alone.
Since we come to know God, in this way, by ourselves, it is natural
that we should attribute to Him whatever we attribute to ourselves.
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This is confirmed by that of which God Himself has informed through
the tongues of the interpreters (i.e., the prophets). In fact He has
described Himself to us through us. Thus, whenever we observe Him
(through some attribute) we are observing (through the same attri-
bute) our own selves. And whenever He observes us, He is observing
Himself.
No one will doubt that we are many as individuals and species.
Certainly, all of us have in common one and the same ‘reality’ (or
‘essence’) which unites us, but we know definitely that there is also a
distinction by which are distinguished all the individuals one from
another. If it were not for this distinction there would not be multi-
plicity within the unity. Likewise, though God describes us precisely
with what He describes Himself with, there must be a distinction
(between us and God). And that distinction can consist only in our
essential need (for Him) regarding our existence, and the depen-
dence of our existence upon Him because of our ‘possibility’, and in
His being absolutely free from all such need. 65
Thus the Absolute and the creatures are the same in a certain
respect, but a fundamental distinction separates the one from the
other: the ‘necessity of existence’ ( wujub al-wujiid) which is pecul-
iar to the Absolute alone. And due to this ‘necessity’, the Absolute
has certain Attributes which are not shared by anything else, like
quidam (‘eternity a parte ante ’ and ‘eternity a parte post').
It is to be remarked that, though this is philosophically the only
real difference between God and the creatures, it is an essential and
fundamental difference. And being a fundamental difference, it
determines the position of Man in a decisive way vis-a-vis God. Man
is certainly the highest of all in the world of Being. To him is
ascribed an ontological ‘height’ (‘uluw). The ‘height’, however,
is not the ‘height’ of the Absolute. Unlike the latter, Man’s ‘height’ is
only ‘consequential’ ( bi-al-tab‘iyah ) or ‘secondary’; it is not an
‘essential ( dhatiy ) height’.
In the Qoran (XL VII, 35) God says to the followers of Muham-
mad: ‘You are the highest and so is God, too, with you’ , 66 This verse,
Ibn ‘Arab! says, might suggest that God and Man share the same
‘height’. But such an understanding is completely wrong. For God
definitely denies such an equality in ‘height’ between Himself and
Man.
Although Man is the ‘highest’ in a particular sense and partici-
pates with God in the ‘height’ in the general connotation of the
word, the real content of the ‘height’ is different when the word is
applied to God from when it is applied to Man. A Peripatetic
philosopher would simplify the matter by saying that the same word
a‘la (‘highest’) is here used secundum prius et posterius. This is
clearly what is meant by al-Qashani when he says: 67
Man as Microcosm
241
The participation (of Man) in ‘being the highest’ , which God affirms
of him is liable to produce the wrong view that Man does participate
(with God) in the same height of rank. So He says: ‘Praise the Name
of thy Lord, the Highest’ (LXXXVII, 1) in order to deny categori-
cally the possibility of such participation. In fact, the absolute and
essential ‘height’ belongs to God, and to God alone. He is the highest
by His Essence, in an absolute sense, not in relation to anything other
than Himself. Thus all ‘height’ belongs properly to Him alone, and
everything to which His ‘height’ is attributed (i.e., everything that is
said to be ‘high’) is ‘high’ according to the degree in which God
manifests himself under the Name ‘High’ {‘aliy).
Nothing really participates with Him in the very source of the
‘height’ . God has no ‘height’ in a relative sense, while all other things
become ‘high’ through His Name ‘High’.
Ibn ‘Arab! further stresses the non-essential nature of the ‘height’ of
Man by pointing out that although Man, i.e., the Perfect Man, is the
highest of all beings, his ‘height’ does not properly belong to him-
self, but rather to the ‘place’ 68 that has been assigned to him. What is
high is not so much Man himself as his ‘place’ . This is why God says:
‘And We raised him to a high place’ (XIX, 57). It is worthy of
remark that the adjective (‘aliy) in this verse qualifies ‘place’
( makan ), not Man. Likewise, Man’s being the ‘vicegerent’ of God
on the earth is simply the ‘height’ of place or position; it is not his
essential ‘height’.
The preceding pages have clarified Ibn ‘Arabi’s thesis that the
‘ height’ of man is not of an essential nature . But whatever the nature
of his ‘height’, it is true that Man is ‘high’ or even the ‘highest’ of all
beings. Here Ibn ‘Arab! points out a very paradoxical fact about
Man. Certainly, Man is the highest of all beings as long as we
consider him ideally. But once we open our eyes to the real situation
of human existence, we find the strange fact that, far from being
‘high’ or ‘highest’, Man is the ‘lowest’ of all in the whole world of
Being. Of course, in doing so we are taking a very particular point
of view. But at least from this particular point of view, the hierarchy
of values becomes completely reversed. For in this new system, the
inanimate beings occupy the highest rank, then the plants, then the
animals, and the human beings are found in the lowest position.
Usually, Man is considered the highest of all beings because of his
Reason (‘ aql ). But, in truth, this very Reason which is peculiar to
Man weaves around him an opaque veil which develops into an
‘ego’. And the ‘ego’ thus produced hinders Man from knowing
the Absolute as it really is. Precisely because of his Reason, Man
cannot but be a ‘mirror which reflects the Absolute only with
inversion’.
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Sufism and Taoism
There is no creature higher than minerals; then come the plants with
their various degree and ranks. The plants are followed by those
possessed of the senses (i.e. , animals). Each of these (three classes of
beings) knows its own Creator through natural intuition or through
an immediate evidential knowledge. But what is called Adam (i.e.,
Man) is shackled by Reason and thinking or is in the pillory of
belief. 69
The inanimate things, or ‘minerals’, have no ego. So they are
obedient to God’s commandments absolutely and unconditionally.
Their ‘servant-ness’ (‘ ubudiyah ) is perfect in this sense. They are
exposed naked to God’s activity upon them, there being no veil at
all between them. In this respect, they occupy the highest place in
the hierarchy of Being.
The second position is given to the plants. They grow, assimilate
nourishment, and generate. To that extent they act positively on
their own accord. And to that extent they are farther removed from
the Absolute than the minerals.
The third position is occupied by the animals. They are possessed
of senses, and they show the activity of will. The sense perception
and will disclose a certain amount of ego. But the animal ego is not
as strong as that of Man.
These three, the minerals, plants, and animals, having no Reason,
know God by a natural ‘unveiling’ or immediate evidential know-
ledge. Man, on the contrary, possesses Reason, and the Reason
develops his ego to a full extent, and he becomes veiled by his own
ego.
Thus from the viewpoint of the ideal state of ‘servant-ness’, Man is
situated on the lowest level on the scale of Being. In order to climb
the scale upward, he must first of all dispel from himself Reason -
which is, paradoxically, exactly the thing that makes him a Man -
and bring to naught all the properties that derive from Reason. Only
when he succeeds in doing so, does he ascend to the rank of animals.
He must then go on to ascend to the rank of plants, and thence
finally to the rank of minerals. Then only does he find himself in the
highest position on the whole scale of Being. There will no longer
remain in him even a shadow of Reason, and the Light of the
Absolute will illumine him undimmed, unhindered, in its original
splendor.
These considerations make us aware of the fact that Man as an Idea
is per se ‘perfect’ and occupies the highest position, but that in his
actual situation he is far from being a perfect realization of his own
ideal. We can maintain that Man is the highest being in the world
Man as Microcosm
only when we take the viewpoint of a philosophical anthropology
standing on the supposition that the ideal of Man is perfectly real-
ized in the actual Man. The actual Man, however, is a being in full
possession of Reason, a being dependent upon his Reason and
brandishing it everywhere in his understanding of everything. He
who brandishes his Reason is not capable of penetrating the mys-
tery of Being.
But while making this observation, we realize that we are already
far removed from the sphere in which we began our discussion of
Man. We started from the basic assumption that Man can be consi-
dered on two entirely different levels: cosmic and individual. And
the purpose of the present chapter has been to elucidate the concept
of Man on the cosmic level, as Microcosm. And on this level, Man is
certainly the highest of all beings. However, in the last section of this
chapter, we have been moving down to the concept of Man on the
individual level. We have learnt that on this latter level, Man is, in a
certain sense, even lower than animals, plants and minerals. On this
level, not all men, but only a small number of special men are
worthy to be called ‘perfect men’. They are ‘perfect’ because, hav-
ing already died to their own ego through the mystical experience of
self-annihilation and subsistence, they are no longer veiled by
Reason. The next chapter will be devoted to a more detailed con-
sideration of the idea of the Perfect Man on the individual level.
Notes
1. Fu$., p. 8/48.
2. Fu$., p. 9/48.
3. Fuj., p. 11/49; p. 132/115.
4. p. 11.
5. Fu$., p. 9/48-49.
6. p. 10.
7. p. 11.
8. I read with Qaygari: tulqi ilay-hi bi-taqallub min wajh.
9. Al- Qashani says that this is the case when the Absolute manifests itself in the very
form of a Perfect Man - p. 42.
10. Fu$., pp. 41—42/66-67.
11. Fw>., p. 232/184.
245
244 Sufism and Taoism
12. Fw>., pp. 251-253/198-199.
13. The ‘great river’ Nile symbolizes an ocean of Knowledge into which Moses’ body
was thrown in order that he might acquire all the possible perfections by which Man is
distinguished from all other beings - cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 293.
14. sakinah from the Hebrew shekina meaning the Divine Presence. Here it means
the ‘Divine aspect’ ( lahut ) of man to be correlated with the above-mentioned nasut.
15. ‘its form (surah)' , that is, the form of the world. The meaning of this expression
will be clarified by al-Qashani’ s explanatory remark which will immediately follow
the present passage.
16. This is tantamount to saying that God governs all the things in the world by
means of their permanent archetypes.
17. p. 252.
18. Here, be it noticed, Ibn ‘Arabi understands Man not on the cosmic, but on the
individual level.
19. As we shall see presently, Man occupies a higher position than angels in the
world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi.
20. The ‘Divine Form’ ( al-surah al-ilahlyah ) itself means nothing else than the
whole of the Divine Names.
21. Fu$., p. 14/50.
22. Fuy., p. 12/49.
23. Fwj., 13/49-50.
24. On this concept see later, III.
25. Fuy., p. 180/143. The explanatory words that follow the verses are by al-
Qashani.
26. Fuy., p. 21/54.
27. Fuy., pp. 25-26/56.
28. Reference to the Qoran, II, 30-33.
29. ‘ibadah dhatlyah ‘essential service’ means, as we have seen above, the perfect
and complete adoration of God which consists in that an existent actualizes in itself
all the Names.
30. ‘Art Thou going to place on the earth one who will do harm therein and shed
blood, when we are praising and sanctifying Thee?’ (II, 30).
31. Fas., pp. 14-15/50-51.
32. Although, to be sure, he is not superior to all the angels, as we shall see.
Man as Microcosm
33. Fu!>., pp. 22-23/55.
34. Fu$., p. 184/144-145.
35. Reference to the Qoran, XV, 28: inni khaliqun basharan, etc. Bashar means
‘ man’ considered from the point of view of his being ‘ mortal’ . But Ibn ‘ Arabi in this
passage understands the word in terms of the verb bdshara (inf. mubasharah)
meaning ‘to touch something directly with one’s own hands’.
36. That is to say, in a non-material, non-anthropomorphic, sense.
37. Qoran, XXXVIII, 76.
38. They stand above the sphere of elements, though they are of the domain of
Nature.
39. From khullah , meaning ‘sincere friendship’.
40. pp. 71-72/80-81.
41. According to al-Qashani, this means the appearance of Abraham in the Form of
the Absolute in such a way that the Absolute is his hearing, his sight, and all his other
faculties - p. 72.
42. This means that the Absolute, by being ‘determined’ by the ‘determination’ of
Abraham, becomes qualified by the attributes of Abraham and his form, so that all
the attributes that are ascribed to Abraham are ascribed to the Absolute, too. The
result of this process is that God does whatever He does through Abraham, hears by
his hearing, and sees with his eyes - al-Qashani, p. 71.
43. Here Ibn ‘Arabi takes up the second type of ‘permeation’ first.
44. This refers to the first type of ‘permeation’.
45. Qashani, p. 72.
46. Fuy., p. 73/81.
47. Fuy., pp. 23-24/55.
48. ‘because a vicegerent should know the will of the man who has appointed him as
his representative, so that he might carry out his command. Thus if the vicegerent of
God does not know Him with all His Attributes, he would not be able to carry out His
Command’ - al-Qashani, p. 23.
49. so that everything that exists in the world is reflected in Man by a corresponding
element.
50. so that his inner form is modeled on the Name and Attributes of God. Thus he is
‘hearing’, ‘seeing’, ‘knowing’ etc., as God Himself is, i.e., he is qualified by all the
Divine Attributes.
51. Fuy., pp. 13-14/50.
246
Sufism and Taoism
52. ‘The engraved seal is the Greatest of all the Divine Names, namely, the Divine
Essence with all the Names. This seal is engraved on the ‘heart’ of the Perfect Man,
which is symbolized here by the bezel of the royal seal. Thus the Perfect Man guards
the treasury of the universe with all that is contained therein, and keeps them in the
established order’ - al-Qashani, p. 13.
53. Cf. Chapter IV
54. Cf. Fuy., p. 53/71.
55. Chapter V, pp. 66-101. For a discussion of the historical relation between this
Islamic /og<w-doctrine and the /ogo^-Christology see Arthur Jeffery: Ibn aI-‘Arabi’s
Shajarat al-Kawn (Studia Islamica, X, Paris, 1959, pp. 45-62).
56. Kantu nabiy wa-Adam bayna al-ma’ wa-al-fin.
57. Affifi, Philosophy , p. 69.
58. p. 266.
59. Reference to the Qoran, II, 31.
60. Fuy., p. 267/214.
61. Fu$., p. 275/220.
62. Fu$., p. 26/56.
63. p. 26.
64. ‘We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and in themselves’.
65. Fuy., p. 19/53-54.
66. Wa-antum al-a‘lawna wa-Allahu ma‘a-kum. Ibn ‘Arabi’s interpretation of this
verse (‘you are the highest and God, too, is the highest with you’) is quite an original
one. Contextually, the verse simply means: ‘you, believers, will surely win (in your
struggle with the disbelievers) for God is with you (i.e., on your side)’.
67. p. 62.
68. either in the sense of makan, i.e., physical place, or makanah, i.e., non-material
place, position or rank.
69. Fuy., pp. 82-83/85. The original is a part of a poem.
XV The Perfect Man as an Individual
At the outset of the preceding chapter I pointed out that Man, in the
thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, is conceived on two different levels, cosmic
and individual. The present chapter will be concerned with the
second of these two levels.
Man on the first level, or - logically - Man as a species, is in the
intermediary stage between the Absolute and the world, and, as an
intermediary, occupies the highest position in the hierarchy of the
created beings. As soon as we begin to consider Man on the indi-
vidual level, however, we cannot help noticing the existence of
many degrees ( maratib ). Otherwise expressed, on the cosmic level
Man himself is the Perfect Man, but on the individual level not all
men are ‘perfect’ ; on the contrary, only a few deserve the title of the
Perfect Man.
How is it possible that a such a fundamental difference should
occur between the two levels? Any man, as long as he is a ‘man’, is
expected to have the ‘comprehensiveness’ actualized in him,
because the ontological ‘comprehensiveness’ belongs to the very
nature of the human species. There can be no possible exception in
this respect. Ontologically, there can be no difference in this respect
between one individual and another. All this is certainly true. But
individual differences arise in accordance with the degrees of lucid-
ity in the mind of those who become conscious of this very fact. All
men are naturally endowed with the same ontological ‘comprehen-
siveness’ but not all men are equally conscious of the ‘comprehen-
siveness’ in themselves. They are variously conscious of it, ranging
from the highest degree of lucidity which comes very close to that of
the Divine Consciousness of the Names and Attributes, down to the
lowest which is practically the same as complete opaqueness. And
only at the highest degree of lucidity can the human mind play the
role of a ‘polished mirror’. Only at the highest degree of lucidity can
Man be the Perfect Man. This is the gist of the whole problem.
In a passage of the Fu$us, Ibn ‘Arab! writes: ‘God has brought to
light their various degrees in him (i.e., Adam)’. 1 Here the pronoun
248
Sufism and Taoism
‘their’ refers to the sons of Adam. Thus the meaning of this short
sentence may be paraphrased as: ‘God has made clear the existence
of various degrees among men within Adam, i.e., the same one
species of Man’ .
The cause which brings into being such degrees among individual
men is explained by Ibn ‘Arabi through the metaphor of colored
glass, a metaphor which we have met in an earlier context. Just as
one and the same light is variously colored as it passes through
pieces of glass of various colors, the same Form of the Absolute is
differently manifested in different men with different capacities . 2
A man who has ‘actualized in himself the Absolute’ (al-
mutahaqqiq bi-al-haqq ) is completely permeated by the Absolute,
so much so that each of his bodily members is a self-manifestation of
the Absolute. And yet, when such men - the people of God (ahl
Allah) - obtain knowledge by ‘immediate tasting’ , one and the same
knowledge becomes variously inflected according to the capacities
of individual organs.
Know that all mystical knowledges which, originating from the
ontological level of the Name Allah, are actualized in the people of
God, differ from each other according to the differences in the
cognitive faculties through which they are actualized, although all
these knowledges are derived ultimately from one source. This last
point is proved by the fact that God Himself declares (in a well-
known Tradition): ‘I am his hearing with which he hears, his sight
with which he sees, his hand with which he seizes, his foot with which
he walks’, God declares in this way that His He- ness ( huwiyah ) is
the very bodily members, which, in their turn, are the man himself.
The He-ness is one, and the bodily members (of the man in whom the
He-ness is actualized) are diverse. And each of his bodily members
has a special knowledge by ‘immediate tasting’ which is peculiar to it
and which is derived from the unique source (from which all the other
bodily members obtain their peculiar knowledges). Thus (the same
knowledge coming from one source) becomes differentiated by the
different bodily members . 3
In the passage just quoted, Ibn ‘Arabi is speaking of the inflection of
one and the same intuitive cognition in one and the same man
through his different bodily members. He is not talking about
differences in intuition among different ‘men of God’. He describes
here simply how one knowledge coming from one source becomes
differently modulated in one man according to which of his faculties
is used. But if in one and the same man the situation is like that, it is
naturally to be expected that even greater differences should arise
in different individuals. In his commentary on this passage, al-
Qashanl understands it in this sense and says : 4
The Perfect Man as an Individual
249
Knowledges by ‘immediate tasting’ are differentiated by the differ-
ence of natural capacities (lit. ‘preparedness’), because the ‘people of
God’ do not all stand on one level. And this causes a difference in
their ‘tasting’ experiences and (the resulting) knowledges . . . just as
one and the same person obtains different knowledges through dif-
ferent faculties. Differences arise (in both cases) in spite of the fact
that all these knowledges go back to one single source, which is the
He-ness of the Absolute.
Ibn ‘Arabi himself explains this phenomenon by comparing it to
water which may have different tastes despite the oneness of its
reality.
This may be understood by the example of water. Water is every-
where one single reality, but it has different tastes according to
places. Here it is sweet, there it is salty and bitter. And yet water is
water in all the states; its reality does not become different however
different its tastes may be . 5
The above explanation gives the ontological cause from which all
differences and degrees occur among men. In addition to this, Ibn
‘Arabi gives another, theological cause for the same phenomenon:
the ‘jealousy’ ( ghayrah ) of God.
The idea of God being ‘jealous’ ( ghayur ) goes back historically to
a very old Semitic conception of God. And it plays also a consider-
ably important part in Sufism.
Now ‘jealousy’ in reference to God is capable of being under-
stood in various meanings. God is ‘jealous’, for example, because
He does not like the secret between Him and His servants be
disclosed to others. Or God is ‘jealous’ in the sense that He forbids
that anything other than Himself be adored and worshipped. Ibn
‘Arabi understands the idea of Divine ‘jealousy’ in terms of the
concept of ‘self-manifestation’ {tajalli).
The Absolute, he says, manifests itself endlessly; it freely dis-
closes and reveals its inner mysteries. And yet the Absolute is,
paradoxically enough, ‘jealous’ of its mysteries, in the sense that it
conceals them from the eyes of ordinary men. From this particular
point of view, Ibn ‘Arabi goes even to the extent of calling the
Divine self-manifestations fawahish (sg. fahishah meaning literally
‘shameful thing’ ‘something scandalous or disgraceful’). Here he is
looking at the whole matter from, so to speak, the subjective view-
point of the Absolute itself. God’s feeling, Ibn ‘Arabi surmises,
would be that He should not have disclosed his secrets, that He
should rather have kept them forever hidden in Himself. On the
human level, it is always an act of shamelessness for man to disclose
to the eyes of the public what he should keep concealed.
Furthermore, Ibn ‘Arabi exercises here again his favorite method
250 Sufism and Taoism
of thinking by phonetic associations, and connects the word ghayrah
(jealously) with ghayr (‘other’).
God admits that He has the Attribute of ‘jealousy’ (ghayrah). It is out
of ‘jealousy’ that He ‘has forbidden the shameful things (fawahish )’
(V, 33).
But ‘shameful’ is only that which has been made openly manifest
(while in truth it should have been kept concealed.) As to what is kept
within, it is ‘shameful’ only to those who can see it. 6
The last sentence would seem to need a few explanatory words.
Here Ibn ‘Arabi divides the ‘shameful things’, i.e., the self-
manifestations of God, into two kinds. The first consists of those
things that are openly manifest to our senses, in the world of
concrete reality. The second refers to the ‘inner’ (ba(in) self-
manifestations of the Divine Essence in the form of the permanent
archetypes. These are not manifest to the eyes of ordinary people,
and in this respect they are not ‘shameful’. And yet they are
nonetheless manifested forms, and as such are clearly visible to
those who have the proper eyes with which to perceive them. They
are, to that extent, equally ‘shameful’. 7
Thus God ‘has forbidden the shameful things’, that is, God has
forbidden the reality to be known openly; namely, the fact that He is
nothing other than the (created) things. So He has concealed the
reality with the veil of ‘jealousy’ -‘other-ness’ (ghayrah ). 8 And (the
‘other’) is yourself (i.e., your ego which is conscious of being some-
thing independent and different from the Absolute). (This connec-
tion between ‘jealousy’ and ‘other-ness’ is natural) because ghayrah
comes from ghayr.
As a result of this, the ‘other’ judges that this (particular act of)
hearing, for instance, is the hearing of such-and-such an individual
person, while the ‘knower’ of the truth judges that the hearing (i.e.,
all particular acts of hearing) is the very (act of) the Absolute. And
the same is true of all human faculties and bodily organs.
Thus not everyone knows the Absolute (in the same degree). There
are superior men and inferior men, and a number of ranks are clearly
discernible among them. 9
The highest rank, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, belongs to a man who
throws himself wholly into the act of ‘remembrance’ (dhikr) - that
is, not only with his tongue and heart alone - and becomes internally
unified with the Absolute.
It must be kept in mind that ‘remembrance’ (dhikr), for Ibn
‘Arabi, does not simply mean the act of remembering God with
one’s tongue and heart; the word is rather synonymous with mysti-
cal ‘self-annihilation’ in God. The dhikr in this meaning is a spiritual
state in which a mystic concentrates all his bodily and spiritual
powers on God in such a way that his whole existence is united with
251
The Perfect Man as an Individual
God completely, without any residue. When a mystic attains to this
state, the distinction between the subject (who exercises the con-
centration of the mind) and the object (upon which his mind is
concentrated) naturally disappears, and he experiences the immed-
iate tasting’ of the essential unity with the Absolute. The ordinary
kind of dhikr which consists in merely ‘remembering’ the
Absolute with tongue or mind without a total existential involve-
ment of the person represents a lower degree of dhikr-ex perience.
When a dhikr of the highest rank actually occurs in a mystic, the
natural perfection of Man is completely realized, and he occupies a
position in the world higher than that of other creatures, including
even angels. Of course all creatures manifest the glory of God each
according to its degree of dhikr, but it is only in Man that this
experience can be heightened to that of the essential unity with God.
The real value of the human existence which is ours is known only to
those who ‘remember’ Godin the proper way of ‘remembering’. For
God is the intimate Companion ( jalis ) of those who ‘remember’ Him,
and those who ‘remember’ Him do witness the Companion. As long
as a man who ‘remembers’ does not witness God who is his Compan-
ion, he is not ‘remembering’ (in the proper way).
The ‘remembrance’ of God (when it is real) runs through all the parts
of a man, unlike the case in which a man ‘remembers’ only with his
tongue. For in the latter case, God happens to be only momentarily
the Companion of the tongue exclusively, so that the tongue alone
sees God while the man himself does not see Him by means of the
sight by which he is properly supposed to see.
You must understand (in the light of this explanation) the following
mystery concerning the ‘remembrance’ of those who are not serious
enough. Even in a man who is not serious enough, the (particular
bodily organ) which happens to be ‘remembering’ Him is doubtless in
the presence of God, and the object of ‘remembrance’ (i.e., God) is
its Companion and it does witness Him. But the man himself, as long
as he lacks seriousness, is not exercising ‘remembrance’ (as he
should), and consequently God is not his Companion (in the real
sense).
All this comes from the fact that man is ‘many’ (i.e., composed of
many parts); he is not one single (non-composite) reality. The Abso-
lute, on the contrary, is One in its essential reality although it is Many
in its Divine Names. But man is ‘many’ with his parts, so that, even if
one of his parts is engaged in ‘remembrance’, it does not necessarily
follow that other parts, too, are ‘remembering’. The Absolute hap-
pens to be the Companion of that particular part of his which is
actually engaged in ‘remembrance’, but his other parts are being
negligent of ‘remembrance’. 10
Such being the case, it is naturally to be expected that there should
arise many degrees among men regarding the capacity for knowing
God and the mystery of Being. On the basis of this fact Ibn ‘Arabi
252
253
Sufism and Taoism
classifies men in several different ways, each classification having its
peculiar standard. I have already introduced some of them. Here I
shall give three typical classifications.
The first classification divides men into two categories: (1) those
whose minds have an otherworldly structure and (2) those whose
minds are of a worldly structure. The first category is represented by
a man who, pure of mind and heart, free from all bodily desires, can
see through things and grasp immediately the realities underlying
them. A man like this knows God by ‘unveiling’ and ‘immediate
tasting’, not by Reason. Of course, he, too, exercises his Reason
within its proper domain, but never pushes it beyond its natural
limits. Rather, he readily goes beyond the realm of Reason, and
follows the judgments given by mystical intuition. Such a man is a
‘knower’ (‘arif) and a ‘servant of the Lord’ (‘ abd rabb ).
The second category, on the contrary, is represented by a man
whose mind is deeply involved in bodily attachments, who is com-
pletely under the sway of desires, and who, consequently, cannot
see the reality of things. In trying to know God, such a man depends
exclusively upon Reason. He cannot step over the boundaries of
logical thinking. Even such a man may taste, on rare occasions,
something of the experience of ‘unveiling’ . In such cases, his Reason
recognizes the fact that he is experiencing something unusual. But
this he knows only by Reason. So as soon as the experience ends, he
falls into confusion, and ends up by submitting himself to the
judgment of Reason. Such a man is not a ‘servant of the Lord’ ; he is
rather a ‘servant of reasoning’ (‘abd naiar).
It must be noticed that Ibn ‘ Arabi does not simply disparage and
deprecate Reason. It has its own field in which to work prop-
erly. But it has its limitations. A real ‘knower’ is one who assigns to
Reason a proper place and restrains it from overstepping its
domain. The prophets and apostles are not people devoid of
Reason. On the contrary, they are pre-eminently men of Reason.
But they have a wider field at their command which lies beyond the
reach of Reason.
In fact, no one is more reasonable than the apostles. But (in addition
to Reason) they are (endowed with another capacity by which) they
bring informations directly from God.
Thus the apostles admit the authority of Reason (within its proper
domain), but add to it something which Reason cannot grasp by its
own power, and which Reason rejects it at first; it is only in the Divine
self-manifestation (i.e., during the time in which the mind happens to
be actually experiencing it by ‘unveiling’) that it admits that it is true.
However, as soon as the experience of the Divine self-manifestation
leaves the mind, the latter falls into confusion concerning what it has
The Perfect Man as an Individual
just seen. If the man in such a case happens to be a ‘servant of the
Lord’, he immediately subjugates his Reason to Him, but if the man
happens to be a ‘servant of reasoning’, he subjugates the truth to the
judgment of Reason.
This state or affairs, however, occurs only as long as the man remains
in the worldly dimension of existence, being veiled from the other
worldly dimensions (which is realized) in the very midst of the
present world.
Even the ‘knowers’ of the truth look in this world as if they were in a
form peculiar to the present world because of the earthly properties
appearing in them. In their ‘interior’, however, they have already
been transported by God to the state of being which is peculiar to the
Hereafter. There can be no doubt about it. So they are not recogniz-
able outwardly except to those whose spiritual eyes have been
opened by God to see through things. In reality, every true ‘knower’
of God, (who knows God) through the experience of (His direct)
self-manifestation in himself, is actually living in a mode of being
peculiar to the Hereafter. Such a man has, already in the present
world, been resurrected from the dead and brought to life from his
tomb. So he sees what others cannot see and witnesses what others
cannot witness. This is a result of a special favor which God grants to
some of His servants."
The second classification which Ibn ‘Arab! proposes consists in
dividing men into three type: (1) ‘knower’ (‘arif), (2) ‘non-knower’
(ghayr ‘arif) and (3) ‘ignorant’ ( jahil ).
He defines 12 the first type as ‘a man who sees the Absolute from
the Absolute, in the Absolute, and by the Absolute itself’. The
second, the ‘non-knower’, is ‘a man who sees the Absolute from the
Absolute, in the Absolute, and by his own self’ . The ‘ignorant’ is ‘a
man who sees the Absolute neither from the Absolute nor in the
Absolute, and who expects to see the Absolute (in the Hereafter) by
his own self’.
The ‘knower’ is a man who completely identifies himself with
God in very possible respect and sees God with God’s own eyes
from the very viewpoint of God. Since he sees God with God’s eyes,
all the self-manifestations of God are within his sight. He actually
witnesses the whole world of Being as it pulsates with Divine Life.
As to the ‘non-knower’, though he sees the Absolute in the
Absolute and from the viewpoint of the Absolute, the eye with
which he sees is his own. So the reality cannot but be deformed by
his sight.
The ‘ignorant’ is by no means in a position to see the Absolute as
it really is. His mind is naturally restricted in an extreme degree.
Each ‘ignorant’ adores and worships God only in a form peculiar tc
a particular religion which he happens to hold, and denies all othe
forms of worshipping God.
254
Sufism and Taoism
Generally speaking each man (i.e., of the class of the ‘ignorant’)
necessarily sticks to a particular religion (‘ aqidah , i.e., religion as a
system of dogmas) concerning his Lord. He always goes back to his
Lord through his particular religious belief and seeks God therein.
Such a man positively recognizes God only when He manifests Him-
self to him in the form recognized by his traditional religion. But
when He manifests Himself in other religions, he flatly refuses to
accept Him and runs away from Him. In so doing, he simply behaves
in an improper way towards God, while imagining that he is practis-
ing good manners toward Him. Thus a man who sticks to the belief of
his particular religion believes in a god according to what he has
subjectively posited in his mind. God in all particular religions
(i'tiqadat) is dependent upon the subjective act of positing ( ja‘l ) on
the part of the believers. Thus a man of this kind sees (in the form of
God) only his own self and what he has posited in his mind. 13
The last paragraph of the passage just quoted discloses in a daring
and outspoken way Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s fundamental position regarding the
eternal Religion and various historical religions. As we have
observed in an earlier context, 14 it is his unshakeable conviction that
all religions are ultimately one because every religion worships the
Absolute in a very particular and limited way. Whatever one wor-
ships as God, one is worshipping through that particular form the
Absolute itself, nothing else, because there is nothing in the whole
world but particular self-manifestations of the Absolute.
In this connection, Ibn ‘Arabi draws our attention to a famous
Tradition that depicts one of the occurrences of the day or Resur-
rection. It reads: ‘On the day of Resurrection, God will appear to
the creatures in a strange form and say, “I am your Lord, the
Highest”. The people will say, “No, we take refuge with God from
thee!” Then He will make Himself manifest in a form familiar to
them in their religions. Thereupon the people will cry out, “Glory
be to Thee, o God” ’. Ibn ‘Arab! observes that this is not only a
matter of the day of Resurrection, for exactly the same thing is
actually happening in the present world. ‘Behold how the degrees of
men concerning their knowledge of God correspond exactly to their
degrees concerning the seeing of God on the day of Resurrection’ .
And he closes the passage by giving us the following warning and
advice:
Beware of being bound up by a particular religion and rejecting all
others as unbelief! If you do that, you will fail to obtain a great
benefit. Nay, you will fail to obtain the true knowledge of the reality.
Try to make yourself a (kind of) Prime Matter for all forms of
religious belief. God is wider and greater than to be confined to one
particular religion to the exclusion of others. For He says: ‘To
whichever direction you turn, there surely is the Face of God’ (II,
115). God does not specify (in this verse) a particular place in which
r
The Perfect Man as an Individual
255
the Face of God is to be found. He only said: ‘ There is the Face of
God.’
The ‘face’ of a thing means its real essence. So God has admonished
by this verse the hearts of the ‘knowers’ so that they might not be
distracted by non-essential matters in the present world from being
constantly conscious of this kind of thing. For no human being ever
knows at which moment he will die. If a man happens to die at a
moment when he is forgetful of this, his position will certainly be not
equal to another who dies in the state of clear awareness. 15
The third classification of men which Ibn ‘Arab! proposes is also a
tripartite division. According to this classification, the lowest degree
is represented by a man who relies upon Reason and who, there-
fore, is content with understanding both God and the world by
exercising his thinking power. The middle position is occupied by
men of ‘imagination’ ( khayal), \.Q ., those who understand the Abso-
lute according to the authentic imagery based on visions of
prophets. And the highest degree is of those who know the reality of
the things through the experience of ‘unveiling’ and ‘immediate
tasting’.
Let us begin with the lowest class, that is, men of Reason. These
people blindly believe in Reason, do not recognize anything as truth
unless it is acceptable to Reason, and refuse to admit anything
which happens to be in conflict with Reason. They do not know that
Reason, in matters concerning the Absolute, is utterly powerless,
and that it can never go deep into the reality of Being. In various
passages of the Fu$u$, Ibn ‘ Arabi emphasizes the narrow limitations
and the essential powerlessness of Reason in contrast to the ‘unveil-
ing’ ( kashf) which is for him the highest form of human cognition.
He sees in the Theologians (mutakallimun) a typical example of the
men of Reason.
As an illustration, he adduces a Qoranic verse: ‘thou (Muham-
mad) wert not the one who threw when thou threwest, but God it
was who really threw’ 16 (VIII, 17). This verse, according to Ibn
‘Arabi, is a most concise symbolic description of the essential rela-
tion between the Absolute and the world. The verse begins by
negating that Muhammad ‘threw’ . Then it affirms that he did throw
-‘when thou threwest’ - and finally Muhammad’s having thrown is
again negated, and the verse ends by establishing that the real
thrower was God Himself. All this is reducible to the proposition:
‘the real thrower is God, but it is God in the phenomenal form of
Muhammad’. The verse, thus understood, expresses nothing other
than the truth about the self-manifestation of the Absolute.
However, only a real ‘knower’ is capable of interpreting the verse
in this sense. As for the Theologians, its true meaning is completely
out of their reach. In confusion they interpret it arbitrarily
k
256 Sufism and Taoism
according to the dictates of their Reason. As a result, their conclu-
sion clashes with that of 'immediate tasting’ . And in most cases they
go to the extreme of declaring impossible and absurd what mystical
intuition recognizes as true.
This and similar verses can be rightly understood only by those
who are possessed of an infinitely flexible mind. On the basis of this
single verse one can say, ‘it was Muhammad who threw’ , just as one
can say, ‘it was not Muhammad who threw’. Likewise, one can say,
‘it was God who threw’ , just as one can say, ‘it was Muhammad who
threw, not God’. The verse, in this way, is liable to produce various
statements that seemingly contradict each other. For, after all, the
question is one of different relations and viewpoints. One and the
same event can be looked at variously according to various possible
viewpoints. And yet all this variation takes place within the
infinitely wide Reality which comprises everything and every poss-
ible viewpoint. All are ultimately the activity of the Absolute. But
Reason which by nature is one-sided, rigid, and inflexible, cannot
accept such a view.
As another good example aptly illustrating the natural and essen-
tial deficiency of Reason, Ibn ‘Arabi considers the problem of the
relation between ‘cause’ and ‘caused’. The Theologians and
Philosophers, who try to understand everything in the light of what
Reason tells them, often discuss the concept of ‘cause’ (‘ illah ). The
reality of ‘cause’, however, can never be revealed to their minds as
long as they remain so utterly dependent upon logical thinking.
As an illustration disclosing the natural weakness of Reason in its
reasoning activity we may mention the judgment given by Reason
concerning ‘cause’: that a ‘cause’ cannot be the ‘caused’ of that of
which it is the ‘cause’. This is evidently what Reason judges. But in
the light of knowledge obtained by mystical illumination, we must
assert precisely this proposition (which is rejected by Reason);
namely, that a ‘cause’ does become the ‘caused’ of that of which it is
the ‘cause ’. 17
The judgment given by Reason can be made (more) correct through
theoretical elaboration within the boundaries of logical thinking.
But, even so, the ultimate limit to which Reason can go, when it is
actually faced with a state of affairs which contradicts the evidence
furnished by logical proof, is to think that - admitting the essential
unity of Reality through all the multifarious forms of things in the
world - (this unique Reality), in so far as it actually and positively acts
as a ‘cause’ in the form of some concrete thing (A, for example) and
causes some other concrete thing ( B ), it can never be the ‘caused’ of
that very thing ( B ) which it (A) has caused as long as it is the ‘cause’.
The truth of the matter, Reason will think, is rather that, as the
Reality changes its form (from A to C, for example, and enters into a
different relationship with B ), its capacity may also change in such a
The Perfect Man as an Individual
257
way that it (now in the form of C) could very well be the ‘caused’ of
what ( B ) it has caused (in the capacity of A), so that, as a result, the
‘caused’ may become the ‘cause’ of its own ‘cause’. This, I say, is the
furthest limit to which Reason can go even when it perceives the
reality (of Being, by perceiving one single Essence underlying all the
things and events that stand in ‘cause’ - ‘caused’ relations), and steps
beyond the proper domain of logical reasoning . 18
The latter half of this passage may be explicated as follows. Properly
speaking, Reason has a very narrowly limited domain of its own. As
long as it remains within the strict limits of this domain, Reason
cannot even see that everything is but a different self-manifestation
of one single Reality, the Absolute. But if Reason does stretch itself
forcibly to the furthest possible limit and goes beyond the domain of
its natural capacity, it will be able to see that the Many in the
possible world are ultimately so many different forms of one and the
same Reality. Of course, such a cognition itself goes against the
judgment of Reason in its normal activity. But at least this much
may be conceded by it if it succeeds in extending its capacity in the
way just described.
Reason, once it has admitted that the Many, i.e., all things and
events in the world of concrete reality, are ultimately One and are
but so many phenomenal forms assumed by one single Reality, must
necessarily admit also that the distinction usually made between
‘cause’ and ‘caused’ is merely a relative matter, because both are
two different forms assumed by one and the same thing. And in this
particular sense, Reason will have to admit that a ‘cause’ can be a
‘caused’.
However, even at this stage, Reason is limited by its own logic. It
will still assert that so long as a certain concrete thing (A) actually is
the ‘cause’ of another concrete thing ( B),A remains a ‘cause’, and
will never be a ‘caused’ of B. A, in the capacity of B's ‘cause’, can
never be a ‘caused’ of B. A can rightly be a ‘caused’ of B only when it
is considered from a different angle in a different capacity, i.e., no
longer exactly as A but rather as something different, C.
Thus it is the final judgment of Reason, even at its unusually
extended limit, that a ‘cause’, unless it be considered in terms of a
different relationship, cannot be caused by its own ‘caused’. This is
the self-evident and primary truth of reason which it can never
abandon as long as Reason remains Reason.
However, if we look at the matter in the light of the intuition
gained by the experience of ‘immediate tasting’, we find immedi-
ately that a ‘cause’ can possibly be a ‘caused’, just as a ‘caused’ can
possibly be a ‘cause’.
It is worthy of notice that the thought pattern that underlies this
conception is very characteristic of Ibn ‘Arab!; we have already met
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Sufism and Taoism
with it in the preceding in various forms. The idea, for example, that
the creatures are ‘food’ of God, just as God is ‘food’ of the crea-
tures, or the idea of the mutual taskhir between God and the
creatures, namely, that the creatures make God ‘subservient’ to
themselves, just as God makes the creatures ‘subservient’ to Him -
these and similar ‘daring’ ideas are structurally of the same category
as that of the mutual causal relationship between God and the
creatures.
How, then, can a ‘caused’ act positively upon its own ‘cause’ in
such a way that it makes the latter its own ‘caused’ ? The answer runs
as follows. ‘The ‘cause-ness’ (‘ illiyah ) of a ‘cause’ (‘illah ) is incon-
ceivable without the ‘caused-ness’ ( ma‘luliyah ) of the ‘caused’
(ma‘lul), nor can the first actually exist without the latter. The
‘cause-ness’ completely depends upon the ‘caused-ness’ of the
‘caused’. ‘Cause’, in this sense, contains in itself ‘caused-ness’, just
as ‘caused’ contains ‘cause-ness’. Moreover, all things, in Ibn
‘ArabFs view, are but different phenomenal forms of one single
Existence. So everything is in one aspect ‘cause’, and in another
‘caused’.
Representing the people of ‘immediate tasting’, al-Qashani for-
mulates the right answer in the following terms : 19
The one single Reality appearing in two different forms (i.e., ‘cause’
and ‘caused’) is apt to receive the two qualifications according to (our
subjective) points of view. That is to say, it has, when it is in the state
of being a ‘cause’, the aptitude to be a ‘caused’, and when it is in the
state of being a ‘caused’, it has the aptitude to be a ‘cause’. For the
one Reality comprehends in itself both ‘cause-ness’ and ‘caused-
ness’ with all the properties peculiar to both. Thus one and the same
thing is a ‘cause’ in its ‘cause-ness’ , and a ‘caused’ in its ‘caused-ness’ .
It has in itself all these and similar aspects (which it manifests)
according to particular circumstances.
Exactly the same holds true of the phenomenon of the self-
manifestation. For (such distinctions as) the ‘self-manifester’, the
locus of self-manifestation, the act of self-manifestation, the being of
the self-manifester a self-manifester and the being of the locus a
locus, etc. ( - all these are simply [reflections of our] subjective
viewpoints.) In reality they are nothing other than the Absolute
which is essentially One and which appears in these various capacities
according to our subjective perspectives. These are all notions con-
ceived by our discriminating Reason, the distinctions existing only in
our Reason. They are all matters of relative forms, supposed rela-
tions secondarily derived from the one single Reality. This Reality is
God, the One and the Unique. There is nothing in Being except God!
If we have gone into a considerably long digression on the problem
of the ‘cause’ - ‘caused’ relationship, it is partly because of its
intrinsic value as a theory of causality typical of Ibn ‘Arab!. The
The Perfect Man as an Individual
main purpose, however, has been to give an illustration showing the
natural incapability of Reason to reach any deep truth about the
Absolute and the world of Being.
‘He who knows himself (lit. ‘his soul’) knows his Lord’ - this
famous Tradition is one of Ibn ‘ArabFs favorite adages. Here again
he refers to it and declares that there has not been even a single
person, among the Philosophers and Theologians, who has grasped
his own ‘self’ (soul) in its real depth.
Of all the men of knowledge no one has obtained a real insight into
the ‘soul’ and its reality except the divinely inspired Apostles and
great Sufis. As to the men of reasoning and logical thinking, whether
the ancient Philosophers or the Theologians in Islam, not even one of
them has hit upon the truth in their discussions on ‘soul’ and its
quiddity. (This is but natural because) logical thinking can never
arrive at the truth in this matter. Therefore, he who seeks the true
knowledge of ‘soul’ by means of thinking is like a person who,
looking at a man with a tumor, thinks him to be fat, or like a person
who blows upon something which is not fuel.
People of this kind are precisely ‘ those whose effort goes astray in the
present world, being convinced that they are doing good work’
(XVIII, 14). For he who seeks anything by a wrong method is sure to
fail in achieving his aim. 20
Between the real ‘knowers’ and the men of Reason are situated the
people of Imagination ( khayal ). These are men who try with sincer-
ity to approach the Absolute by the aid of the images given by their
Prophet and Apostle. Concerning the above-quoted Qoranic verse
about the ‘one who threw’ , for example, the men of this kind believe
firmly that the true ‘thrower’ is God Himself, although the deep
meaning of the verse escapes their understanding. They readily
accept as true whatever their Prophet teaches them, and do not dare
to be critical of anything which they think contradicts Reason. Ibn
‘Arabi calls these men ‘people of Belief (or Faith)’ ( ahl al-iman).
The ‘people of Belief are those who accept unquestioningly what-
ever the Prophets and Apostles convey from the Absolute. They
should not be confused with those who accept unquestioningly the
teaching of the (Philosophers and Theologians) who think by Reason
and who are not content unless they interpret any message (i.e.,
Qoranic verse or prophetic Tradition) that is transmitted to them in
the light of logical evidences.
To these people (of Belief) refers the Qoranic expression: ‘or he who
lends his ear’ (L, 37) to the Divine messages as they are conveyed
through the tongues of the Prophets. And such a man, i.e., a man who
lends his ear in this way, ‘is a witness’ (L, 37). God here refers to the
ontological dimension of Imagination and the proper use of the
faculty of Imagination. And this corresponds to the saying of the
Prophet (Muhammad) on the ‘perfection of Belief’
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261
Sufism and Taoism
(ihsan):‘ 2i . . .that you worship God as if you saw Him’. God is always
in the direction toward which man prays. This is why such a man is a
witness. 22
‘Being a witness {shahid)' in this passage means, in Ibn Arabi’s
interpretation, the spiritual state in which a man ‘witnesses’, i.e., is
present by his heart to the ontological plane of Imagination. It is a
state at which the heart of a ‘knower’ perceives in sensible imagery
some of the things that properly belong to the world of the Unseen.
The heart of a ‘ knower’ , when he reaches this stage, finds itself in the
world of Imagination and begins to witness in images various states
of affairs of the invisible world.
It is worthy of notice that toward the end of the passage just
quoted, Ibn ‘Arabi, referring to the famous Tradition about ihsan,
draws attention to the expression: ‘. . . that you worship Him as if
you saw Him’. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s interpretation, this describes the
lowest and weakest degree of the ‘witnessing’ here in question. It is
the lowest degree of the mental presence in the ontological plane of
Imagination, for it is said: ‘as if you saw Him’ . As the very wording
of this phrase indicates, man is not as yet actually seeing God. There
is as yet no actual vision. Man only acts as if he had a real vision.
But when the heart of the ‘knower’ becomes strengthened and
mounts a step higher, the object of the ‘witnessing’ becomes visible
to the internal, spiritual eye (ba$irah), though as yet no vision occurs
to his physical eye . 23
As the ‘knower’ goes up to the next degree, the object becomes
visible to both his physical eye and his spiritual eye. And if he still
goes up and reaches finally the ultimate and highest stage, the one
who ‘witnesses’ and the object ‘witnessed’ become completely
unified. At this stage it is no longer the human heart that ‘witnesses’
its object; but it is the Absolute itself ‘witnessing’ itself in itself. And
this is the stage of the ‘saint’ ( waliy ).
Thus when a man ‘wakes up’, and rises to the highest degree of
‘saintship’, he begins to witness an extraordinary phenomenon, for
his spiritual eye is now open to the reality of what we have described
earlier under the title of ‘new creation’.
In the eye of a real ‘knower’, the Absolute (in whatever form it may
appear) remains always the ‘recognized’ one which is never denied. 24
The people who recognized the same Absolute under all phenomenal
forms in the present world will do exactly the same in the Hereafter,
too.
This is why God (speaking of a man of this kind) says ‘for whomever
has a heart ( qalb )’ (L, 37). For (such a man) knows the constant
changing of the Absolute in various forms; he knows this judging by
The Perfect Man as an Individual
the fact that his ‘heart’ is constantly changing from one form to
another. 25
Thus such a man comes to know his own ‘self’ through (the know-
ledge of the constant transformation of) himself. (And from this he
obtains the real knowledge about the Absolute, for) his own ‘self’ is
nothing other than the He-ness of the Absolute, (and his knowledge
thus obtained is easily extended to everything because) everything in
the world of Being, whether present or future, is nothing other than
the He-ness of the Absolute; indeed, everything is the He-ness
itself. 26
A real ‘knower’ who knows his ‘heart’ {qalb) sees with his own inner
eye how it changes constantly and transforms itself {qalb or taqal-
lub) at every moment in a myriad of modes and states. He knows at
the same time that his ‘heart’ is but a self-manifestion of the Abso-
lute, and that it is nothing other than the He-ness of the Absolute.
Of course his ‘ heart’ is the only thing in the whole world whose inner
structure he can know through introspection. But he is well aware
also that all other things must be exactly of the same structure as his
‘heart’. Thus a man who knows his own ‘heart’ from inside knows
also the Absolute as it goes on transforming itself moment after
moment in all the possible forms of the world.
The category to which such a ‘knower’ belongs constitutes the
highest degree on the scale of humanity. The subject of the next
chapter will be this highest category of men.
Notes
1. Fuy., p. 26/56.
2. Fuy., p. 118/114. The whole passage has been given in translation in Chapter IV.
3. Fus., pp. 125-126/107.
4. p. 126.
5. Fus., p. 126/107.
6. Fus., p. 130/109-110.
7. Cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 126.
8. As I have remarked above, the word ghayrah meaning ‘jealousy’ is, in the
linguistic consciousness of Ibn ‘ Arabi, directly connected with ghayr meaning ‘ other’ .
So the sentence: ‘God covered or concealed the reality with ghayrah' not only means
that He concealed it with ‘jealousy’, but at the same time that He has concealed the
reality by an infinite number of particular ‘determinations’ , all of which are regarded
as ‘other’ than God Himself, so that in this view everything appears as something
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Sufism and Taoism
‘other’ than the rest of the things as well as ‘other’ than the Absolute. And the view of
‘other-ness’ covers the reality of Being and hinders it from being perceived by the
eyes of ordinary people.
9. Fus ., p. 130/110.
10. Fus., p. 211/168-169.
11. Fus., PP- 234-235/185-186.
12. Fus., pp. 135-136/113.
13. ibid.
14. Cf. Chapter V, where the same idea is dealt with in connection with a different
problem, that of ‘metaphysical perplexity’.
15. Fus., P- 136/1 13.
16. Wa-ma ramayta idh ramayta wa-lakinna Allaha rama.
17. Suppose A is the ‘cause’ of B, for instance. B is of course the ‘caused’ of A. But
there is also a certain respect in which B must be regarded as the ‘cause’ of A . In this
latter respect, A would be the ‘caused’ of B.
18. Fus., p. 233/185.
19. p. 234.
20. Fus ■, P- 153/125.
21. On the exact meaning of the word ihsan see my The Concept of Belief in Islamic
Theology, Tokyo, 1965, pp. 58-60.
22. Fus., p. 149/123.
23. Qashani, p. 150.
24 The reference is to the Tradition, which has been quoted and explained earlier in
the present chapter, concerning what will happen on the day of Resurrection.
25. By the ‘etymological’ way of thinking which, as we have observed several times,
is so typical of Ibn ‘Arab!, he brings together the ‘heart’ ( qalb ) and ‘change’ or
‘transformation’ {qalb).
26. Fus., P- 149/122.
XVI Apostle, Prophet, and Saint
The preceding chapter has revealed that the moment we begin to
consider Man on the individual level, we are faced with the exist-
ence of several degrees among men. We have seen also that the
highest of all human degrees is ‘saintship’ ( walayah ). The Saint
( waliy ) is the highest ‘knower’ of God, and consequently (in terms
of the world-view of Ibn ‘ Arabi) of the essential structure of Being.
Otherwise expressed, the Saint is the Perfect Man par excellence.
The central topic of this chapter will be the concept of ‘saintship’ .*
We may begin by remarking that, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s understanding, the
concept of Saint comprises both Prophet ( nabiy ) and Apostle
( rasul ). Briefly stated, the Saint is the widest concept comprising
Prophet and Apostle; next is the concept of Prophet which com-
prises that of Apostle; and the Apostle is the narrowest of all. As
al-Qashani says, ‘every Apostle is a Prophet, and every Prophet is a
Saint’, but not vice versa.
On the relation between the three concepts, there is a consider-
ably long passage in the Fusus 2 in which Ibn ‘Arabi develops his
thought. The argument is very entangled and somewhat confusing,
but the gist of it may be clarified in the following way.
The first point to note concerning the concept of Saint is that
waliy is properly a Divine Name. The fact that waliy is one of the
Names of God implies that it is an aspect of the Absolute. In this
respect, the Saint is radically different from the Prophet and the
Apostle because the words nabiy and rasul are not Divine Names;
they are peculiar to human beings. ‘ Waliy is a Name of God’, as Ibn
‘Arabi says, ‘but God has neither called Himself nabiy nor rasul,
while He has named Himself waliy and has made it one of His own
Names ’. 3
Thus waliy is a Divine Name. But even a man, when his know-
ledge of God attains to its highest point, becomes entitled to be
called by the same name; he is a waliy. However, the human waliy
himself, being so keenly conscious of his ‘servant-ness’ (‘ubud-
iyah) does not like to make the name publicly his own . For he knows
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265
Sufism and Taoism
that the word waliy properly belongs to God alone, and that when a
human being becomes a waliy he is supposed to have transcended
his position of ‘servant-ness’ and have put himself in the position of
Lordship ( rububiyah ). But, whether he likes it or not, it does
sometimes happen that a mystic transcends his position of
‘servant-ness’. This occurs by a mystic being completely drowned in
the Absolute and losing the consciousness of his own
‘servant-ness’ . 4
It is to be remarked that, since waliy is a name common to God
and Man, the walayah never ceases to exist. As God exists everlast-
ingly, the saintship will exist forever. As long as there remains in
the world even a single man of the highest spiritual power who
attains to the rank of ‘saintship’ - and, in fact, such a man will
certainly exist in every age - the ‘saintship’ itself will be kept intact.
In contrast to this, the prophethood and apostleship are histori-
cally conditioned, and can, therefore, be intermittent or even disap-
pear completely. 5 As a matter of fact, we know that the chain of
prophethood has historically come to an end at Muhammad, the last
of all authentic Prophets. After Muhammad, there does not exist
any longer a Prophet, who is at the same time a Law-giver
v musharri ). After Muhammad we have only what Ibn ‘Arabi calls
general prophethood’ ( nubuwwah ‘ ammah ), i.e., prophethood
without institution of Law, which is nothing other than ‘saintship’.
Only this name (i.e., waliy ) remains forever among mankind, not
only in the present world but also in the Hereafter. As for the names
which are peculiar to Man to the exclusion of God (i.e., Prophet and
Apostle), they cease to exist with the cessation of prophethood and
apostleship. God, however, has shown special mercy upon his ser-
vants and has allowed to subsist among them ‘general prophethood’
which is not accompanied by institution of Law . 6
This passage makes it clear that, in the conception of Ibn ‘Arabi,
institution of Law ( tashri ‘) constitutes one of the characteristics of
the Prophet. From this particular point of view, he divides the
Prophets into two kinds: (1) those who institute Law ( nabiy
musharri ‘) and (2) those whose prophetic activity is done within a
given Law ( nabiy musharra‘ la-hu). The first category is represented
by men like Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, each one of whom
instituted a particular Law by a Divine Command. The second
category is exemplified by those who, like the successive Prophets in
Israel, live and fulfil their prophetic mission within the boundaries
of a given Law instituted by Moses.
Since, as we have seen, the Saint is the widest concept in terms of
extension and is the most basic one at that, there can be no Prophet,
no Apostle unless the ‘saintship’ is first established. The Prophet is a
Saint who adds to his ‘saintship’ one more distinguishing mark;
namely, a particular knowledge of things unknown and unseen.
And the Apostle is a Saint who adds to his ‘saintship’ and ‘prophet-
hood’ one more characteristic; namely being conscious of the mis-
sion and capacity of conveying Divine messages to the people who
follow him.
From this we learn that the first requirement for a man to be a
Perfect Man is to be in the rank of a waliy, and that walayah is the
most fundamental and most general attribute of all types of Perfect
Man. What, then, does walayah mean?
Walayah implies, first and foremost, a perfect knowledge of the
ultimate truth concerning the Absolute, the world, and the relation
between the Absolute and the world. 7 A man who has attained to
the rank of ‘saintship’ has a clear consciousness that he is a self-
manifestation of the Absolute, and that, as such, he is essentially
one with the Absolute, and, indeed, ultimately is the Absolute itself.
He is also conscious of the fact that, on the analogy of the inner
structure of himself, all the phenomenal Many are self-
manifestations of the Absolute and are, in the sense, one with the
Absolute. This precisely is the consciousness of the ultimate and
essential ‘oneness of Being’ (wahdah al-wujud ).
This consciousness of the ‘oneness of Being’ he obtains only by
being ‘annihilated’ and completely immersed in the Absolute.
Through the experience of ‘self-annihilation’ he transforms himself,
so to speak, into the ‘inside’ of the Absolute, and from there sees the
reality of all things by ‘immediate tasting’. The concept of ‘self-
annihilation’ ( Jana ) in this sense plays an exceedingly important
role in the theory of walayah. The ‘self-annihilation’ is, in fact, the
first item in the essential attributes of the Saint.
Ibn ‘Arabi distinguishes three stages in ‘self-annihilation’. 8 The
first is the annihilation of the attributes. This stage is called by Ibn
‘Arabi takhalluq. It means that the mystic has all his human attri-
butes ‘annihilated’ and in their place ‘assumes as his own’ ( takhal-
luq ) the Divine Attributes. It is, as Bali Efendi tersely describes it, 9
‘annihilating his attributes in the Attributes of the Absolute’. The
second stage is called tahaqquq. It means that the mystic has his
essence ( dhat ) ‘annihilated’ and realizes ( tahaqquq ) in himself his
being one with the Absolute. Bali Efendi 10 describes it as ‘annihilat-
ing his essence in the Essence of the Absolute’ . The third and the
last stage is called ta‘alluq. The wordta‘alluq, meaning literally ‘firm
adherence’, indicates that the man in this state remains firmly
attached to the essential property of walayah so that he is never
separated from it no matter what he may do in the world of empiri-
cal existence. The state of ta‘alluq corresponds to what is more
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usually known as the state of ‘self-subsistence’ ( baqa ’) which comes
after the state of fana’. In this spiritual state, the mystic regains his
self which he has once annihilated, but he regains it not in himself
but in the very midst of the Divine Essence. In his fully illumined
consciousness, there is no longer any trace of his old personal ego.
He is only conscious that after having lost his life he now subsists in
the Divine Essence, and that, therefore, it is, in reality, not he who
exists but the Absolute itself. Whatever he does, it is not he but God
who does it. Bali Efendi describes it as ‘annihilating his actions in
the actions of the Absolute ’. 11
‘Saintship’ comes into existence only on the basis of the experi-
ence of ‘self-annihilation’ here depicted. And wide indeed is the
consciousness of the Saint who has passed through such an experi-
ence. For he witnesses the astonishing scene of all things merging
into the limitless ocean of Divine Life, and he is conscious that all
this is actually taking place in himself. At the very height of this
spiritual state, the consciousness of the Saint is identical with the
Divine Consciousness which has not yet begun to become split into
an infinity of ‘determinations’ ( ta‘ayynnat ). 12 Such a man is the
highest ‘knower’. And such a man naturally falls into deep silence
(sukut), li because the content of the deepest knowledge is ineffable.
Such is the existential ground on which stands ‘saintship’. And on
this basis stands ‘prophethood’ with an additional property, and on
‘prophethood’ stands ‘apostleship’ with a further addition. The
Prophet and the Apostle are closely tied to the present world; their
functions concern the life in this world, for institution of Law always
aims at regulating the worldly life with a view to letting people
obtain the everlasting happiness in the next world. ‘Saintship’, on
the contrary, has no such essential relation to the present world.
Thus ‘prophethood’ and ‘apostleship’ can disappear from their
subjects, but the quality or title of ‘saintship’ never leaves its sub-
ject. Those from whom the titles of ‘prophethood’ and ‘apostleship’
disappear become immediately Saints without any qualifications.
And since, in the Hereafter, there can be no institution of Law,
everybody who is in the present world a Prophet or Apostle will
continue to exist in the next world in the rank of ‘saintship ’. 14
As we have just remarked, the Prophet is a Saint with the addition
of a different qualification (i.e., the rank of ‘saintship’ plus the rank
of ‘prophethood’), and the Apostle is a Prophet with the addition of
a further qualification (i.e., the rank of ‘saintship’ plus the rank of
‘prophethood’ plus the rank of ‘apostleship’). So the Prophet unites
in one person two ranks, and the Apostle unites in himself three
different ranks. There are thus three different ranks recognized:
‘saintship’, ‘prophethood’ and ‘apostleship’. The question is natur-
Apostle, Prophet, and Saint
267
ally raised as to which of them is higher than which. With regard to
this question, the most problematic point, according to Ibn ‘ Arab!,
concerns the position of ‘saintship’. Against those sufis who regard
‘saintship’ qua ‘saintship’ as higher than ‘prophethood’ and
‘apostleship’, he emphatically states that it is only when these two or
three ranks co-exist in one person that we can rightly regard his
‘saintship’ as higher than his ‘prophethood’ and ‘apostleship’.
(When one and the same person unites in him these two or three
qualifications) the man in the capacity of a ‘knower’ or Saint is more
complete and more perfect than himself in the capacity of an Apostle
or in that of a man who has instituted a Divine Law (i.e., Prophet).
So whenever you hear a man belonging to the ‘people of God’ saying
- or whenever such a saying is conveyed to you through somebody
else - that ‘saintship’ is higher than ‘prophethood’, you must under-
stand him to mean what I have just remarked.
Likewise, when such a man declares that the Saint stands above the
Prophet and the Apostle, he is simply talking about one and the same
person. In fact, the Apostle qua Saint is more complete (and perfect)
than himself qua Prophet and Apostle. It is not the case, however,
that a Saint (i.e., a different person who happens to be a Saint) who
follows (another person who happens to be a Prophet or Apostle in
the community) is higher than the Prophet or Apostle . 15
The last sentence of this passage points out the fact that in case the
three qualifications (Saint, Prophet, and Apostle) do not concern
one and the same person but three different persons, there is a
respect in which the Saint must necessarily follow and be subordi-
nate to the Prophet or Apostle. And this because the Apostle
possesses a knowledge of the particular Law (i.e., ‘exterior know-
ledge’ l ilm zahir ) with which he has been sent to his community,
while the Saint has no such knowledge. In what concerns the regula-
tions of the Law, the latter must follow the Apostle of his age.
But there is also a certain respect in which the Saint is superior to
the Apostle. For the Saint not only possesses a complete knowledge
about God and the reality of things (‘interior knowledge’, ‘ilm
bafin ) but also is conscious of the fact that he has that knowledge.
But neither the Apostle nor the Prophet is conscious of it, although
they, too, do possess the same knowledge.
From the fact that ‘apostleship’ is based on three different con-
stituents there naturally follows that there are differences among
the Apostles regarding their degrees. This is the conception of the
‘difference in degrees among the Apostles’ ( tafadul al-rusul ).
All Apostles, in terms of their ‘saintship’, are equal and stand on
the same level, but in actuality they must necessarily differ one from
the other because of their intimate relations with the concrete
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situations of the age and country in which they live. And the same is
true of the Prophet. The nature and rank of an Apostle is decisively
affected by the conditions, material and spiritual, determining the
situation of the nation of which he happens to be the Apostle.
Likewise, the rank of a Prophet is gravely affected by the amount of
knowledge he actually has.
Know that the Apostles qua Apostles - not qua Saints or ‘knowers’ -
stand in different degrees, each according to the state of his commun-
ity. For the amount of his knowledge concerning his own apostolic
mission is exactly measured to what his community needs, no more,
no less. And since communities differ from each other in terms
of relative superiority, the Apostles also are higher and lower in
terms of the knowledge of their mission in exact accordance with the
difference that exists among the nations. And to this refers the saying
of God: ‘Those Apostles, We have made some of them superior to
others’. (II, 253)
Likewise, (the Prophets) differ in rank among themselves in accor-
dance with their individual capacities with regard to their personal
knowledges and judgments. ‘And to this refers the saying of God:
And We have made some of the Prophets superior to others’ . (XVII,
55) 16
In the preceding chapter we have seen that the Perfect Man on the
cosmic level is the ‘vicegerent’ of God. The same is true also of the
Perfect Man on the individual level. Here on the level of individual
persons, the idea of the Perfect Man is embodied by Saint, Prophet,
and Apostle. These three are the ‘vicegerents’ ( khulafa ’) of God
because they are the most perfect and most complete loci of
theophany on the earth. 17 They are concrete manifestations of the
‘Reality of Muhammad’ ( al-haqiqah al-muhammadiyah) which we
have discussed in the previous chapter. 18
The term khalifah meaning ‘vicegerent’ is a little ambiguous,
because we ordinarily use it to designate the political head of the
Muslim community, the Caliph. 19 In view of this fact, Ibn ‘Arab!
strictly distinguishes between two kinds of khalifah : (1) the ‘vice-
gerent of God’ ( khalifah Allah, or khalifah ‘ an Allah) and (2) the
‘vicegerent (or successor) of the Apostle’ ( khalifah al-rasul, or
khalifah ‘an al-rasul ). The ‘vicegerent’ in the sense of the Perfect
Man (1) is totally different from the Caliph, the historical and
political head of the Muslim community, who assumes the same
name khalifah (2).
God has His ‘vicegerents’ on the earth; they are the Apostles. As for
the Caliphs we know today, they are (‘vicegerents’ or ‘successors’) of
the Apostles, not of God, because a Caliph governs (the community)
strictly according to the dictates of the Law of an apostolic origin, and
never goes beyond it. 20
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Apostle, Prophet, and Saint
There are, however, exceptional cases in which a Caliph, i.e., a
‘vicegerent’ succeeding the Apostle, is in touch with the very source
from which the latter has drawn his knowledge, and governs the
community according to the inner Law which he receives direct
from God. Such a man is outwardly a khalifah of the Apostle, but
inwardly is a khalifah of God.
Such a man is outwardly a follower ( muttabi ‘ , namely, of the Apostle)
in the sense that he conforms himself (to the Law) in governing the
community: Jesus, for example, when he will come down to the earth
and govern the world. 21 Another example is the Prophet Muham-
mad. And to this refers the saying of God: ‘These are the men whom
God has given guidance. So follow their guidance’ (VI, 90). A man of
this sort is, in virtue of the way in which he derives (his knowledge)
and of which he is conscious, both ‘specially privileged’ ( mukhtass )
and ‘conforming’ ( muwafiq ). 22 In this respect he is somewhat in the
same position as the Prophet (Muhammad) who, confirming as he did
the Law of the Apostles who had preceded him, confirmed it in his
own name, so that we, his followers, actually follow him (accepting
the Law) as his own, and not as a Law established by some of his
predecessors. In like manner, the ‘vicegerent of God’ obtains (his
knowledge) from exactly the same source as the Apostle.
Such a man is called, in mystic terminology, ‘the vicegerent of God’,
but, in ordinary (non-mystic) terminology, ‘the vicegerent of the
Apostle of God’.
This is the reason why the Apostle of God (Muhammad) died with-
out explicitly designating anyone as his khalifah. He acted in this way
because he knew that among the believers there would appear some-
one who would receive ‘vicegerency’ directly from his Lord and
thereby become a ‘vicegerent of God’, while conforming himself
perfectly to the given Law (established by the Apostle).
One of the key-terms of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s theory of walayah is the ‘Seal’
( khatam ), meaning the ultimate and final unit of a series. I should
like to close this chapter by a brief consideration of this concept,
although the problems it raises mostly go far beyond the scope of
the present book which aims at elucidating the ontological structure of
Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view.
The term khatam appears in two phrases: (1) the Seal of the
Prophets ( khatam al-anbiya ’) or Seal of the Apostles ( khatam al-
rusut), and (2) the Seal of the Saints {khatam al-awliya’). In conformity
with the commonly-accepted usage in Islam, the first phrase ‘Seal of
the Prophets’ designates the Prophet Muhammad himself. The phrase
in itself has nothing original about it; it is an expression often used in
accordance with the common belief in Islam that the Prophet
Muhammad represents historically the last ring of a long chain of
Prophets, there being absolutely no possibility of an authentic Prophet
appearing after him.
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Sufism and Taoism
By the second phrase: ‘the seal of the Saints’ , which is naturally more
problematic, Ibn ‘ ArabI means most probably himself, at least as long
as the present world lasts, 23 although he does not say so explicitly in the
Fusus. As Affifi points out, 24 Ibn ‘ArabI, besides hinting at the idea in
many places of his writings by ambiguous expressions as, for example,
‘the Seal of the Muhammadan saintship ( walayah muhammadiyah ) is a
man of noble Arab birth, living in our own time’ etc., declares in one
passage of the Futuhat al-Makkiyyah : ‘ I am the Seal of the saintship, no
doubt, (the Seal of) the heritage of the Hashimite (Muhammad) and
the Messiah’.
But whether or not Ibn ‘Arab! really means by the Seal himself,
the problem is merely of a peripheral significance to us. For the
specific purposes of the present work, what is important is the
concept of Seal itself.
The problem turns round the ultimate source of the highest know-
ledge peculiar to the class of the highest ‘knowers’.
This (highest) knowledge properly belongs only to the Seal of the
Apostles and the Seal of the Saints. No one of the Prophets and
Apostles obtains this knowledge except from the sacred niche of the
Last Apostle , 25 and no one of the Saints obtains it except from the
niche of the Last Saint . 26
The last sentence might suggest the wrong idea that Ibn ‘ArabI is
speaking here of two different ‘niches’. In truth, however, there is
only one ultimate ‘niche’ from which all obtain the highest know-
ledge. For, as al-Qashani says, 27 if all the Apostles obtain it from the
Seal of the Apostles, the latter obtains it from his own innermost
‘niche’ , in the very capacity of the Seal of the Saints, 28 so that all the
Apostles and the Saints ultimately obtain their Light from the Seal
of the Saints.
As to the relative superiority between the Seal of the Apostles
and the Seal of the Saints, Ibn ‘ArabI gives his view as follows: 29
It is true that the Seal of the Saints follows externally what the Seal of
the Apostles has established, namely, the Sacred Law. This, how-
ever, does not minimize in any way the spiritual rank of the Seal of
the Saints. Nor does this contradict what I have said above (concern-
ing all Apostles obtaining their esoteric knowledge from the ‘niche’
of the Seal of the Saints). For (it simply means that) the Seal of the
Saints is in a certain respect lower in rank (than the Seal of the
Apostles) but is higher in another respect.
This interpretation is confirmed by what actually took place in our
religion, namely, by the fact, (for instance) that ‘Umar proved to be
superior (to Muhammad) in his decision about the right treatment of
the prisoners of Badr and also regarding the fertilization of the
date-palm. A ‘perfect’ man need not be superior to others in every
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Apostle , Prophet, and Saint
matter and in every respect. What the (spiritual persons) consider
important is superiority in terms of knowledge about God. That only
is the central point. As for worldly affairs, they are of no importance
at all in the minds (of spiritual persons).
In connection with the problem of the relation between the Seal
of the Saints and the Seal of the Apostles, Ibn ‘ArabI refers to a
famous Tradition in which Muhammad compares himself to the one
last brick that finishes and completes an entire wall. Then he corre-
lates this Tradition with a vision he had at Mecca in the year 599
A.H.
In this vision Ibn ‘Arab! saw the Ka‘bah, the House of God. The
Ka‘bah was built of gold and silver brick (‘silver brick’ being a
symbol of the Prophet, and ‘gold brick’ of the Saint). The wall of the
Ka‘ bah as he saw it still lacked two final pieces of brick , one gold and
another silver. Ibn ‘ArabI, in the dream, keenly felt that the two
missing bricks were no other than himself. And the construction of
the Ka‘bah was brought to completion when he filled the place of
these two bricks.
The Prophet (Muhammad) once compared the ‘prophethood’ to a
wall made of brick which was complete except in one place which was
to be filled by a piece of brick. Muhammad himself was that brick.
The important point is that he saw, as he says (in this Tradition), only
one single piece of brick still missing.
As for the Seal of the Saints, he would surely have visions of a similar
nature; he would surely see what the Prophet symbolized by a wall.
(The only difference would, however, be that) he would see in the
wall two bricks still missing, the entire wall being built of gold and
silver bricks. And he would notice that the two bricks that were
lacking in the wall were one gold and the other silver. Further, he
would surely see in the vision himself just fit to be put into the place of
these two bricks. Thus he would see that what was meant by the two
bricks completing the wall was no other than the Seal of the Saints.
The reason why he must necessarily see himself as two bricks is as
follows. He is, externally, a follower of the Law established by the
Seal of the Apostles. This fact was (symbolized in the vision by) the
place for the silver brick. But this is only the ‘external’ side of the Seal
of the Saints, concerning as it does only the legal regulations about
which he simply follows the Seal of the Apostles. But, on the other
hand, in his innermost heart, he obtains directly from God that very
thing in which externally he is a simple follower (of the Seal of the
Apostles).
All this because he sees the state of affairs as it really is. So he cannot
but see the matter in this way. And in this capacity he corresponds,
internally, to the place for the gold brick, for he obtains his know-
ledge from the same source from which the angel (Gabriel) obtains
that which he conveys to the Apostle.
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Sufism and Taoism
If you have understood what I have here indicated metaphorically
you have obtained an extremely valuable knowledge about everything.
Thus every Prophet, (in the long historical chain of ‘prophethood’)
beginning with Adam and ending with the last Prophet, invariably
obtained his (prophetic Light) from the ‘niche’ of the Seal of the
Prophets, although the corporeal existence of the latter was posterior
to others. This because Muhammad, in his Reality , 30 was existent
(from eternity). To this refer his words (in a Tradition): ‘I was a
Prophet even while Adam was still between water and clay ’. 31
On the implication of this passage al-Qashani makes an interesting
remark . 32 Ibn ‘Arabi’s description might be taken to imply the
superiority of the Seal of the Saints to the Prophet Muhammad,
because the position of the latter is symbolized only by one brick,
whereas that of the Seal of the Saints is symbolized by two bricks,
one of silver as the sign of his ‘external’ subordination to Muham-
mad, and the other of brilliant gold as the sign of his own Light.
Against this understanding al-Qashani warns the reader and points
out that, according to the Tradition in question, the Ka‘bah had
lacked one single piece of brick, and that when Muhammad filled
the place the building was completed. This means, he says, that
Muhammad was de facto the Seal of the Saints. Except that
Muhammad himself appeared only as a Prophet- Apostle, and did
what he did only in that capacity, not in the capacity of a Saint. He
did not, in other words, manifest the form of walayah.
The vision which Ibn ‘Arabi saw in Mecca was formed in the
world of Imagination on the basis of this historical fact. Muhammad
was de facto the Seal of the Saints, but since he did not manifest
himself as such, there still remained the necessity for another person
to appear as a historical phenomenon in the capacity of the Seal of
the Saints. Otherwise expressed, the ‘saintships’, with Muhammad,
remained to the last ‘interior’ . This ‘interior’ , i.e., hidden, ‘saintship’
has come to light only with the appearance of the Seal of the Saints.
Regarding the difference between the Seal of the Saints and the
rest of the Saints, Ibn ‘Arabi remarks that in the former the ‘saint-
ship’ is something essential while in the latter it is something that
must be ‘acquired’ first. And this is the reason why (according to
al-Qashani ) 33 the ‘saintship’ of the former is called ‘solar saintship’
{walayah shamsiyah) while that of the latter is called ‘lunar saint-
ship’ {walayah qamariyah).
Notes
1. In this book I use provisionally the words ‘saint’ and ‘saintship’ as the English
equivalents of waliy and walayah respectively. Whether the meaning of the Arabic
word waliy is covered by the English word ‘saint’ is another question.
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Apostle, Prophet, and Saint
2. Fu$., pp. 160-169/135-136.
3. Fuy., p. 168/135. See for example the Qoran (II, 257) where we read: ‘God is the
waliy (close, protecting Friend) of those who believe’.
4. Fu$., p. 167/135.
5. Cf. also Fus., p. 34/62.
6. Fus., p. 167/135.
7. The concrete content of such a knowledge is precisely what we have analytically
discussed throughout the preceding pages.
8. Fus., pp. 168-169/136.
9. p. 168.
10. ibid.
11. p. 169.
12. Fus., p. 89/88.
13. Fus., p. 34/62.
14. Fus., p. 169/136.
15. Fu$., p. 168/135-136.
16. Fus., p. 162/132.
17. Fus., p.259/207.
18. Cf. Chapter XIV, (IV).
19. The English word Caliph is itself nothing but an Anglicized form of khalifah.
20. Fus., p. 204/162-163.
21. The reference is to the eschatological figure of Jesus. According to the Muslim
belief, Jesus will descend from Heaven once again at the end of the present world,
and will govern the world by the Sacred Law of Islam. In that state, Jesus will be
formally a ‘vicegerent’ of Muhammad, while deriving his knowledge from the same
source from which Muhammad received his Law. Jesus will be, in that state, the Seal
of the Saints.
22. ‘Specially privileged’, because he is conscious of the fact that he has received
directly from God an inner Law by which he governs the community, but ‘conform-
ing’, at the same time, because outwardly he owes his Law to his predecessors.
23. I say ‘at least as long as the present world lasts’ because, as we saw above (cf.
note 21), at the very end of the present world, in the eschatological situation, Jesus
will come down to the earth and assume the function of the Seal of the Saints. This
latter is called the ‘general saintship’ ( walayah ‘ammah) as distinguished from the
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Sufism and Taoism
‘ Muhammadan saintship’ ( walayah muhammadiyah). Regarding this distinction, see
the relevant passages quoted from the Futuhat by Dr Osman Yahya in his edition of
al-Tirmidhi: Khatm al-Awliya, Beyrouth, 1965, p. 161, Footnote 53.
24. Philosophy, pp. 100-101.
25. ‘Niche’ ( miskhat ) symbolizes the Divine Light in the deepest core of the saintly
heart; the Divine Light is nothing other than the ‘Reality of Muhammad’.
26. Fus., p. 34/62.
27. p. 34.
28. We have observed above that by the ‘Seal of the Saints’ Ibn ‘Arabi means
himself. But here al-Qashani seems to be saying that the Seal of the Apostles, i.e.,
Muhammad, was also the Seal of the Saints. This, however, is not a contradiction. As
we noticed before in discussing the ‘Reality of Muhammad’, in the consciousness of
Ibn ‘Arabi, ‘Muhammad’ is not only a historical individual person but a cosmic
principle of creation, and the two aspects seem to be constantly present in his mind
when he speaks about ‘Muhammad’.
29. Fus., pp. 34-35/62-63.
30. Reference to the above-mentioned ‘Reality of Muhammad’.
31. Fuy., p. 35/63.
32. p. 36.
33. ibid.
XVI I The Magical Power of the Perfect
Man
Ibn ‘Arabi recognizes in the Perfect Man a particular kind of magi-
cal power. This is hardly to be wondered at, because the Perfect
Man, as a ‘knower’ (‘arif), is by definition a man with an unusually
developed spiritual power. His mind naturally shows an extraordi-
nary activity.
This extraordinary power is known as himmah, meaning a con-
centrated spiritual energy. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, a ‘knower’ can,
if he likes, affect any object by merely concentrating all his spiritual
energy upon it; he can even bring into existence a thing which is not
actually existent. In brief, a ‘knower’ is able to subjugate anything to
his will. He is endowed with the power of taskhir . 1
The word taskhir reminds us of King Solomon. It is widely known
and accepted in Islam that Solomon was in possession of a super-
natural power by which he could dominate Nature and move it at
will. He could, for instance, cause winds to blow in whatever direc-
tion he wished. He is said to have been able to control at will
invisible beings.
According to Ibn ‘Arabi, however, Solomon did not exercise his
control over Nature by his himmah. In this respect, Solomon
occupies a very special place. It was a special favor of God granted
to him in a peculiar way. For, in order to work miracles, he did not
have to have recourse to the particular concentration of mind
known as himmah . He had only to ‘ command’ ( amr ) . Whatever was
commanded by him to do anything, moved immediately as it was
commanded. This kind of taskhir is, in the judgment of Ibn ‘Arabi, a
degree higher than the taskhir by himmah , because the former is a
direct working upon the object.
The taskhir which was peculiar to Solomon, which made him superior
to others, and which God had given him as (an essential) part of the
kingship never to be given to anybody after him - this taskhir was
characterized by its being exercised by his ‘command’. God says:
‘Thus have We subjugated to him (i.e., Solomon) the wind so that it
might blow by his command (XXI, 81) (That which is really
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Sufism and Taoism
characteristic of Solomon’s case) is not the simple fact that he could
exercise taskhlr. For God says concerning all of us without any
discrimination: ‘And We have subjugated to you all that are in
heaven and in earth' (XXXI, 20). Thus He speaks of having put
under our control winds, stars, and others. But (in our case) the
taskhir occurs not by our command, but by the Command of God. So
you will find by reflection that what was peculiar to Solomon was (not
the taskhlr itself) but in fact that (the taskhlr) could be exercised by
his own command. In order to do that, he did not need any mental
concentration or himmah', all he had to do was to ‘command’.
I mention this point specifically because we all know that the things of
the world can be affected and influenced by a particular kind
of mental force when the latter happens to be in a heightened state of
concentration. I have witnessed this phenomenon in my own (mysti-
cal) life. Solomon, however, had only to pronounce the word of
command to anything he wanted to control, without there being any
need for himmah and concentration. 2
What kind of thing, then, is this spiritual concentration called him-
mahl It may be most easily understood if we try to conceive it on the
analogy of our ordinary experience of imagination. We can produce
in imagination anything we like, even things that are not existent in
the outside world. Such an imagined object exists only within our
minds. In a somewhat similar way, a true ‘knower’ who has attained
to the stage of walayah is able to produce by his concentrated
spiritual power things that are not actually there, with this differ-
ence, however, that he produces the object in the outer world of
reality. This is obviously a kind of ‘creation’ ( khalq ). But it should
not be identified or confused with the Divine act of creation.
Anybody can create within his mind by means of his faculty of
imagination things that have no existence except in imagination
itself. This is a matter of common experience. But the ‘knower’
creates by himmah things that do have existence outside the place of
the himmah (i.e., outside the mind).
(However, the object thus created by himmah continues to exist)
only as long as the himmah maintains it without being weakened by
the keeping of what it has created. As soon as the concentration
slackens and the mind of the ‘knower’ becomes distracted from the
keeping of what it has created, the object created disappears. This,
however, does not apply to those special cases in which a ‘knower’
has obtained a firm control over all the Presences (ontological levels
of Being) so that his mind never loses sight of them all at the same
time. In fact, the mind of such a man (even if it loses sight of the
Presences, does not lose sight of all together); there surely remains at
least one Presence present to his mind. 3
We must recall at this juncture the five Presences of Being to which
reference was made in the first chapter. The Presences are classified
variously. One of the classifications, to give an example of
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The Magical Power of the Perfect Man
classification which is a little different from the one explained in the
first chapter, makes the whole world of Being consist of (1) the
Presence of the senses (i.e., the plane of the sensible experience),
(2) the Presence of Images-Exemplars, (3) the Presence of the
Spirits (arwah), (4) the Presence of the Intellects (‘uqul), and the
Presence of the Essence. But the way in which the Presences are
classified is not very important in the present context. What is of
primary importance is to know that the world of Being is structured
in terms of levels or planes and that these planes are related to each
other in an organic way. This means that anything that exists in the
plane of sensible experience, for instance, has a corresponding
existence also in the higher planes in a particular form peculiar to
each plane, so that ultimately it goes back to the very Essence of the
Absolute as its ontological ground.
Because of this particular structure of Being, the ‘knower’ can, by
concentrating his entire spiritual energy upon an object on one of
the suprasensible levels, produce the object in a sensible form on
the level of concrete reality. Also by maintaining spiritually the
form of an object on a higher level he can maintain the forms of the
same object on the lower levels of Being.
But this spiritual ‘creation’ is essentially different from the Divine
Creation in one vital point. When, for example, the ‘knower’ has
produced by himmah an object in a sensible form, the object thus
‘created’ on the level of sensible experience continues to subsist on
that level only during the time in which he continues to maintain his
spiritual concentration. The moment his attention becomes less
keen by the effect of drowsiness or by a different idea occurring to
his mind, the object ceases to exist on the level of the senses.
However, Ibn ‘Arabi adds, in the case of the highest ‘knower’, his
spiritual power dominating all the basic five planes of Being, there is
always at least one level on which the spiritual concentration is
maintained even if his attention becomes less keen and less intense
on other levels. In such a case, the object ‘created’ may be preserved
for a long period of time.
By saying this, I have disclosed a secret which the people of God (i.e.,
mystics) have always jealously guarded themselves from revealing
for fear that something might come to light which would contradict
their claim to the effect that they are the Absolute. (Against this
claim I have disclosed the fact that) the Absolute never becomes
forgetful of anything, while man must necessarily be always forgetful
of this particular thing or that.
Only as long as a man spiritually maintains what he has ‘ created’ , is he
in a position to say, ‘I am the Creator!’ ( ana al-haqq). However, his
maintaining the ‘created’ object is entirely different from God s
maintaining. I have just explained the difference.
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Sufism and Taoism
As long as he becomes forgetful of even one form and its ontological
level, man is to be distinguished from the Absolute. He is naturally to
be distinguished from the Absolute even if he maintains all the forms
(of an object on different levels) by maintaining one of the forms on
its proper level of which he happens to be unforgetful, because this is
after all a kind of ‘implicit’ ( tadammun ) maintaining. God's maintain-
ing what He has created is not like this; He maintains every form
‘explicitly’ (i.e., He maintains all forms of the thing, each on its
proper level individually).
This is a question which no one, as far as I know, has even written in
any book, neither myself nor others. This is the only and the first
book in which (the secret has been disclosed). The present work is in
this sense a unique pearl of the age. Keep this well in mind!
The particular level of Being 4 to which the mind of the ‘knower’ is
kept present, being concentrated on the form (of an object which he
has created on that ontological level) , may be compared to the ‘ Book’
of which God says: ‘We have not neglected anything in the Book (of
Decrees)’ (VI, 38), so that it comprehends both what has been
actualized and what has not yet been actualized. But what I say here
will never be understood except by those who are themselves the
‘gathering’ principle ( qur’an ). 5
Thus it has been clarified that a man who can gather his himmah in
such a comprehensive way is able to do so because he ‘gathers’
together in his consciousness all the levels of Being into a com-
prehensive unity. Such a man stands closest to God, with the only
difference which has just been explained. The difference, in short,
results from the furqan. And precisely because of the furqan he is
essentially distinguished from God.
The important point, however, is that this ‘separating’ is not an
ordinary furqan. It is the highest furqan (ar fa furqan) 1 because it is
a furqan after the ‘gathering’. In the case of an ordinary man, the
‘separating’ which he exercises is a pr e-fana phenomenon; he has
not yet had any experience of ‘self-annihilation’, that is, he has not
yet ‘tasted’ his essential oneness with the Absolute. The ‘separating’
he exercises in such a state is an absolute, unconditional ‘separa-
tion’. He is absolutely and unconditionally ‘separated’ and distin-
guished’ from the Absolute.
The ‘knower’, on the contrary, is a man who has already passed
through the experience of ‘self-annihilation’ and, consequently,
knows through personal experience his essential oneness with the
Absolute. He knows it, and yet distinguishes in himself between the
‘Divine aspect’ ( lahut ) and the ‘human aspect’ (nasut), i.e., between
the Absolute and the creature. This ‘separating’ is not a mere
‘separating’; it is a ‘separating’ of a higher order. And this corres-
ponds to what is generally known in Sufi terminology as ‘self-
subsistence’ ( baqa ’).
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The Magical Power of the Perfect Man
Now, if we consider in the light of this conception the idea of
himmah, we are led to the following understanding of it. The highest
‘knower’, while he is actually exercising his himmah, is in a certain
sense a ‘creator’ ( khaliq ); all the traces of his ‘servant-ness’ disap-
pear from his consciousness, and he feels ‘Lordship’ living and
acting in himself. He feels himself to be a ‘Lord’, and has the clear
consciousness that everything in the whole world is under his con-
trol. This is the stage of ‘gathering’ (qur’an). However, this state is
but a temporary and unstable one, because if his mind slackens and
loses its highest intensity of concentration even for a moment, he
becomes immediately conscious of his ‘impotence’ (‘ajz) and is
necessarily faced with his own ‘servantness’ . And this is the stage of
‘separating’ (furqan)}
We must observe also that himmah is, in its practical aspect, a free
disposal of things (taskhir al-ashya’), while in its cognitive aspect it
is an extraordinary power to penetrate the secret of Being which lies
beyond the grasp of Reason. It is significant in this respect that Ibn
‘Arabi in a passage of the Fusus 9 declares that the true reality
(haqiqah) of Being can only be known by a ‘servant endowed with
himmah' . Himmah consists essentially in that a ‘knower’ concen-
trates all his spiritual powers upon one single point and projects his
concentrated heart (qalb) toward a certain definite direction. This
act works in two different, but closely related, ways: (1) producing
something or some state of affairs in a place where such a thing or
state of affairs does not sensibly exist, and (2) tearing apart the veil
of Reason and bringing to light the reality lying behind it.
The supernatural power of himmah being as described, the next
question that naturally arises is: Does the ‘knower’, i.e., the Perfect
Man, work ‘miracles’ (karamat) as he likes?
According to the usual theory among Sufis, a ‘knower’ who has
reached the stage of ‘saintship’ is in a position to perform ‘things
that go against the customs’ (khawariq-al-‘adat), i.e., ‘miracles’.
Such a man is usually represented as a kind of superman who,
projecting his spiritual power to anything and anybody, affects and
changes the object at will.
Ibn ‘Arabi does not accept this view. In the Qoran, he argues, 10
we find the Divine words: ‘God is He who creates you of weakness’
(XXX, 54). The very root of man’s creation is ‘weakness’ (da‘f).
Man is essentially and naturally ‘weak’ (da‘if) and ‘powerless’
(‘ajiz). He begins with the weakness of the infant and ends with the
weakness of the old man. Of course, as the Qoran verse itself
admits, 11 the child, as he grows into a man, acquires ‘strength’
(quwwah) and becomes conscious of his own strength. But this,
after all, is a transitory state. Soon he grows old and falls into
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Sufism and Taoism
decrepitude. Besides, the ‘strength’ which he obtains in the inter-
mediary stage is but an ‘accidental strength’ ( quwwah ‘aradiyah).
Moreover, this accidental strength is not something which he pro-
duces in himself, but is a result of God’s ‘putting’. In reality, he
shows strength only because he happens to be at that stage a locus of
theophany in which God manifests Himself under the Name
‘Powerful’ (i qawiy ).
What is by essence strong is the Absolute alone; man is strong
only by accident. Ordinary men do not know this. Only the true
‘knower’ knows that the strength (including himmah) which he feels
in himself is not his own but God’s.
And since he is conscious of this, the ‘knower’ knows also that it is
not right for him to try to exercise at will the power of himmah . Thus
he confides its exercise to the real owner of that power, and puts
himself in the original state of the ‘absolute powerlessness’ (‘ ajz
muflaq).
Someone may say: ‘What prevents (the highest ‘knower’) from exer-
cising his himmah that has a positive power to affect things? Since
such a power does exist even in those mystics who merely follow the
Apostles, the Apostles must be more appropriate to possess it’ .
To this I will answer: ‘You are certainly right. But you do not know
another important point. A true “knowledge” does not allow him-
mah to be freely exercised. And the higher the knowledge, the less
possibility there is for a free exercise of himmah' .
And this for two reasons. One is that such a man fully realizes his
state of ‘servant-ness’ and that he is always conscious of the original
ground of his own creation (which is the above-mentioned ‘weak-
ness’). The other is the oneness of the subject who exercises himmah
and the object upon which it is exercised (for both are essentially and
ultimately the Absolute, nothing else), so that he does not know upon
whom to project his himmah. This prevents him from exercising
himmah .' 2
Then Ibn ‘Arab! says 13 that another reason for which the ‘knower’
refrains from working ‘miracles’ in the world is the knowledge
about the absolute determining power of the permanent
archetypes, which we have discussed in detail in an earlier chapter.
Suppose there is in the presence of the ‘knower’ a man who
disobeys the commands of the Apostle and thereby disobeys God.
Why does the ‘knower’ not exercise his himmah upon this man so
that he might be brought back to the right road? It is because
everything, every event in the world is in accordance with what has
been eternally determined in the form of an archetype or
archetypes. The ‘knower’ knows that this ontological determination
can never be changed. In the eyes of a man who has penetrated into
the depth of the structure of Being, everything follows the track
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The Magical Power of the Perfect Man
fixed by the very nature of Being, and nothing can deviate from it. In
the light of this knowledge, even a man disobedient to God is
walking along the God-determined way. And it is not in the power
of an Apostle to bring such a man back to the ‘right road’, because
the man is already on the ‘right road’.
A certain Sufi of the highest rank once said to Master ‘Abd al-
Razzaq: Go and ask Master Abu Madyan, after salutations, ‘O Abu
Madyan, why is it that nothing is impossible to us, while everything is
impossible to you? And yet here we are, aspiring to your spiritual
stage, while you do not care for our spiritual stage. Why ?’ 14
In fact, the situation was exactly like that (i.e., Abu Madyan really
showed signs of ‘powerlessness’) in spite of the fact that Abu Madyan
had, beside this state (i.e. the state of ‘powerlessness’), the other state
(i.e., that of free disposal of things by means of himmah).
We (i.e., Ibn ‘ Arabi himself) are even more complete as regards the
state of ‘weakness’ and ‘powerlessness’. But (even though Abu
Madyan did not show so much of ‘weakness’ as we do) the afore-
mentioned Sufi of the highest rank said to him what he said. (How
much more should we be worthy of such a remark, if the same Sufi
were to criticize us.) In any event, however, Abu Madyan’ s case
clearly exemplifies that kind of thing (i.e., the showing of ‘weakness’
because of a deep knowledge of the truth ). 15
Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to argue that even this state of ‘weakness’ or
refraining from exercising himmah should not properly be taken as
a willful act on the part of the ‘knower’. The true ‘knower’ puts
himself entirely in the hands of God; if He commands him to
exercise his himmah he does, if He forbids him to do so he refrains
from it, and if God Himself gives him a choice between the two he
chooses refraining from the exercise of himmah.
Abu al-Su‘ud (Ibn al-Shibl) once said to his followers: Verily God
gave me the power of the free disposal of things fifteen years ago. But
I have refrained from exercising that power for the sake of courtesy
(tazarrufan) toward God.
This saying implies too much bold familiarity (toward God). I myself
do not refrain from exercising himmah for the sake of courtesy,
because such an attitude would imply a willful choice on my part. No.
I refrain from it because of the perfection of knowledge. The true
knowledge of the matter does not require refraining from the exer-
cise of himmah by way of willful choice. Whenever a ‘knower’ does
exercise his himmah in this world, he does so in obedience to a Divine
Command; that is to say, he does so because he is constrained to do
so, not by way of willful choice . 16
The position of an Apostle regarding this problem of ‘refraining’ is
somewhat more delicate than that of a Saint . 17 Properly speaking
the function itself of ‘apostleship’ requires his exercising himmah in
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Sufism and Taoism
order that his being an Apostle be made clear to the people. For
only when he is accepted as such by the community, is he able to
spread the true religion of God. The Saint per se has nothing to do
with such a mission.
And yet, even the Apostle (Muhammad) did not try to show
prophetic ‘miracles’ ( mufizat ). For one thing, he refrained from
exercising his himmah because of his compassion for the people. He
did not go to extremes in manifesting the conclusive evidence of his
‘apostleship’ because it would have brought destruction to them. He
spared them by not showing them too strong evidences of his
‘apostleship’. Besides this, Muhammad had another reason shared
by all true Saints for refraining from working miracles; namely, his
knowledge that a ‘miracle’ can never change the eternally fixed
course of events. Whether a man becomes a Muslim or not is
determined by his archetype; it is not something which can easily be
changed by the Apostle accomplishing before his eyes a ‘miracle’.
Thus even the most perfect of all Apostles (akmal al-rusul),
Muhammad, did not exercise himmah. There was actually a practi-
cal need for showing ‘miracles’, and he was unquestionably
endowed with such a power. And yet he did not exercise his spiritual
power in that way. For, being the highest ‘knower’, he knew better
than anybody else that ‘miracles’ were, in truth, ineffective.
The most ideal state of the Perfect Man is a spiritual tranquility and
quietude of an unfathomable depth. He is a quiet man content with
a passivity in which he confides himself and every thing else to God’s
disposal. The Perfect Man is a man who, having in himself a tre-
mendous spiritual power and being adorned with the highest know-
ledge of Being, gives the impression of a deep calm ocean. He is
such because he is the most perfect image, in a concrete individual
form, of the cosmic Perfect Man who comprehends and actualizes
all the Names and Attributes of the Absolute.
Notes
1. Taskhir literally means ‘forcing somebody to compulsory service, controlling
something at will’. In discussing the problem of the ‘compulsory’ force of the
permanent archetypes we have already come across the word taskhir in the form of a
‘mutual taskhir between the Absolute and the world.
2. Fuj., p. 199/158.
3. Fu$., p. 90/88-89.
4. Again Ibn ‘Arab! goes back to the case in which the ‘knower’ maintains spiritually
all the forms of an object on all the levels of Being by actually concentrating on one of
the levels.
The Magical Power of the Perfect Man
5. Fu$„ p. 91/89-90.
283
6. On the difference between ‘gathering’ ( qur’an ) and ‘separating’ ( furqan ) see
above, Chapter II.
7. Fwj., p. 91/90.
8. Cf. Fuj., p. 92/90.
9. Fu$„ p. 148/121.
10. Fu^., p. 156/127.
1 1 . The verse reads: ‘ God is He who creates you of weakness , then puts ( ja'ala ) after
weakness strength ( quwwah ), then again puts weakness after strength.’
12. Fu$., p. 157/127-128.
13. Fuj., pp. 157-158/128.
14. It means: We can freely accomplish ‘miracles’, but you apparently cannot. And
yet we want to attain to your spiritual stage, while you do not show any sign of being
desirous of attaining to our spiritual stage.
15. Fus„ p. 158/129.
16. Fus ., p. 159/129-130.
17. ibid.
I
I
S
I Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu
The book called Tao Te Ching is now world-famous, and is being
widely read in the West in various translations as one of the most
important basic texts of Oriental Wisdom. It is generally - or
popularly, we should say - thought to be a philosophico-mystical
treatise written by an ancient Chinese sage called Lao-tzu, a senior
contemporary of Confucius. In more scholarly circles no one today
takes such a view.
In fact, since the Ch’ing Dynasty when the question of the author-
ship of the book was first raised in China , 1 it has been discussed by so
many people, it has provoked such an animated controversy not
only in China but in Japan, and even in the West, and so divergent
are the hypotheses which have been put forward, that we are left in
utter darkness as to whether the Tao Te Ching is a work of an
individual thinker, or even whether a man called Lao-tzu ever
existed in reality. We are no longer in a position to assign a proper
chronological place to the book with full confidence.
For our particular purposes, the problem of authorship and the
authenticity of the work is merely of peripheral importance.
Whether or not there once existed as a historical person a sage
called Lao-tzu in the state of Ch’u, who lived more than one
hundred and sixty years , 2 whether or not this sage really wrote the
Tao Te Ching - these and similar questions, whether answered
affirmatively or negatively, do not affect at all the main contention
of the present work. What is of fundamental importance is the fact
that the thought is there, and that it has a very peculiar inner
structure which, if analyzed and understood in a proper way, will
provide an exceedingly interesting Chinese counterpart to the
‘Unity of Existence’ ( wahdah al-wujud) type of philosophy as rep-
resented by Ibn ‘Arab! in Islam.
Lao-tzu is a legendary, or at the very most, semi-legendary figure, of
whom it is an obvious understatement to say that nothing certain is
known to us. For, even on the assumption that there is an historical
core in his so-called biography, we must admit that the popular
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Sufism and Taoism
imagination has woven round it such a fantastic tapestry of imposs-
ible events and unbelievable incidents that no one can ever hope to
disentangle the intricate web of legends, myths and facts.
Even the most sober and most dependable of all Chinese his-
torians in ancient times, and the earliest to attempt a description of
Lao-tzu’s life and adventures in his Book of History, 3 Ssu Ma Ch’ien
of the Han Dynasty (the beginning of the 1st century B.C.), had to
be content with giving a very inconsistent and unsystematic narra-
tive made up of a number of stories stemming from heterogeneous
origins.
According to one of those legends, Lao-tzu was a native of the
state of Ch’u. 4 He was an official of the royal Treasury of Chou,
when Confucius came to visit him. After the interview, Confucius is
related to have made the following remark to his disciples about
Lao-tzu. ‘Birds fly, fishes swim, and animals run - this much I know
for certain. Moreover, the runner can be snared, the swimmer can
be hooked, and the flyer can be shot down by the arrow. But what
can we do with a dragon? We cannot even see how he mounts on
winds and clouds and rises to heaven. That Lao-tzu whom I met
to-day may probably be compared only to a dragon!’
The story makes Lao-tzu a senior contemporary of Confucius
(551-479 B.C.). This would naturally mean that Lao-tzu was a man
who lived in the 6th century B.C., which cannot possibly be a
historical fact.
Many arguments have been brought forward against the histori-
city of the narrative which we have just quoted. One of them is of
particular importance to us; it is concerned with examining this and
similar narratives philologically and in terms of the historical
development of philosophical thinking in ancient China. I shall give
here a typical example of this kind of philological argument.
Sokichi Tsuda in his well-known work, The Thought of the Taoist
School and its Development , 5 subjects to a careful philological
examination the peculiar usage of some of the key technical terms in
the Tao Te Ching, and arrives at the conclusion that the book must
be a product of a period after Mencius (372-289 B.C.). This would
imply of course that Lao-tzu - supposing that he did exist as a
historical person - was a man who came after Mencius.
Tsuda chooses as the yardstick of his judgment the expression
jen-i which is found in Chap. XVIII of the Tao Te Ching, 6 and which
is a compound of two words jen and i. These two words, jen
(‘humaneness’ with particular emphasis on ‘benevolence’) and i
(‘righteousness’), properly speaking, do not belong to the vocabul-
ary of Lao-tzu; they are key-terms of Confucianism. As represent-
ing two of the most basic human virtues, they play an exceedingly
important role in the ethical thought of Confucius himself. But in
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Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu
the mouth of Confucius, they remain two independent words; they
are not compounded into a semantic unit in the form of jen-i
corresponding almost to a single complex concept. The latter
phenomenon is observed only in post-Confucian times.
Tsuda points out that the thinker who first emphasized the con-
cept of jen-i is Mencius. This fact, together with the fact that in the
above-mentioned passage Lao-tzu uses the terms jen and i in this
compound form, would seem to suggest that the Tao Te Ching , is a
product of a period in which the Confucian key-term jen-i has
already been firmly established, for the passage in question is most
evidently intended to be a conscious criticism of Confucian ethics.
Lao-tzu, in other words, could use the expression with such an
intention only because he had before his eyes Mencius and his
ethical theory.
Moreover, Tsuda goes on to remark, Mencius vehemently attacks
and denounces everything incompatible with Confucianism, but
nowhere does he show any conscious endeavour to criticize Lao-tzu
or Tao Te Ching in spite of the fact that the teaching of the latter is
diametrically opposed to his own doctrine; he does not even men-
tion the name Lao-Tzu. This is irrefutable evidence for the thesis
that the Tao Te Ching belongs to a period posterior to Mencius.
Since, on the other hand, its doctrines are explicitly criticized by
Hsiin-tzu (c. 315-236 B.C.), it cannot be posterior to the latter.
Thus, in conclusion, Tsuda assigns to the Tao Te Ching a period
between Mencius and Hsiin-tzu.
Although there are some problematic points in Tsuda’ s argu-
ment, he is, I think, on the whole right. In fact, there are a number of
passages in the Tao Te Ching which cannot be properly understood
unless we place them against the background of a Confucian
philosophy standing already on a very firm basis. And this, indeed,
is the crux of the whole problem, at least for those to whom the
thought itself of Lao-tzu is the major concern. The very famous
opening lines of the Tao Te Ching, for instance, in which the real
Way and the real Name are mentioned in sharp contrast to an
ordinary ‘way’ and ordinary ‘names’, 7 do not yield their true mean-
ing except when we realize that what is meant by this ordinary ‘way’
is nothing but the proper ethical way of living as understood and
taught by the school of Confucius, and that what is referred to by
these ordinary ‘names’ are but the Confucian ‘names’, i.e., the
highest ethical categories stabilized by means of definite ‘names’,
i.e., key-terms.
The Tao Te Ching contains, furthermore, a number of words and
phrases that are - seemingly at least - derived from various other
sources, like Mo-tzu, Yang Chu, Shang Yang, and even Chuang-
tzu, Shen Tao, and others. And there are some scholars who, basing
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Sufism and Taoism
themselves on this observation, go farther than Tsuda and assert
that the Tao Te Ching belongs to a period after Chuang-tzu and
Shen Tao. Yang Jung Kuo, a contemporary scholar of Peking, to
give one example, takes such a position in his History of Thought in
Ancient China. 6
Some of these alleged ‘references’ to thinkers who have tradi-
tionally been considered later than Lao-tzu may very well be
explained as due to the influence exercised by the Tao Te Ching
itself upon those thinkers who, in writing their books, may have
‘borrowed’ ideas and expressions from this book. Besides, we have
to remember that the text of this book as we have it to-day has
evidently passed through a repeated process of editing, re-editing,
and re-arranging in the Han Dynasty. Many of the ‘references’ may
simply be later additions and interpolations.
Be this as it may, it has to be admitted that the Tao Te Ching is a
controversial work. And at least it is definitely certain that the
formation of its thought presupposes the existence of the Confucian
school of thought.
Turning now to another aspect of Lao-tzu, which is more important
for the purposes of the present work than chronology, we may begin
by observing that the Biography of Lao-tzu as given by Ssu Ma
Ch’ien in his Book of History makes Lao-tzu a man of Ch’u . 9 Thus
he writes in one passage, ‘Lao-tzu was a native of the village Ch’ii
Jen, in Li Hsiang, in the province of K’u, in the state of Ch’u’. In
another passage he states that according to a different tradition,
there was a man called Lao Lai Tzu in the time of Confucius; that he
was a man of Ch’u, and produced fifteen books in which he talked
about the Way. Ssu Ma Ch’ien adds that this man may have been the
same as Lao-tzu.
All this may very well be a mere legend. And yet it is, in my view,
highly significant that the ‘legend’ connects the author of the Tao Te
Ching with the state of Ch’u. This connection of Lao-tzu with the
southern state of Ch’u cannot be a mere coincidence. For there is
something of the spirit of Ch’u running through the entire book. By
the ‘spirit of Ch’u’ I mean what may properly be called the shamanic
tendency of the mind or shamanic mode of thinking. Ch’u was a
large state lying on the southern periphery of the civilized Middle
Kingdom, a land of wild marches, rivers, forests and mountains, rich
in terms of nature but poor in terms of culture, inhabited by many
people of a non-Chinese origin with variegated, strange customs.
There all kinds of superstitious beliefs in supernatural beings and
spirits were rampant, and shamanic practices thrived.
But this apparently primitive and ‘uncivilized’ atmosphere could
provide an ideal fostering ground for an extraordinary visionary
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Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu
power of poetic imagination, as amply attested by the elegies writ-
ten by the greatest shaman-poet the state of Ch’u has ever pro-
duced, Ch’ii Yuan . 10 The same atmosphere could also produce a
very peculiar kind of metaphysical thinking. This is very probable
because the shamanic experience of reality is of such a nature that it
can be refined and elaborated into a high level of metaphysical
experience. In any case, the metaphysical depth of Lao-tzu’s
thought can, I believe, be accounted for to a great extent by relating
it to the shamanic mentality of the ancient Chinese which can be
traced back to the oldest historic times and even beyond, and which
has flourished particularly in the southern part of China throughout
the long history of Chinese culture.
In this respect Henri Maspero 11 is, I think, basically right when he
takes exception to the traditional view that Taoism abruptly started
in the beginning of the fourth century B.C. as a mystical metaphys-
ics with Lao-tzu, was very much developed philosophically by
Chuang-tzu toward the end of that century and vulgarized to a
considerable degree by Lieh-tzu and thenceforward went on the
way of corruption and degeneration until in the Later Han Dynasty
it was completely transformed into a jumble of superstition, anim-
ism, magic and sorcery. Against such a view, Maspero takes the
position that Taoism was a ‘personal’ religion - as contrasted with
the agricultural communal type of State religion which has nothing
to do with personal salvation - going back to immemorial antiquity.
The school of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, he maintains, was a particu-
lar branch or section within this wide religious movement, a particu-
lar branch characterized by a marked mystical-philosophical ten-
dency.
These observations would seem to lead us back once again to the
problem of the authorship of Tao Te Ching and the historicity of
Lao-tzu. Is it at all imaginable that such a metaphysical refinement
of crude mysticism should have been achieved as a result of a
process of natural development, without active participation of
an individual thinker endowed with an unusual philosophical
genius? I do not think so. Primitive shamanism in ancient China
would have remained in its original crudity as a phenomenon of
popular religion characterized by ecstatic orgy and frantic ‘posses-
sion’ , if it were not for a tremendous work of elaboration done in the
course of its history by men of unusual genius. Thus, in order to
produce the Elegies of Ch’u the primitive shamanic vision of the
world had to pass through the mind of a Ch’u Yuan. Likewise, the
same shamanic world-vision could be elevated into the profound
metaphysics of the Way only by an individual philosophical genius.
When we read the Tao Te Ching with the preceding observation
292
Sufism and Taoism
in mind, we cannot but feel the breath, so to speak, of an extraordi-
nary man pervading the whole volume, the spirit of an unusual
philosopher pulsating throughout the book. With all the possible
later additions and interpolations, which I readily admit, I cannot
agree with the view that the Tao Te Ching is a work of compilation
consisting of fragments of thought taken from various heterogene-
ous sources. For there is a certain fundamental unity which strikes
us everywhere in the book. And the unity is a personal one. In fact,
the Tao Te Ching as a whole is a unique piece of work distinctly
colored by the personality of one unusual man, a shaman-
philosopher. Does he not give us a self-portrait in part XX of the
book?
The multitude of men are blithe and cheerful as though they were
invited to a luxurious banquet, or as though they were going up a high
tower to enjoy the spring scenery.
I alone remain silent and still, showing no sign of activity. Like a
new-born baby I am, that has not yet learnt to smile. Forlorn and
aimless I look, as if I had no place to return.
All men have more than enough. I alone seem to be vacant and blank.
Mine indeed is the mind of a stupid man! Dull and confused it is! The
vulgar people are all clever and bright, I alone am dark and obtuse.
The vulgar people are all quick and alert, I alone am blunt and tardy.
Like a deep ocean that undulates constantly I am, like a wind that
blows never to rest.
All others have some work to do, while I alone remain impractical /
and boorish. I alone am different from all others because I value
being fed by the Mother . 12
Similarly in another passage (LXVII), he says of himself:
Everybody under Heaven says that I 13 am big, but look stupid. Yea, I
look stupid because I am big. If I were clever I would have diminished
long ago.
And again in LXX, we read:
My words are very easy to understand and very easy to practise. Yet
no one under Heaven understands them; no one puts them into
practice.
My words come out of a profound source, and my actions come out of
a high principle. But people do not understand it. Therefore they do
not understand me.
Those who understand me are rare. That precisely is the proof that I
am precious. The sage, indeed, wears clothes of coarse cloth, but
carries within precious jade.
The passages just quoted give a picture of a very original mind, an
image of a man who looks gloomy, stupid and clumsy, standing
aloof from the ‘clever’ people who spend their time in the petty
Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu
293
pleasures of life. He takes such an attitude because he is conscious
of himself as utterly different from ordinary men. The important
question we have to raise about this is: Whence does this difference
come? The Tao Te Ching itself and the Chuang-tzu seem to give a
definite answer to this question. The man feels himself different
from others because he is conscious that he alone knows the real
meaning of existence. And this he knows due to his metaphysical
insight which is based on what Chuang-tzu calls tso wang ‘sitting in
oblivion’ , that is, the experience of ecstatic union with the Absolute,
the Way. The man who stands behind the utterances which we have
quoted above is a philosopher-mystic, or a visionary shaman turned
into a philosopher.
It is highly significant for our specific purpose to note that the
spirit of a philosophically developed shamanism pervades the whole
of the Tao Te Ching. It is, so to speak, a living personal ‘center’
round which are co-ordinated all the basic ideas that we find in the
book, whether the thought concerns the metaphysical structure of
the universe, the nature of man, the art of governing people, or the
practical ideal of life. And such an organic unity cannot be
explained except on the assumption that the book, far from being a
compilation made of fragmentary and disparate pieces of thought
picked up at random from here and there, is in the main the work of
a single author.
In studying a book like the Tao Te Ching it is more important than
anything else to grasp this personal unity underlying it as a whole,
and to pinpoint it as the center of co-ordination for all its basic ideas.
For, otherwise, we would not be in a position to penetrate the subtle
structure of the symbolism of the Tao Te Ching and analyze with
precision the basic ideas of its metaphysics.
Turning from Lao-tzu to Chuang-tzu, we feel ourselves standing on
a far more solid ground. For, although we are no better informed
about his real life and identity, at least we know that we are dealing
with an historical person, who did exist in about the middle of the
fourth century B.C., as a contemporary of Mencius, the great
shaman-poet Ch’ii Yuan of Ch’u to whom reference has been made,
and the brilliant dialectician Hui Shih or Hui-tzu 14 with whom he
himself was a good match in the mastery of the art of manipulating
logical concepts.
According to the account given by Ssu Ma Ch’ien in the above-
mentioned Book of History, Chuang-tzu or Chuang Chou 15 was a
native of Meng; 16 he was once an official at Ch’i-Yiian in Meng; he
had tremendous erudition, but his doctrine was essentially based on
the teachings of Lao-tzu; and his writing, which counted more than
100,000 words, was for the most part symbolic or allegorical.
294
Sufism and Taoism
It is significant that Meng, which is mentioned by Ssu Ma Ch’ien
as Chuang-tzu’s birthplace, is in present-day Ho Nan and was a
place in the ancient state of Sung. 17 I regard this as significant
because Sung was a country where the descendants of the ancient
Yin 18 people were allowed to live after having been conquered by
the Chou people. 19 There these descendants of the once-illustrious
people, despised by the conquerors as the ‘conquered’ and con-
stantly threatened and invaded by their neighbors, succeeded in
preserving the religious beliefs and legends of their ancestors. The
significance of this fact with regard to the thesis of the present study
will at once be realized if one but remembers the animistic-
shamanic spirit of Yin culture as manifested in its sacrificial cere-
monies and rites of divination as well as in the myths connected with
this dynasty. The people of Yin were traditionally famous for their
cult of spirits and worship of the ‘God-above’. From of old the
distinction between Yin and Chou was made by such a dictum as:
‘Yin worships spirits while Chou places the highest value on human
culture.’ 20
Quite independently of the observation of this historical relation
between the Yin Dynasty and the Sung people, Fung Yu Lang in his
History of Chinese Philosophy 21 points out - quite rightly, to my
mind - that the form of Chuang-tzu’s thought is close to that of the
Ch’u people. ‘We should keep in mind’, he writes, ‘the fact that the
state of Sung bordered Ch’u, making it quite possible that Chuang-
tzu was influenced on the one hand by Ch’u, and at the same time
was under the influence of the ideas of the Dialecticians. (Hui Shih,
it will be remembered, was a native of Sung.) Thus by using the
dialectics of the latter, he was able to put his soaring thoughts into
order, and formulate a unified philosophical system.’
Of the ‘spirit of Ch’u’ we have talked in an earlier passage in
connection with the basic structure of Lao-tzu’s thought. Fung Yu
Lang compares the Elegies of Ch’u ( Ch’u Tz’u ) 22 with the Chuang-
tzu and observes a remarkable resemblance between the two in the
display of ‘a richness of imagination and freeness of spirit’. But he
neglects to trace this resemblance down to its shamanic origin, so
that the ‘richness of imagination and freeness of spirit’ is left unex-
plained. However it may be, we shall refrain from going any further
into the details of this problem at this point, for much more will be
said in the following chapter.
The problem of the relationship between Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu
has been discussed at length by philologists. As we have already
observed the major doctrines of Chuang-tzu have traditionally been
regarded as being based upon the teachings of Lao-tzu. On this
view, Lao-tzu of course was a predecessor of Chuang-tzu in Taoist
Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu
295
philosophy; the main lines of thought had been laid down by the
former, and the latter simply took them over from him and
developed them in his own way into a grand-scale allegorical system
according to the dictates of his philosophical and literary ability.
This view seems to be a natural conclusion drawn from the observa-
tion of the following two facts: (1) the existence of an undeniable
inner connection between the two in the very structure of their
world-view and their mystical way of thinking; (2) Chuang-tzu
himself often mentioning Lao-tzu as one of the earlier Taoist sages,
and the expressions used being in some places almost the same.
The matter, however, is not as simple as it looks at the first glance.
In fact serious questions have been raised in modern times about
this problem. The Tao Te Ching itself, to begin with, is nowhere
referred to in the Chuang-tzu, although Lao-tzu, as a legendary
figure, appears in its pages, and his ideas are mentioned. But this
latter fact proves almost nothing conclusively, for we know that
many of the persons who are made to play important roles in the
Chuang-tzu are simply fictitious. Similarities in language may easily
be explained away as the result either of later interpolations in the
Tao Te Ching itself, or as going back to common sources. /
Yang Jung Kuo, to whom reference has been made earlier, may
be mentioned as a representative present-day scholar who not only
doubts Lao-tzu’s having been a predecessor of Chuang-tzu, but
goes a step further and completely reverses the chronological order.
In an interesting chapter of his above-mentioned book, History of
Thought in Ancient China 22 he decidedly takes the position that
Chuang-tzu was not a disciple of Lao-tzu; that, on the contrary, the
latter - or, to be more exact, the Tao Te Ching - was nothing other
than a continuation and further development of the Chuang-tzu.
And the way he defends his position is strictly philological; he tries
to prove his position through an examination of some of the key-
concepts common to Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. And he concludes
that the Tao Te Ching presupposes the prior existence of the
Chuang-tzu. For instance, the most important of all key-concepts of
Taoism, tao (Wag) as the cosmic principle of natural growth, or
Nature, is in the Chuang-tzu not yet fully developed in its inner
structure. The concept is already there, he says, but it is as yet a
mere beginning. The Tao Te Ching takes over this concept at this
precise point and elaborates it into an absolute principle, the abso-
lutely unknowable Source, which is pre-eternal 24 and from which
emanate all things. 25 And Yang Jung Kuo thinks that this historical
relation between the two - Chuang-tzu being the initial point and
Lao-tzu representing the culmination - is observable throughout
the whole structure of Taoist philosophy.
This argument, highly interesting though it is, is not conclusive.
296
297
Sufism and Taoism
For the key-concepts in question allow of an equally justifiable
explanation in terms of a process of development running from
Lao-tzu to Chuang-tzu. As regards the metaphysics of tao, for
instance, we have to keep in mind that Lao-tzu gives only the
result, a definitely established monistic system of archetypal ima-
gery whose center is constituted by the absolute Absolute, tao, which
develops stage after stage by its own ‘natural’ creative activity down
to the world of multiplicity. This ontology, as I have pointed out
before, is understandable only on the assumption that it stands on
the basis of an ecstatic or mystical experience of Existence. Lao-tzu,
however, does not disclose this experiential aspect of his world-view
except through vague, symbolic hints and suggestions. This is the
reason why the Tao Te Ching tends to produce an impression of
being a philosophical elaboration of something which precedes it.
That ‘something which precedes it’, however, may not necessarily
be something taken over from others.
Chuang-tzu, on the other hand, is interested precisely in this
experiential aspect of Taoist mysticism which Lao-tzu leaves
untouched. He is not mainly concerned with constructing a
metaphysics of a cosmic scale ranging from the ultimate Unknow-
able down to the concrete world of variegated colors and forms. His
chief concern is with the peculiar kind of ‘experience’ itself by which
one penetrates the mystery of Existence. He tries to depict in detail,
sometimes allegorically, sometimes theoretically, the very
psychological or spiritual process through which one becomes more
and more ‘illumined’ and goes on approaching the real structure of
reality hidden behind the veil of sensible experience.
His attitude is, in comparison with Lao-tzu, epistemological,
rather than metaphysical. And this difference separates these two
thinkers most fundamentally, although they share a common inter-
est in the practical effects that come out of the supra-sensible
experience of the Way. The same difference may also be formulated
in terms of upward movement and downward movement. Lao-tzu
tries to describe metaphysically how the absolute Absolute
develops naturally into One, and how the One develops into Two,
and the Two into Three, and the Three into ‘ten thousand things’ , 26
It is mainly a description of an ontological - or emanational -
movement downward, though he emphasizes also the importance of
the concept of Return, i.e., the returning process of all things back
to their origin. Chuang-tzu is interested in describing epistemologi-
cally the rising movement of the human mind from the world of
multiplicity and diversity up to the ontological plane where all
distinctions become merged into One.
Because of this particular emphasis on the epistemological aspect
of the experience of the tao, Chuang-tzu does not take the trouble of
Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu
developing the concept itself of tao as a philosophical system. This is
why his metaphysics of tao appears imperfect, or imperfectly
developed. This, however, does not necessarily mean that he rep-
resents chronologically an earlier stage than Lao-tzu. For, as we
have just seen, the difference between them may very well be only
the difference of emphasis.
I shall now bring this chapter to a close by giving a brief explanation
of the book itself known by the name Chuang-tzu.
The important Bibliography contained in the Chronicle of the
Han Dynasty 27 notes that the Chuang-tzu consists of fifty-two chap-
ters. But the basic text of the book which we actually have in our
hands has only thirty-three chapters. This is the result of editorial
work done by Kuo Hsiang . 28 In fact all the later editions of the
Chuang-tzu ultimately go back to this Kuo Hsiang recension. This
eminent thinker of the Taoist school critically examined the tradi-
tional text, left out a number of passages which he regarded as
definitely spurious and worthless, and divided what survived this
examination into three main groups. The first group is called
Interior Chapters ( nei p’ien ) consisting of seven chapters. The sec-
ond is called Exterior Chapters ( wai p’ien ) and consists of fifteen
chapters. And the third is called Miscellaneous Chapters ( tza pi’en )
and contains eleven chapters.
Setting aside the problem of possible additions and interpolations
we might say generally that the Interior Chapters represent
Chuang-tzu’s own thought and ideas, and are probably from his
own pen. As to the two other groups, scholars are agreed to-day that
they are mostly later developments, interpretations and elucida-
tions added to the main text by followers of Chuang-tzu. Whether
the Interior Chapters come from Chuang-tzu’s own pen or not, it is
definite that they represent the oldest layer of the book and are
philosophically as well as literarily the most essential part, while the
Exterior and Miscellaneous Chapters are of but secondary impor-
tance.
In the present study, I shall depend exclusively on the Interior
Chapters. This I shall do for the reason just mentioned and also out
of a desire to give consistency to my analytic description of
Chuang-tzu’s thought . 29
Notes
1. Ts’ui Shu (^a£in his r#:$g%tSlfuI) may here be mentioned as one of the most
eminent writers of the Ch’ing Dynasty who raised serious doubts about the reliability
of the so-called biography of Lao-tzu. Of the Tao Te Ching he says: ‘As for the
298
Sufism and Taoism
five-thousand-words-about-the-Tao-and-Virtue, no one knows who wrote it. There
is no doubt, in any case, that it is a forgery by some of the followers of Yang Chu.'
2. The name Lao-tzu, incidentally, simply means Old Master, the word ‘old’ in this
context meaning almost the same as ‘immortal’.
3. -Wa8 : Shih Chih, ntfiU, LXIII,ngj{£*tt?iJ#j , III.
4. For my reason for translating r , as 4 an official of the royal Treasury
of Chou’, see Shigeta Koyanagi: The Thought of Lao-tzu, Chuang-tzu and Taoism
, Tokyo, 1942, pp. 26-27.
5. -EoSIMj , Complete Works of S. Tsuda, XIII, Tokyo,
1964. The work was published earlier in 1927 as a volume of the series of publica-
tions of Toyo Bunko.
6. > ‘Only when the great Way declines, does the virtue of
benevolence-righteousness arise.’
7. This passage will be translated and explained later.
8. Peking, 1954, 3rd ed. 1955, Chap. VII, 4, pp. 245-
247. At the outset (p. 245), the author states: The Book of Lao-tzu is, in my opinion,
a product of an age subsequent to the flourishing of the school of Chuang-tzu in the
Warring States period.
9. «.
10. Hit . We may note as quite a significant fact that this great poet of Ch’u was a
contemporary of Chuang-tzu. According to a very detailed and excellent study done
by Kuo Mo Jo nSSCSf^j), Ch’u Yuan was born in 340 B.C. and died in 278
B.C., at the age of sixty-two. As for Chuang-tzu, an equally excellent study by Ma
Hsu Lun (.lUOra has established that he lived c. 370 B.C.-300 B.C.
1 1 . Henri Maspero: Le Taoism ( melanges posthumes sur les religions et Thistoire de
la Chine, II) Paris, 1950, III.
12. 4 Mother’ here symbolizes the Way ( tao ). Just as a child in the womb feeds on the
mother without its doing anything active on its part, the Taoist sage lives in the bosom
of the Way, free and careless, away from all artificial activity on his part.
13. The text usually reads; • • ■ making ‘my Way’ the subject of the
sentence.
14. MW , M.T, known as one of the representatives of the 4 school of dialecticians ( pien
chef, or ‘sophists’, in the Warring States period. The Chuang-tzu records several
anecdotes in which Chuang-tzu is challenged by this logician, disputes with him, and
scores a victory over him. The anecdotes may very well be fictitious -as almost all the
anecdotes of the Chuang-tzu are - but they are very interesting in that they disclose
the basic characteristics of the one as well as of the other.
15. Chou being his personal name.
16 . *.
Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzii
17 . 5 ^ ■
18. ®.
299
19.
20. nSffi*JHfirS:J(Cf. Hong Kong, 1957, pp. 1-2).
21. Trans, by D. Bodde, 2 vols., Princeton, 1952-53; vol. I, pp. 221-222.
22. r@^j, some of which are by the poet Ch’ii Yuan himself, Li Sao rflgSij being his
representative work, while some others are by his followers. But, whether by Ch’u
Yuan or by others, all the Elegies are through and through shamanic. Some of them
describe in a typical way the spiritual, visionary journeys of a shaman in an ecstatic
state.
23. pp. 252-257.
24. lit. ‘The Tao precedes Heaven and Earth’. The concept of tao in this
respect may rightly be compared with the Islamic concept qadim.
25. rig£3S#!J, lit. ‘The Tao produces, or makes grow, the ten thousand things’.
26. See, Tao Te Ching, XLII. The process of ‘emanation’ will be dealt with later in
full detail.
27. TSIHj which was compiled in the 1st century B.C.
28. $p$s, a scholar of the 4th century A.D.
29. In quoting from the Chuang-tzu I shall give page numbers according to the
Peking edition of Chuang-tzu Chi Shih by Kuo Ch’ing Fan ?£R?S, Peking,
1 961 , vol. 1 . The editor was one of the outstanding philologists of the Ch’ ing dynasty,
and his edition is a very useful one, because it gives the commentary by Kuo Hsiang
himself (r&T&j) and two other equally famous glosses by Ch’eng Hsiiang Ying
and Lu Te Ming rgT#J£), supplemented by some of the
results of modern scholarship. As for Lao-tzu, I shall quote from the edition of Kao
Heng: Lao-tzu Cheng KuW$- r^TiE^SJ, Shanghai, 1943, giving, as is usually done,
chapter numbers instead of page numbers.
II From Mythopoiesis to
Metaphysics
In the preceding chapter I indicated in a preliminary way the possi-
bility of there being a very strong connection between Taoist
philosophy and shamanism. I suggested that the thought or world-
view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu may perhaps be best studied
against the background of the age-old tradition of the shamanic
spirit in ancient China. The present chapter will be devoted to a
more detailed discussion of this problem, namely, the shamanic
background of Taoist philosophy as represented by the Tao Te
Ching and Chuang-tzu.
In fact, throughout the long history of Chinese thought there runs
what might properly be called a ‘shamanic mode of thinking’. We
observe this specific mode of thinking manifesting itself in diverse
forms and on various levels in accordance with the particular cir-
cumstances of time and place, sometimes in a popular, fantastic
form, often going to the limit of superstition and obscenity, and
sometimes in an intellectually refined and logically elaborated form.
We observe also that this mode of thinking stands in sharp contrast
to the realistic and rationalistic mode of thinking as represented by
the austere ethical world-view of Confucius and his followers.
Briefly stated, I consider the Taoist world-view of Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu as a philosophical elaboration or culmination of this
shamanic mode of thinking; as, in other words, a particular form of
philosophy which grew out of the personal existential experience
peculiar to persons endowed with the capacity of seeing things on a
supra-sensible plane of consciousness through an ecstatic encounter
with the Absolute and through the archetypal images emerging out
of it.
The Taoist philosophers who produced works like the Tao Te
Ching and Chuang-tzu were ‘shamans’ on the one hand, as far as
concerns the experiential basis of their world-vision, but they were
on the other, intellectual thinkers who, not content to remain on the
primitive level of popular shamanism, exercised their intellect in
order to elevate and elaborate their original vision into a system of
metaphysical concepts designed to explain the very structure of Being.
From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics
301
Lao-tzu talks about sheng-jen 1 or the ‘sacred man’ . It is one of the
key-concepts of his philosophical world-view, and as such plays an
exceedingly important role in his thought. The ‘sacred man’ is a man
who has attained to the highest stage of the intuition of the Way, to
the extent of being completely unified with it, and who behaves
accordingly in this world following the dictates of the Way that he
feels active in himself. He is, in brief, a human embodiment of the
Way. In exactly the same sense, Chuang-tzu speaks of chen-jen 2 or
the ‘true man’, chih-jen 3 or the ‘ultimate man’, shen-jen 4 or the
‘divine (or super-human) man’. The man designated by these vari-
ous words is in reality nothing other than a philosophical shaman, or
a shaman whose visionary intuition of the world has been refined
and elaborated into a philosophical vision of Being.
That the underlying concept has historically a close connection
with shamanism is revealed by the etymological meaning of the
word sheng here translated as ‘sacred’. The Shuo Wen Chieh Tzu,
the oldest etymological dictionary (compiled in 100 A.D.), in its
explanation of the etymological structure of this word states: 1 Sheng
designates a man whose orifices of the ears are extraordinarily
receptive’. 5 In other words, the term designates a man, endowed
with an unusually keen ear, who is capable of hearing the voice of a
super-natural being, god or spirit, and understands directly the will
or intention of the latter. In the concrete historical circumstances of
the ancient Yin Dynasty, such a man can be no other than a divine
priest professionally engaged in divination.
It is interesting to remark in this connection that in the Tao Te
Ching the ‘sacred man’ is spoken of as the supreme ruler of a state,
or ‘ king’ , and that this equation (Saint = King) is made as if it were a
matter of common sense, something to be taken for granted. We
must keep in mind that in the Yin Dynasty 6 shamanism was deeply
related to politics. In that dynasty, the civil officials of the higher
ranks who possessed and exercised a tremendous power over the
administration of the state were all originally shamans. And in the
earliest periods of the same dynasty, the Grand Shaman was the
high priest-vizier, or even the king himself. 7
This would seem to indicate that behind the ‘sacred man’ as the
Taoist ideal of the Perfect Man there is hidden the image of a
shaman, and that under the surface of the metaphysical world-view
of Taoism there is perceivable a shamanic cosmology going back to
the most ancient times of Chinese history.
For the immediate purposes of the present study, we do not have to
go into a detailed theoretical discussion of the concept of shaman-
ism. 8 We may be content with defining it in a provisional way by
saying that it is a phenomenon in which an inspired seer in a state of
302
Sufism and Taoism
ecstasy communes with supernatural beings, gods or spirits. As is
well known, a man who has a natural capacity of this kind tends to
serve in a primitive society as an intermediary between his tribes-
men and the unseen world.
As one of the most typical features of the shamanic mentality we
shall consider first of all the phenomenon of mythopoiesis . Shamans
are by definition men who, in their ecstatic-archetypal visions per-
ceive things which are totally different from what ordinary people
see in their normal states through their sensible experiences, and
this naturally tends to induce the shamans to interpret and struc-
turalize the world itself quite differently from ordinary people. That
which characterizes their reality experience in the most remarkable
way is that things appear to their ‘imaginal’ consciousness in sym-
bolic and mythical forms. The world which a shaman sees in the
state of trance is a world of ‘creative imagination’ , as Henry Corbin
has aptly named it, however crude it may still be. On this level of
consciousness, the things we perceive around us leave their natural,
common-sense mode of existence and transform themselves into
images and symbols. And those images, when they become sys-
tematized and ordered according to the patterns of development
which are inherent in them, tend to produce a mythical cosmology.
The shamanic tradition in ancient China did produce such a
cosmology. In the Elegies ofCh’u to which reference was made in
the preceding chapter, we can trace almost step by step and in a very
concrete form the actual process by which the shamanic experience
of reality produces a peculiar, ‘imaginal’ cosmology. And by com-
paring, further, the Elegies ofCh’u with a book like Huai Nan Tzu , 9
we can observe the most intimate relationship that exists between
the shamanic cosmology and Taoist metaphysics. There one sees sur
le vif how the mythical world-view represented by the former
develops and is transformed into the ontology of the Way.
Another fact which seems to confirm the existence of a close
relationship, both essential and historical, between the Taoist
metaphysics and the shamanic vision of the world is found in the
history of Taoism after the Warring States period. In fact, the
development of Taoism, after having reached its philosophical
zenith with Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, goes on steadily describing a
curve of ‘degeneration’ - as it is generally called - even under a
strong influence of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang-tzu, and returns to
its original mythopoeic form, revealing thereby its shamanic basis,
until it reaches in the Later Han Dynasty a stage at which Taoism
becomes almost synonymous with superstition, magic and witch-
craft. The outward structure of Taoist metaphysics itself discloses
almost no palpable trace of its shamanic background, but in the
From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics
303
philosophical description of the tao by Lao-tzu, for instance, there is
undeniably something uncanny and uncouth that would seem to be
indicative of its original connection with shamanism.
Lao-tzu depicts, as we shall see later in more detail, the Way {tao) as
Something shadowy and dark, prior to the existence of Heaven and
Earth, unknown and unknowable, impenetrable and intangible to
the degree of only being properly described as Non-Being, and yet
pregnant with forms, images and things, which lie latent in the midst
of its primordial obscurity. The metaphysical Way thus depicted has
an interesting counterpart in the popular mythopoeic imagination
as represented by Shan Hai Ching , 10 in which it appears in a fantas-
tic form.
Three hundred and fifty miles further to the West there is a mountain
called Heaven Mountain. The mountain produces much gold and
jade. It produces also blue sulphide. And the River Ying takes its rise
therefrom and wanders southwestward until it runs into the Valley of
Boiling Water. Now in this mountain there lives a Divine Bird whose
body is like a yellow sack, red as burning fire, who has six legs and
four wings. It is strangely amorphous, having no face, no eyes, but it is
very good at singing and dancing. In reality, this Bird is no other than
the god Chiang.
In the passage here quoted, two things attract our attention. One is
the fact that the monster-bird is described as being good at singing
and dancing. The relevance of this point to the particular problem
we are now discussing will immediately be understood if one
remembers that ‘singing and dancing’, i.e., ritual dance, invariably
accompanies the phenomenon of shamanism. Dancing in ancient
China was a powerful means of seeking for the divine Will, of
inducing the state of ecstasy in men, and of ‘calling down’ spirits
from the invisible world. The above-mentioned dictionary, Shuo
Wen, defines the word wu (shaman) as ‘a woman who is naturally fit
for serving the formless (i.e., invisible beings) and who, by means of
dancing call down spirits ’ . 11 It is interesting that the same dictionary
explains the character itself which represents this word, M , by
saying that it pictures a woman dancing with two long sleeves
hanging down on the right and the left. In the still earlier stage of its
development , 12 it represents the figure of a shaman holding up jade
with two hands in front of a spirit or god.
It is also significant that the monster is said to be a bird, which is
most probably an indication that the shamanic dancing here in
question was some kind of feather-dance in which the shaman was
ritually ornamented with a feathered headdress.
The second point to be noticed in the above-given passage from
the Shan Hai Ching - and this point is of far greater relevance to the
304
Sufism and Taoism
present study than the first - is the particular expression used in the
description of the monster’s visage, hun tun, 13 which I have provi-
sionally translated above as ‘strangely amorphous’. It means a
chaotic state of things, an amorphous state where nothing is clearly
delineated, nothing is clearly distinguishable, but which is far from
being sheer non-being; it is, on the contrary, an extremely obscure
‘presence’ in which the existence of something - or some things, still
undifferentiated - is vaguely and dimly sensed.
The relation between this word as used in this passage and
Chuang-tzu’s allegory of the divine Emperor Hun Tun has been
noticed long ago by philologists of the Ch’ing dynasty. The com-
mentator of the Shan Hai Ching, Pi Yuan, for instance, explicitly
connects this description of the monster with the featureless face of
the Emperor Hun Tun.
The allegory given by Chuang-tzu reads as follows: 14
The Emperor of the South Sea was called Shu, the Emperor of the
North Sea was called Hu , 15 and the Emperor of the central domain
was called Hun Tun . 16 Once, Shu and Hu met in the domain of Hun
Tun, who treated both of them very well. Thereupon, Shu and Hu
deliberated together over the way in which they might possibly repay
his goodness.
'All men’, they said, ‘are possessed of seven orifices for seeing,
hearing, eating, and breathing. But this one (i.e., Hun Tun) alone
does not possess any (orifice). Come, let us bore some for him.’
They went on boring one orifice every day, until on the seventh day
Hun Tun died.
This story describes in symbolic terms the destructive effect exer-
cised by the essentialist type of philosophy on the Reality. It is a
merciless denunciation of this type of philosophy on behalf of a
peculiar form of existentialist philosophy which, as we shall see
later, Chuang-tzu was eager to uphold. Shu and Hu, symbolizing the
precariousness of human existence, met in the central domain of
Hun Tun; they were very kindly treated and they became happy for
a brief period of time as their names themselves indicate. This event
would seem to symbolize the human intellect stepping into the
domain of the supra-sensible world of ‘un-differentiation’, the
Absolute, and finding a momentary felicity there - the ecstasy of a
mystical intuition of Being, which, regrettably, lasts but for a short
time. Encouraged by this experience, the human intellect, or
Reason, tries to bore holes in the Absolute, that is to say, tries to
mark distinctions and bring out to actuality all the forms that have
remained latent in the original undifferentiation. The result of
‘boring’ is nothing but the philosophy of Names ( ming ) as rep-
resented by Confucius and his school, an essentialist philosophy,
where all things are clearly marked, delineated, and sharply disting-
From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 305
uished from one another on the ontological level of essences. But
the moment orifices were bored in Hun Tun’s face, he died. This
means that the Absolute can be brought into the grasp of Reason by
‘essential’ distinctions being made in the reality of the Absolute,
and becomes thereby something understandable; but the moment it
becomes understandable to Reason, the Absolute dies.
It is not time yet for us to go into the details of the existentialist
position taken by Chuang-tzu. I simply wanted to show by this
example how closely the shamanic mythopoeic imagination was
originally related with the birth of Taoist philosophy, and yet, at the
same time, how far removed the latter was in its philosophical
import from the former.
This sense of distance between shamanism and philosophy may
be alleviated to a considerable extent if we place between the two
terms of the relation the cosmogonical story - a product of the same
mythopoeic mentality - which purports to explain how Heaven and
Earth came into being. It is not exactly a ‘story’ ; it is a ‘theory’ and is
meant to be one. It is a result of a serious attempt to describe and
explain theoretically the very origin of the world of Being and the
process by which all things in the world have come to acquire the
forms with which we are now familiar. The cosmogony constitutes
in this sense the middle term - structurally, if not historically -
between the crude shamanic myth and the highly developed
metaphysics of the Way.
Here we give in translation the cosmogony as formulated in the
above-mentioned Huai Nan Tzu : 17
Heaven and Earth had no form yet. It was a state of formless fluidity;
nothing stable, nothing definite. This state is called the Great Begin-
ning. The Great Beginning produced 18 a spotless void. The spotless
void produced the Cosmos. The Cosmos produced (the all-
pervading) vital energy. 11 ' The vital energy had in itself distinctions.
That which was limpid and light went up hovering in thin layers to
form Heaven, while that which was heavy and turbid coagulated and
became Earth. The coming together of limpid and fine elements is
naturally easy, while the coagulation of heavy and turbid elements is
difficult to occur. For this reason, Heaven was the first to be formed,
then Earth became established.
Heaven and Earth gathered together the finer elements of their vital
energy to form the principles of Negative (Yin) and Positive (Yang),
and the Negative and Positive gathered together the finer elements of
their vital energy to constitute the four seasons. The four seasons
scattered their vital energy to bring into being the ten thousand
things. The caloric energy of the Positive principle, having been
accumulated, gave birth to fire, and the essence of the energy of fire
became the sun. The energy of coldness peculiar to the Negative
principle, having been accumulated became water, and the essence of
306
Sufism and Taoism
the energy of water became the moon. The overflow of the sun and
the moon, having become refined, turned into stars and planets.
Heaven received the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Earth received
water, puddles, dust, and soil.
In the passage her quoted we encounter again that undifferen-
tiated, featureless Something, the primordial Chaos, this time as a
cosmogonic principle or the Great Beginning, representing the state
of affairs before the creation of the world. The Great Beginning is
certainly different from the mythical monster of the Shan Hai Ching
and the metaphysical principle of the Tao Te Ching. But it is evident
at the same time that these three are but different ‘phenomena’ of
one and the same thing.
Similarly in a different passage 20 in the same book we read:
Long long ago, when Heaven and Earth were still non-existent, there
were no definite figures, no definite forms. Mysteriously profound,
opaque and dark: nothing was distinguishable, nothing was fathom-
able; limitlessly remote, vast and void; nobody would have discerned
its gate.
Then there were born together two divinities, and they began to rule
Heaven and to govern Earth. Infinitely deep (was Heaven), and no
one knew where it came to a limit. Vastly extensive (was Earth), and
no one knew where it ceased.
Thereupon (Being) divided itself into the Negative and the Positive,
which, then, separated into the eight cardinal directions.
The hard and the soft complemented each other, and as a result the
ten thousand things acquired their definite forms. The gross and
confused elements of the vital energy produced animals (including
beasts, birds, reptiles and fish). The finer vital energy produced man.
This is the reason why the spiritual properly belongs to Heaven, while
the bodily belongs to Earth.
Historically speaking, this and similar cosmogonical theories seem
to have been considerably influenced by Taoism and its metaphys-
ics. Structurally, however, they furnish a connecting link between
myth and philosophy, pertaining as they do to both of them and yet
differing from them in spirit and structure. The cosmogony discloses
to our eyes in this sense the mythopoeic background of the
metaphysics of the Way as formulated by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu.
In a similar fashion, we can bring to light the subjective - i.e.,
epistemological - aspect of the relationship between shamanism
and Taoist philosophy by comparing the above-mentioned Elegies
ofCh’u and the books of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. The possibility of
obtaining an interesting result from a comparative study of Ch’u
Yuan, the great shaman-poet of the state of Ch’u, and the
From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics
307
philosophers of Taoism was noted long ago by Henri Maspero , 21
although death prevented him from fully developing his idea.
In the Li Sao 22 and the Yuan Yu 23 the shaman-poet describes in
detail the process of visionary states through which a soul in an
ecstatic state, helped and assisted by various gods and spirits,
ascends to the heavenly city where the ‘eternal beings’ live. This is in
reality nothing but a description of a shamanic unio mystica. And
the shamanic ascension is paralleled by a visionary ascension of a
similar structure in the Chuang-tzu , the only essential difference
between the two being that in the latter case the experience of the
spiritual journey is refined and elaborated into the form of a
metaphysical contemplation. Just as the shaman-poet experiences
in his ecstatic oblivion of the ego a kind of immortality and eternity,
so the Taoist philosopher experiences immortality and ‘long life’ in
the midst of the eternal Way, by being unified with it. It is interesting
to notice in this respect that the poet says in the final stage of his
spiritual experience that he ‘transcends the Non-Doing , 24 reaches
the primordial Purity, and stands side by side with the Great Begin-
ning ’. 25 In Taoist terminology, we would say that the poet at this
stage ‘stands side by side with the Way’, that is, ‘is completely
unified with the Way’, there being no discrepancy between them.
In the Li Sao the poet does not ascend to such a height. Standing
on the basic assumption that both the Li Sao and Yuan Yu are
authentic works of Ch’u Yuan, Maspero remarks that the Li Sao
represents an earlier stage in the spiritual development of the poet,
at which he, as a shaman, has not yet attained to the final goal,
whereas the Yuan Yu represents a later stage at which the poet ‘has
already reached the extremity of mysticism’.
Such an interpretation is of course untenable if we know for
certain that the Yuan Yu is a work composed by a later poet and
surreptitiously attributed to Ch’u Yuan. In any case, the poem in its
actual form is markedly Taoistic, and some of the ideas are undeni-
ably borrowings from Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. Here again,
however, the problem of authenticity is by no means a matter of
primary importance to us. For even if we admit that the poem - or
some parts of - it is a Han Dynasty forgery, it remains true that the
very fact that Taoist metaphysics could be so naturally transformed
- or brought back - into a shamanic world-vision is itself a proof
of a real congeniality that existed between shamanism and
Taoism.
A detailed analytic comparison between the Elegies ofCh’u and
the books of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu is sure to make an extremely
fruitful and rewarding work. But to do so will take us too far afield
beyond the main topic of the present study. Besides, we are going to
describe in detail in the first chapters of this book the philosophical
308 Sufism and Taoism
version of the spiritual journey which has just been mentioned. And
this must suffice us for our present purposes.
Let us now leave the problem of the shamanic origin of Taoism,
and turn to the purely philosophical aspects of the latter. Our main
concern will henceforward be exclusively with the actual structure
of Taoist metaphysics and its key-concepts.
Notes
1. fiA-
2. *A-
3. $A, i.e., a man who has attained to the furthest limit (of perfection).
4. #A. We may note that this and the preceding words all refer to one and the same
concept which is the Taoist counterpart of the concept of insan kamil or the Perfect
Man, which we discussed in the first part of this study.
5. rmxmzy. ruinii,
6. Reference has been made in the preceding chapter to the possible historical
connection between the Yin dynasty and the spirit of the state of Ch’u.
7. For more details about the problem of the shaman ((iwu) representing the
highest administrative power in the non-secularized state in ancient China, see for
example Liang Ch’i Ch’ao: A History of Political Thought in the Periods Prior to the
Ch’in Dynasty %%% rftggt&S.If.ltj , 1923, Shanghai, Ch. II.
8. I would refer the reader to Mircea Eliade’s basic work: Shamanism, Archaic
Techniques of Ecstasy, English tr., London, 1964.
9. rjtii f j, an eclectic work compiled by thinkers of various schools who were
gathered by the king of Huai Nan, Liu AniiJ^, at his court, in the second century B.C.
The book is of an eclectic nature, but its basic thought is that of the Taoist school.
10. r one of the most important source-books for Chinese mythology, giving
a detailed description of all kinds of mythological monsters living in mountains and
seas. The following quotation is taken from a new edition of the book,
with a commentary by Pi Yuan of the Ch’ing dynasty,
Tai Pei, 1945, p. 57.
11. hi.
12. The character /gas it appears in the oracle-bones is: ® or/fi.
13. The word is written in the Chuang-tzu f-Pti.
14. Chapter VII entitled ‘Fit to be Emperors and Kings’, p. 309.
15. Both shu (fJ5) and hu (£?.) literally mean a brief span of time, symbolizing in this
allegory the precariousness of existence.
From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics
309
16. Important to note is the fact that hun tun , the ‘ undifferentiation’ is placed in the
center. It means that hun tun represents the true ‘ reality’ of Being, bordering on both
sides on ‘precariousness’. The philosophical implication of all this will be elucidated
in a later chapter.
17. rjftiffTj, III, T’ien Wen A£ll.
18. The received text as it stands is apparently unintelligible. Following the emenda-
tion suggested by Wang Yin Chih (T'j|2 ) I read: r&B Af^ig^TjSl I ■
19. The ‘all-pervading vital energy’ is a clumsy translation of the Chinese wordc/i7
Si , which plays an exceedingly important role in the history of Chinese thought. It is a
‘reality’, proto-material and formless, which cannot be grasped by the senses. It is a
kind of vital force, a creative principle of all things; it pervades the whole world, and
being immanent in everything, molds it and makes it grow into what it really is.
Everything that has a ‘form’, whether animate or inanimate, has a share in the ch’i.
The concept of ch’i has been studied by many scholars. As one of the most detailed
analytic studies of it we may mention Teikichi Hiraoka: A Study of Ch’i in Huai Nan
Tzu,^mm Tokyo 1969.
20. ibid., VII, $}Wn)||.
21. ibid., III.
22. rgSj.
23. TiilSj. Many scholars entertain serious doubts - with reason, I think - as to the
authenticity of this important and interesting work. Most probably it is a product of
the Han Dynasty (see composed in the very atmosphere of
a fully developed philosophy of Taoism.
24. wu-wei , one of the key-terms of Taoist philosophy, which we shall analyze
in a later passage. ‘Non-Doing’ means, in short, man’s abandoning all artificial,
unnatural effort to do something, and identifying himself completely with the activity
of Nature which is nothing other than the spontaneous self-manifestation of the Way
itself. Here the poet claims that at the final stage of his spiritual development he goes
even beyond the level of ‘non-activity’ and of being one with Nature, and steps
further into the very core of the Way. In his consciousness - or in his ‘non-
consciousness’, we should rather say - his is no longer a human being; he is deified.
25.
Ill Dream and Reality
In the foregoing chapter we talked about the myth of Chaos, the
primordial undifferentiation which preceded the beginning of the
cosmos. In its original shamanic form, the figure of Chaos as a
featureless monster looks very bizarre, primitive and grotesque.
Symbolically, however, it is of profound importance, for the
philosophical idea symbolized by it directly touches the core of the
reality of Being.
In the view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the reality of Being is
Chaos. And therein lies the very gist of their ontology. But this
proposition does not mean that the world we live in is simply chaotic
and disorderly as an empirical fact. For the empirical world, as we
daily observe it, is far from being as ‘featureless’ and ‘amorphous’ as
the face of the bird-monster of the Shan Hai Ching. On the con-
trary, it is a world where we observe many things that are clearly
distinguishable from one another, each having its peculiar ‘name’,
and each being definitely delineated and determined. Everything
therein has its own place; the things are neatly ordered in a hier-
archy. We live in such a world, and do perceive our world in such a
light. According to the Taoist philosophers, that precisely is
the malady of our Reason. And it is difficult for an ordinary mind
not to see the distinctions in the world. The world, in brief, is not
chaotic.
It will be the first task of a Chuang-tzu to shatter to pieces these
seemingly watertight compartments of Being, allowing us to have a
glimpse into the fathomless depth of primeval Chaos. But this is not
in any way an easy task. Chuang-tzu actually tries many different
approaches. Probably the easiest of them all for us to understand is
his attempt at the ‘chaotification’ - if we are allowed to coin such a
word - of ‘dream’ and ‘reality’. By a seemingly very simple descrip-
tive and narrative language, he tries to raise us immediately to an
ontological level where ‘dream’ and ‘reality’ cease to be distinguish-
able from each other , 1 and merge together into something
‘amorphous’.
The following is a very famous passage in the Chuang-tzu, in
Dream and Reality
311
which the sage tries to give us a glimpse of the ‘chaotification of
things : 2
Once I Chuang Chou, 3 dreamt that 1 was a butterfly. Flitting about
at ease and to my heart’s content, I was indeed a butterfly. Happy and
cheerful, I had no consciousness of being Chou.
All of a sudden I awoke, and lo, I was Chou.
Did Chou dream that he was a butterfly? Or did the butterfly dream
that it was Chou? How do I know? There is, however, undeniably a
difference between Chou and a butterfly. This situation is what I
would call the Transmutation of things.
The latter half of this passage touches upon the central theme of
Chuang-tzu. In the kind of situation here described, he himself and
the butterfly have become undistinguishable, each having lost his or
its essentia] self-identity. And yet, he says, ‘there is undeniably a
difference between Chou and a butterfly’ . This last statement refers
to the situation of things in the phenomenal world, which man
ordinarily calls ‘reality’ . On this level of existence, ‘man’ cannot be
‘butterfly’ , and ‘butterfly’ cannot be ‘man’ . These two things which
are thus definitely different and distinguishable from each other do
lose their distinction on a certain level of human consciousness, and
go into the state of undifferentiation - Chaos.
This ontological situation is called by Chuang-tzu the Transmu -
tion of things, wu hua . 4 The wu hua is one of the most importan
key-terms of Chuang-tzu’ s philosophy. It will be dealt with in detail
presently. Here I shall give in translation another passage in which
the same concept is explained through similar images . 5
A man drinks wine in a dream, and weeps and wails in the morning
( when he awakes) . A man weeps in a (sad) dream, but in the morning
he goes joyously hunting. While he is dreaming he is not aware that
he is dreaming; he even tries (in his dream) to interpret his dream.
Only after he awakes from sleep does he realize that it was a dream.
Likewise, only when one experiences a Great Awakening does one
realize that all this 6 is but a Big Dream. But the stupid imagine that
they are actually awake. Deceived by their petty intelligence they
consider themselves smart enough to differentiate between what is
noble and what is ignoble. How deep-rooted and irremediable their
stupidity is! ,
In reality, however, both I and you are a dream. Nay, the very fact
that I am telling you that you are dreaming is itself a dream
This kind of statement is liable to be labeled bizarre sophistry. (But it
looks so precisely because it reveals the Truth), and a great sage
capable of penetrating its mystery is barely to be expected to appear
in the world in ten thousand years.
The same idea is repeated in the following passage : 8
312
Sufism and Taoism
313
Suppose you dream that you are a bird. (In that state) you do soar up
into the sky. Suppose you dream that you are a fish. You do go down
deep into the pool. (While you are experiencing all this in your
dream, what you experience is your ‘reality’.) Judging by this,
nobody can be sure whether we -you and I, who are actually engaged
in conversation in this way - are awake or just dreaming . 9
Such a view reduces the distinction between Me and Thee to a mere
semblance, or at least it renders the distinction very doubtful and
groundless.
Each one of us is convinced that ‘this’ is I (and consequently ‘other
than this’ is You or He). On reflexion, however, how do I know for
sure that this ‘I’ which I consider as ‘I’ is really my ‘I ’? 10
Thus even my own ‘ego’ which I regard as the most solid and reliable
core of existence, - and the only absolutely indubitable entity even
when I doubt the existence of everything else, in the Cartesian sense
- becomes transformed all of a sudden into something dreamlike
and unreal.
Thus by what might seem ‘bizarre sophistry’ Chuang-tzu reduces
everything to a Big Dream. This abrupt negation of ‘reality’ is but a
first step into his philosophy, for his philosophy does have a positive
side. But before disclosing the positive side - which our ‘petty
intelligence’ can never hope to understand - he deals a mortal blow
to this ‘intelligence’ and Reason by depriving them of the very
ground on which they stand.
The world is a dream; that which we ordinarily consider solid
‘reality’ is a dream. Furthermore, the man who tells others that
everything is a dream, and those who are listening to his teaching,
are all part of a dream.
What does Chuang-tzu want to suggest by this? He wants to
suggest that Reality in the real sense of the word is something totally
different from what Reason regards as ‘ reality’ . In order to grasp the
true meaning of this, our normal consciousness must first lose its
self-identity. And together with the ‘ego’, all the objects of its
perception and intellection must also lose their self-identities and
be brought into a state of confusion which we called above the
primordial Chaos. This latter is an ontological level at which
‘dream’ and ‘reality’ lose the essential distinction between them, at
which the significance itself of such distinctions is lost. On its subjec-
tive side, it is a state of consciousness in which nothing any longer
remains ‘itself’, and anything can be anything else. It is an entirely
new order of Being, where all beings, liberated from the shackles of
their semantic determinations freely transform themselves into one
another. This is what Chuang-tzu calls the Transmutation of things.
The Transmutation of things, as conceived by Chuang-tzu, must
Dream and Reality
be understood in terms of two different points of reference. On the
one hand, it designates a metaphysical situation in which all things
are found to be ‘transmutable’ to one another, so much so that
ultimately they become merged together into an absolute Unity. In
this sense it transcends ‘time’ ; it is a supra-temporal order of things.
In the eye of one who has experienced the Great Awakening, all
things are One; all things are the Reality itself. At the same time,
however, this unique Reality discloses to his eye a kaleidoscopic
view of infinitely various and variegated things which are ‘essen-
tially’ different one from another, and the world of Being, in this
aspect, is manifold and multiple. Those two aspects are to be recon-
ciled with each other by our considering these ‘things’ as so many
phenomenal forms of the absolute One. The ‘unity of existence’,
thus understood, constitutes the very core of the philosophy of
Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu.
The same Transmutation can, on the other hand, be understood
as a temporal process. And this is also actually done by Chuang-tzu.
A thing, a , continues to subsist as a for some time; then, when the
limit which has been naturally assigned to it comes, 1 1 it ceases to be a
and becomes transmuted or transformed into another thing, b.
From the viewpoint of supra-temporality, a and b are metaphysi-
cally one and the same thing, the difference between them being
merely a matter of phenomenon. In this sense, even before a ceases
to be a - that is, from the beginning -a is b, and b is a. There is, then,
no question of a ‘becoming’ b, because a, by the very fact that it is a,
is already b.
From the second viewpoint, however, a is a and nothing else. And
this a ‘becomes’, in a temporal process, something else, b. The
former ‘changes’ into the latter. But here again we run into the same
metaphysical Unity, by, so to speak, a roundabout way. For a, by
‘becoming’ and ‘changing into’ b, refers itself back to its own origin
and source. The whole process constitutes an ontological circle,
because through the very act of becoming b , a simply ‘becomes’
itself - only in a different form.
Applied to the concepts of ‘life’ and ‘death’, such an idea natur-
ally produces a peculiar Philosophy of Life, a basically optimistic
view of human existence. It is ‘optimisic’ because it completely
obliterates the very distinction between Life and Death. Viewed in
this light, the so-called problem of Death turns out to be but a
pseudo-problem.
Although it is thus a pseudo-problem from the point of view of
those who have seen the Truth, Chuang-tzu often takes up this
theme and develops his thought around it. Indeed, it is one of his
most favorite topics. This is so because actually it is a problem, or the
problem. Death, in particular, happens to be the most disquieting
314
Sufism and Taoism
problem for the ordinary mind. And a man’s having overcome the
existential angoisse of being faced constantly and at every moment
with the horror of his own annihilation is the sign of his being at the
stage of a ‘true man’. Besides, since it happens to be such a vital
problem, its solution is sure to bring home to the mind the
significance of the concept of Transmutation. Otherwise, every-
thing else is exactly in the same ontological situation as Life and
Death.
Now to go back to the point at which Chuang-tzu has reduced
everything to a dreamlike mode of existence. Nothing in the world
of Being is solidly self-subsistent. In scholastic terminology we
might describe the situation by saying that nothing has - except in
semblance and appearance - an unchangeable ‘quiddity’ or
‘essence’. And in this fluid state of things, we are no longer sure of
the self-identity of anything whatsoever. We never know whether a
is really a itself.
And this essential dreamlike uncertainty of indetermination
naturally holds true of Life and Death. The conceptual structure of
this statement will easily be seen if one replaces the terms Life and
Death by a and b, and tries to represent the whole situation in terms
of the a-b pattern which has been given above.
Speaking of a ‘true man’ from the state of Lu, Chuang-tzu says:
He does not care to know why he lives. Nor does he care to know why
he dies. He does not even know which comes first and which comes
last, (i.e., Life and Death are in his mind undifferentiated from each
other, the distinction between them being insignificant). Following
the natural course of Transmutation he has become a certain thing;
now he is simply awaiting further Transmutation. ]j
Besides, when a man is undergoing Transmutation, how can he be
sure that he is (in reality) not being transmuted? And when he is not
undergoing Transmutation, how can he be sure that he has (in
reality) not already been transmuted ? 12
In a similar passage concerned with the problem of Death and the
proper attitude of ‘true men’ toward it, Chuang-tzu lets Confucius
make the following statement . 13 Confucius here, needless to say, is a
fictitious figure having nothing to do with the historical person, but
there is of course a touch of irony in the very fact that Confucius is
made to make such a remark.
They (i.e., the ‘true men’) are those who freely wander beyond the
boundaries (i.e., the ordinary norms of proper behavior), while men
like myself are those who wander freely only within the boundaries.
‘ Beyond the boundaries’ and ‘within the boundaries’ are poles asun-
der from one another.
Dream and Reality
315
They are those who, being completely unified with the Creator
Himself, take delight in being in the realm of the original Unity of the
vital energy 14 before it is divided into Heaven and Earth.
To their minds Life (or Birth) is just the growth of an excrescence, a
wart, and Death is the breaking of a boil, the bursting of a tumor.
Such being the case, how should we expect them to care about the
question as to which is better and which is worse - Life or Death?
They simply borrow different elements, and put them together in the
common form of a body . 15 Hence they are conscious neither of their
liver nor of their gall, and they leave aside their ears and eyes . 16
Abandoning themselves to infinitely recurrent waves of Ending and
Beginning, they go on revolving in a circle, of which they know
neither the beginning-point nor the ending-point.
For Chuang-tzu Death is nothing but one of the endlessly varieg-
ated phenomenal forms of one eternal Reality. To our mind’s eye
this metaphysical Reality actualizes itself and develops itself as a
process evolving in time. But even when conceived in such a tem-
poral form, the process depicts only an eternally revolving circle, of
which no one knows the real beginning and the real end. Death is
but a stage in this circle. When it occurs, one particular phenomenal
form is effaced from the circle and disappears only to reappear as an
entirely different phenomenal form. Nature continuously makes
and unmakes. But the circle itself, that is, Reality itself is always
there unchanged and unperturbed. Being one with Reality, the
mind of a ‘true man’ never becomes perturbed.
A ‘true man’, Chuang-tzu related , 17 saw his own body hideously
deformed in the last days of his life. He hobbled to a well, looked at
his image reflected in the water and said, ‘Alas! That the Creator has
made me so crooked and deformed!’ Thereupon a friend of his
asked him, ‘Do you resent your condition?’ Here is the answer that
the dying ‘true man’ gave to this question:
No, why should I resent it? It may be that the process of Transmuta-
tion will change my left arm into a rooster. I would, then, simply use it
to crow to tell the coming of the morning. It may be that the process
goes on and might change my right arm into a crossbow. I would,
then, simply use it to shoot down a bird for roasting. It may be that the
process will change my buttocks into a wheel and my spirit into a
horse. I would, then, simply ride in the carriage. I would not have
even to put another horse to it.
Whatever we obtain (i.e., being born into this world in a particular
form) is due to the coming of the time. Whatever we lose (i.e., death)
is also due to the arrival of the turn. We must be content with the
‘time’ and accept the ‘turn’. Then neither sorrow nor joy will ever
creep in. Such an attitude used to be called among the Ancients
‘loosing the tie ’. 18 If man cannot loose himself from the tie, it is
because ‘things’ bind him fast.
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Sufism and Taoism
Dream and Reality
317
Another ‘true man’ had a visit in his last moments from one of his
friends, who was also a ‘true man’. The conversation between them
as related by Chuang-tzu 19 is interesting. The visitor seeing the wife
and children who stood around the man on the deathbed weeping
and wailing, said to them, ‘Hush! Get away! Do not disturb him as
he is passing through the process of Transmutation!’
Then turning to the dying man, he said:
How great the Creator is! What is he going to make of you now?
Whither is he going to take you? Is he going to make of you a rat’s
liver? Or is he going to make of you an insect’s arm?’
To this the dying man replies:
(No matter what the Creator makes of me, I accept the situation and
follow his command.) Don’t you see? In the relationship between a
son and his parents, the son goes wherever they command him to go,
east, west, south, or north. But the relation between the Yin-Yang
(i.e., the Law regulating the cosmic process of Becoming) and a man
is incomparably closer than the relation between him and his parents.
Now they (the Yin and Yang) have brought me to the verge of death.
Should I refuse to submit to them, it would simply be an act of
obstinacy on my part . . .
Suppose here is a great master smith, casting metal. If the metal
should jump up and begin to shout, ‘I must be made into a sword like
Mo Yeh , 20 nothing else!’ The smith would surely regard the metal as
something very evil. (The same would be true of) a man who, on the
ground that he has by chance assumed a human form, should insist
and say: ‘I want to be a man, only man! Nothing else!’ The Creator
would surely regard him as of a very evil nature.
Just imagine the whole world as a big furnace, and the Creator as a
master smith. Wherever we may go, everything will be all right.
Calmly we will go to sleep (i.e., die), and suddenly we will find
ourselves awake (in a new form of existence).
The concept of the Transmutation of things as conceived by
Chuang-tzu. might seem to resemble the doctrine of ‘transmigra-
tion’. But the resemblance is only superficial. Chuang-tzu does not
say that the soul goes on transmigrating from one body to another.
The gist of his thought on this point is that everything is a pheno-
menal form of one unique Reality which goes on assuming succes-
sively different forms of self-manifestation. Besides, as we have
seen before, this temporal process itself is but a phenomenon.
Properly speaking, all this is something taking place on an eternal,
a-temporal level of Being. All things are one eternally, beyond
Time and Space.
Notes
1. We may do well to recall at this stage a chapter in the first part of the present
study, where we took the undifferentiation or indistinction between ‘dream’ and
‘reality’ as our starting-point for going into the metaphysical world of Ibn ‘Arabi.
There Ibn ‘Arabi speaks of the ontological level of ‘images’ and ‘similitudes’.
Chuang-tzu, as we shall see presently, uses a different set of concepts for interpreting
his basic vision. But the visions themselves of these two thinkers are surprisingly
similar to each other.
2. II, p. 1 12. The heading itself of this Chapter, ch’i wu is quite significant in this
respect, meaning as it does ‘equalization of things’.
3. mini, the real name of Chuang-tzu.
4. %{t, meaning literally: ‘things-transform’.
5. II., pp. 104-105.
6. i.e., everything that one experiences in this world of so-called ‘reality’. ‘Great
Awakening’: ta chiieh
7. i.e., being unaware of the fact that ‘life’ itself, the ‘reality’ itself is but a dream.
8. VI., p. 275.
9. i.e., it may very well be that somebody - or something - is dreaming that he (or it)
is a man, and thinks in the dream that he is talking with somebody else.
10. ibid.
11. This problem will be dealt with in detail in a later chapter which will be devoted
to the problem of determinism and freedom in the world-view of Taoism.
1 2. The meaning of this sentence can, I think, be paraphrazed as follows. It may well
be that ‘being transmuted’ (for example, from Life to Death, i.e., ‘to die’) is in reality
‘not to be transmuted’ (i.e., ‘not to die’). Likewise nobody knows for sure whether by
‘not being transmuted’ (i.e., remaining alive without dying) he has already been
transmuted (i.e., is already dead). The original sentence runs:
TJltffTTbSitoBft:. Kuo Hsiang in his commentary - which happens to be the oldest
commentary now in existence - explains it by saying: Bfbiff)£, Ssto^i^WfsL
^fbrfnTE, SitoB?E2:ff (P- 276), meaning; ‘Once transmuted into a living being,
how can a man know the state of affairs which preceded his birth? And while he is not
yet transmuted and is not yet dead, how can he know the state of affairs that will come
after death?’ I mention this point because many people follow Kuo Hsiang’s
interpretation in understanding the present passage. (VI, p. 274).
13. VI, pp. 267-268.
14. i.e., the primordial cosmic energy which, as we saw in the last chapter, is thought
to have existed before the creation of the world. It refers to the cosmogonic state in
which neither Heaven and Earth nor the Negative and the Positive were yet divided.
Philosophically it means the metaphysical One in its pure state of Unity.
15. According to their view, human existence is nothing but a provisional pheno-
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Sufism and Taoism
menal form composed by different elements (i.e., four basic elements: earth, air,
water and fire) which by chance have been united in the physical form of a body.
16. They do not pay any attention to their physical existence.
17. VI, pp. 259-260.
18. Hsien chiehf&fff, ‘loosing the tie’, i.e., an absolute freedom.
19. ibid., p. 261-262.
20. A noted sword made in the state of Wu (K) in the sixth century B.C.
IV Beyond This and That
We have seen in the last pages of the preceding chapter how
Chuang-tzu obliterates the distinction or opposition between Life
and Death and brings them back to the original state of ‘undifferen-
tiation’ . We have spent some time on the subject because it is one of
Chuang-tzu’ s favorite topics, and also because it discloses to our
eyes an important aspect of his philosophy.
Properly speaking, however, and from an ontological point of
view, Life and Death should not occupy such a privileged place. For
all so-called ‘opposites’ are not, in Chuang-tzu’ s philosophy, really
opposed to each other. In fact, nothing, in his view, is opposed to
anything else, because nothing has a firmly established ‘essence’ in
its ontological core. In the eye of a man who has ever experienced
the ‘chaotification’ of things, everything loses its solid contour,
being deprived of its ‘essential’ foundation. All ontological distinc-
tions between things become dim, obscure, and confused, if not
completely destroyed. The distinctions are certainly still there, but
they are no longer significant, ‘essential’. And ‘opposites’ are no
longer ‘opposites’ except conceptually. ‘Beautiful’ and ‘ugly’,
‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘pious’ and ‘impious’ -all these
and other conceptual pairs which are sharply distinguished, at the
level of Reason, and which actually play a leading role in human life,
are found to be far from being absolute.
This attitude of Chuang-tzu toward the ‘opposites’ and ‘distinc-
tions’ which are generally accepted as cultural, esthetic, or ethical
‘values’, would appear to be neither more nor less than so-called
relativism. The same is true of Lao-tzu’s attitude. And, in fact, it is a
relativist view of values. It is of the utmost importance, however, to
keep in mind that it is not an ordinary sort of relativism as under-
stood on the empirical or pragmatic level of social life. It is a
peculiar kind of relativism based on a very peculiar kind of mystical
intuition: a mystical intuition of the Unity and Multiplicity of exist-
ence. It is a philosophy of ‘undifferentiation’ which is a natural
product of a metaphysical experience of Reality, an experience in
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Sufism and Taoism
which Reality is directly witnessed as it unfolds and diversifies itself
into myriads of things and then goes back again to the original
Unity.
This ‘metaphysical 7 basis of Taoist relativism will be dealt with in
detail in the following chapter. Here we shall confine ourselves to
the ‘relativist’ side of this philosophy, and try to pursue Chuang-tzu
and Lao-tzu as closely as possible as they go on developing their
ideas on this particular aspect of the problem.
As I have just pointed out, the attitude of both Chuang-tzu and
Lao-tzu toward the so-called cultural values would on its surface
appear to be nothing other than ‘relativism’ in the commonly
accepted sense of the term. Let us first examine this point hy quoting
a few appropriate passages from the two books. Even at this pre-
liminary stage of analysis, we shall clearly observe that this relativ-
ism is directed against the ‘essentialist’ position of the school of
Confucius. In the last sentence of the following passage 1 there is an
explicit reference to the Confucian standpoint.
If a human being sleeps in a damp place, he will begin to suffer from
backache, and finally will become half paralyzed. But is this true of a
mudfish? If (a human being) lives in a tree, he will have to be
constantly trembling from fear and be frightened. But is this true of a
monkey? Now which of these three (i.e., man, mudfish and monkey)
knows the (absolutely) right place to live ? 2
Men eat beef and pork; deer eat grass; centipedes find snakes delici-
ous; kites and crows enjoy mice. Of these four which one knows the
(absolutely) good taste?
A monkey finds its mate in a monkey; a deer mates with a deer. And
mudfishes enjoy living with other fishes. Mao Ch’iang and Li Chi 3 are
regarded as ideally beautiful women by all men. And yet, if fish
happen to see a beauty like them, they will dive deep in the water;
birds will fly aloft; and deer will run away in all directions. Of these
four, which one knows the (absolute) ideal of beauty?
These considerations lead me to conclude that the boundaries be-
tween ‘benevolence’ ( jen ) and ‘righteousness’ (i ), 4 and the limits
between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are (also) extremely uncertain and con-
fused, so utterly and inextricably confused that we can never know
how to discriminate (between what is absolutely right and what is
absolutely wrong, etc.).
This kind of relativism is also found in the book of Lao-tzu. The
underlying conception is exactly the same as in the book of
Chuang-tzu; so also the reason for which he upholds such a view. As
we shall see later, Lao-tzu, too, looks at the apparent distinctions,
oppositions and contradictions from the point of view of the
metaphysical One in which all things lose their sharp edges of
conceptual discrimination and become blended and harmonized.
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Beyond This and That
The only difference between Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu in this
respect is that the latter expresses himself in a very terse, concise,
and apothegmatic form, while the former likes to develop his
thought in exuberant imagery. Otherwise, the idea itself is common
to both of them. In the first of the following quotations from the Tao
Te Ching, for instance, Lao-tzu implicitly criticizes the cultural
essentialism of the Confucian school . 5
Cast off Learning , 6 and there will be no worries. How much in fact,
difference is there between ‘yes, sir’ and ‘hum!’? Between ‘good’ and
‘bad’ what distinction is there? ‘Whatever others respect I also must
respect’, (they say).
Oh, how far away I am from the common people (who adhere to such
an idea). For (on such a principle) there will be absolutely no limit to
the vast field (of petty distinctions).
People tend to imagine, Lao-tzu says, that things are essentially
distinguishable from one another, and the Confucians have built up
an elaborate system of moral values precisely on the notion that
everything is marked off from others by its own ‘essence’. They
seem to be convinced that these ‘distinctions’ are all permanent and
unalterable. In reality, however, they are simply being deceived by
the external and phenomenal aspects of Being. A man whose eyes
are not veiled by this kind of deception sees the world of Being as a
vast and limitless space where things merge into one another. This
ontological state of things is nothing other than what Chuang-tzu
calls Chaos. On the cultural level, such a view naturally leads to
relativism. Lao-tzu describes the latter in the following way : 7
By the very fact that everybody in the world recognizes ‘beautiful’ as
‘beautiful’, the idea of ‘ugly’ comes into being. By the very fact that
all men recognize ‘good’ as‘good’, the idea of ‘bad’ comes into being.
Exactly in the same way ‘existence’ and ‘non-existence’ give birth to
one another; ‘difficult’ and ‘easy’ complement one another; ‘long’
and ‘short’ appear in contrast to one another; ‘high’ and ‘low’ incline
toward each other; ‘tone’ and ‘voice’ keep harmony with one
another; ‘before’ and ‘behind’ follow one another.
Everything, in short, is relative; nothing is absolute. We live in a
world of relative distinctions and relative antitheses. But the major-
ity of men do not realize that these are relative. They tend to think
that a thing which they - or social convention - regard as ‘beautiful’
is by essence ‘beautiful’, thus regarding all those things that do not
conform to a certain norm as ‘ugly’ by essence. By taking such an
attitude they simply ignore the fact that the distinction between the
two is merely a matter of viewpoint.
As I remarked earlier, such equalization of opposites surely is
‘relativism’ , but it is a relativism based on, or stemming from, a very
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322 Sufism and Taoism
remarkable intuition of the ontological structure of the world. The
original intuition is common both to Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. But
with the latter, it leads to the ‘chaotic’ view of things, the essential
‘undifferentiation’ of things, which in its dynamic aspect is con-
ceived as the Transmutation of things. In the case of Lao-tzu, the
same intuition leads, in its dynamic aspect, to an ontology of
evolvement and in-volvement, the static aspect of which is the
relativism we have just discussed.
As Transmutation ( hua ) is the key- word of Chuang-tzu in this
section of his philosophy, Return (fan 8 or fu 9 ) is the key-term which
Lao-tzu chooses as an appropriate expression for his idea.
On the cosmic significance of the Return as understood by Lao-
tzu we shall have occasion to talk in a later context. Here we shall
confine ourselves to considering this concept in so far as it has direct
relevance to the problem of relativism.
The Return is a dynamic concept. It refers, in other words, to the
dynamic aspect of the above-mentioned relativism of Lao-tzu, or
the dynamic ontological basis on which it stands. He explicates this
concept in a terse form in the following passage, which may in fact
be considered an epitome of the whole of his ontology . 10
Returning is how the Way moves, and being weak is how the Way
works. The ten thousand things under heaven are born from Being,
and Being is born from Non-Being.
It is to be remarked that there is in this passage a covert reference to
two different meanings or aspects of ‘returning’ which Lao-tzu
seems to recognize in the ontological structure of all things. The first
meaning (or aspect) is suggested by the first sentence and the second
meaning by the second sentence. The first sentence means that
everything (a) that exists contains in itself a possibility or natural
tendency to ‘return’, i.e., to be transformed into its opposite ( b ),
which, of course, again contains the same possibility of ‘returning’
to its opposite, namely the original state from which it has come (a).
Thus all things are constantly in the process of a circular movement,
from a to b , and then from bio a. This is, Lao-tzu says, the rule of the
ontological ‘movement’ ( tung), u or the dynamic aspect of Reality.
And he adds that ‘weakness’ is the way this movement is made by
Reality.
The next sentence considers the dynamic structure of Reality as a
vertical, metaphysical movement from the phenomenal Many to the
pre-phenomenal One. Starting from the state of multiplicity in
which all things are actualized and realized, it traces them back to
their ultimate origin. The ‘ten thousand things under heaven’, i.e.,
all things in the world, come into actual being from the Way at its
stage of ‘existence’. But the stage of ‘existence’, which is nothing
Beyond This and That
other than a stage in the process of self-manifestation of the Way,
comes into being from the stage of ‘non-existence’, which is the
abysmal depth of the absolutely unknown-unknowable Way itself.
It is to be observed that this ‘tracing-back’ of the myriad things to
‘existence’ and then to ‘non-existence’ is not only a conceptual
process; it is, for Lao-tzu, primarily a cosmic process. All things
ontologically ‘return’ to their ultimate source, undergoing on their
way ‘circular’ transformations among themselves such as have been
suggested by the first sentence. This cosmic return of all things to the
ultimate origin will be a subject of discussion in a later chapter. Here
we are concerned with the ‘horizontal’ Return of things as referred
to in the first sentence, i.e., the process of reciprocal ‘returning’
between a and b. Lao-tzu has a peculiar way of expressing this idea
as exemplified by the two following passages.
Misfortune is what good fortune rests upon and good fortune is what
misfortune lurks in. (The two thus turn into one another indefinitely,
so that) nobody knows the point where the process comes to an end.
There seems to be no absolute norm. For what is (considered) just
‘re-turns’ to unjust, and what is (considered) good ‘re-turns’ to evil.
Indeed man has long been in perplexity about this . 12
The nature of things is such that he who goes in front ends by falling
behind, and he who follows others ultimately finds himself in front of
others. He who blows upon a thing to make it warm ends by making it
cold, and he who blows upon a thing to make it cold finally makes it
warm. He who tries to become strong becomes weak, and he who
wants to remain weak turns strong. He who is safe falls into danger,
while he who is in danger ends by becoming safe . 13
Thus in the view of both Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu, everything in the
world is relative; nothing is absolutely reliable or stable in this
sense. As I have indicated before, this ‘relativism’, in the case of
Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, must be understood in a peculiar sense,
namely, in the sense that nothing has what is called ‘essence’ or
‘quiddity’.
All things, on the deeper level of Reality, are ‘essence-less’. The
world itself is ‘chaotic’ . This is not only true of the external world in
which we exist, but is equally true of the world within us, the internal
world of concepts and judgments. This is not hard to understand,
because whatever judgment we may make on whatever thing we
choose to talk about in this ‘chaotic’ world, our judgment is bound
to be relative, one-sided, ambiguous, and unreliable, for the object
of the judgment is itself ontologically relative.
The argument which Chuang-tzu puts forward on this point is
logically very interesting and important. The Warring States period
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Sufism and Taoism
witnessed a remarkable development of logico-semantical theories
in China In the days of Chuang-tzu, Confucians and Mohists
stood sharply opposed to each other, and these two schools were
together opposed to the Dialecticians 15 (or Sophists) otherwise
known as the school of Names 16 . Heated debates were being held
among them about the foundation of human culture, its various
phenomena, the basis of ethics, the logical structure of thought, etc.,
etc And it was a fashion to conduct discussions of this kind in a
dialectical form. ‘This is right’ -‘this is wrong’ or ‘this is good’ -‘this
is bad’, was the general formula by which these people discussed
their problems.
Such a situation is simply ridiculous and all these discussions are
futile from the point of view of a Chuang-tzu for whom Reality itself
is ‘chaotic’. The objects themselves about which these people
exchange heated words are essentially unstable and ambiguous.
The Dialecticians ‘are talking about the distinction between hard
and “white”, for example, as if these could be hung on different
pegs’
Not only that. Those who like to discuss in this way usually
commit a fatal mistake by confusing ‘having the best of an argu-
ment’ with ‘being objectively right’, and ‘being cornered in an
argument’ with ‘being objectively wrong’. In reality, however, vic-
tory and defeat in a logical dispute in no way determines the right
and ‘wrong’ of an objective fact.
Suppose you and I enter into discussion. And suppose you beat me,
and I cannot beat you. Does this mean that you are ‘right’ and that I
am ‘wrong’?
Suppose I beat you, instead, and you cannot beat me. Does this mean
that I am ‘right’ and you are ‘wrong’? Is it the case that when I am
‘right’ you are ‘wrong’, and when you are ‘right lam wrong ? Or are
we both ‘right’ or both ‘wrong’? It is not for me and you to decide.
(What about asking some other person to judge?) But other people
are in the same darkness. Whom shall we ask to give a fair judgment?
Suppose we let someone who agrees with you judge. How could such
a man give a fair judgment seeing that he shared from the beginning
the same opinion with you? Suppose we let someone who agrees with
me judge. How could he give a fair judgment, seeing that he shares
from the beginning the same opinion with me?
What if we let someone judge who differs from both you and me . But
he is from the beginning at variance with both of us. How could such a
man give a fair judgment? (He would simply give a third opinion.)
What if we let someone judge who agrees with both of us? But from
the beginning he shares the same opinion with both of us. How could
such a man give a fair judgment? (He would simply say that I am
‘right’, but you also are ‘right’.)
From these considerations we must conclude that neither you nor 1
j
Beyond This and That
325
nor the third person can know (where the truth lies). Shall we expect
a fourth person to appear? 18
How is this situation to be accounted for? Chuang-tzu answers that
all this confusion originates in the natural tendency of the Reason to
think everything in terms of the opposition of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
And this natural tendency of our Reason is based on, or a product
of, an essentialist view of Being. The natural Reason is liable to
think that a thing which is conventionally or subjectively ‘right’ is
‘right’ essentially, and that a thing which is ‘wrong’ is ‘wrong’
essentially. In truth, however, nothing is essentially ‘right’ or
‘wrong’. So-called ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are all relative matters.
In accordance with this non-essentialist position, Chuang-tzu
asserts that the only justifiable attitude for us to take is to know, first
of all, the relativity of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and then to transcend this
relativism itself into the stage of the ‘equalization’ of all things, a
stage at which all things are essentially undifferentiated from one
another, although they are, at a lower stage of reality, relatively
different and distinct from each other. Such an attitude which is
peculiar to the ‘true man’ is called by Chuang-tzu t’ien ni 19
(Heavenly Levelling), t’ien chun 20 (Heavenly Equalization), or man
yen 21 (No-Limits).
‘Right’ is not ‘right’, and ‘so’ is not ‘so’. If (what someone considers)
‘right’ were (absolutely) ‘right’, it would be (absolutely) different
from what is not ‘right’ and there could be no place for discussion.
And if ‘so’ were (absolutely) ‘so’, it would be (absolutely) different
from ‘not-so’ and there could be no place for discussion.
Thus (in the endless chain of ‘shifting theses’ 22 (i.e., ‘right’ -» ‘not-
right’ — ► ‘right’ -*■ ‘not-right’ . . . ), (theses and antitheses) depend
upon one another. And (since this dependence makes the whole
chain of mutually opposing theses and antitheses relative), we might
as well regard them as not mutually opposing each other.
(In the presence of such a situation, the only attitude we can reason-
ably take) is to harmonize all these (theses and antitheses) in the
Heavenly Levelling, and to bring (the endless oppositions among the
existents) back to the state of No-Limits. 23
‘To bring back the myriad oppositions of things to the state of No-
Limits’ means to reduce all things that are ‘essentially’ distinguish-
able from each other to the original state of ‘chaotic’ Unity where
there are no definite ‘limits’ or boundaries set among the things. On
its subjective side, it is the position of abandoning all discriminatory
judgments that one can make on the level of everyday Reason.
Forgetting about passing judgments, whether implicit or explicit, on
any thing, one should, Chuang-tzu emphasizes, put oneself in a
mental state prior to all judgments, prior to all activity of Reason, in
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326 Sufism and Taoism
which one would see things in their original - or ‘Heavenly’ as he
says - ‘essence-less’ state.
But to achieve this is by no means an easy task. It requires the
active functioning of a particular kind of metaphysical intuition,
which Chuang-tzu calls ming , 24 ‘illumination’. And this kind of
illuminative intuition is not for everybody to enjoy. For just as there
are men who are physically blind and deaf, so there are also men
who are spiritually blind and deaf. And unfortunately, in the world
of Spirit the number of blind and deaf is far greater than that of
those who are capable of seeing and hearing.
The blind cannot enjoy the sight of beautiful colors and patterns. The
deaf cannot enjoy the sound of bells and drums. But do you think that
blindness and deafness are confined to the bodily organs? No, they
are found also in the domain of knowing. 25
The structure of the ming, ‘intuition’ , will be studied more closely in
due course. Before we proceed to this problem, we shall quote one
more passage in which Chuang-tzu develops his idea regarding the
relative and conventional nature of ontological ‘distinctions . The
passage will help to prepare the way for our discussion of the
‘existentialist’ position Chuang-tzu takes against the ‘essentialist’
view of Being . 26
The nature of the things is such that nothing is unable to be ‘that’ (i.e.,
everything can be- ‘that’) and nothing is unable to be ‘this’ (i.e.,
everything can be ‘this’).
We usually distinguish between ‘this’ and ‘that’ and think and talk
about the things around us in terms of this basic opposition. What is
‘this’ is not ‘that’, and what is ‘that’ is not ‘this’. The relation is
basically that of ‘I’ and ‘others’, for the term ‘this’ refers to the
former and the term ‘that’ is used in reference to the latter.
From the viewpoint of ‘I’, ‘I’ am ‘this’, and everything other than
‘ f is ‘ that’ . But from the viewpoint of ‘ others’ , the ‘ others’ are ‘ this’ ,
and ‘I’ am ‘that’. In this sense, everything can be said to be both
‘this’ and ‘that’ . Otherwise expressed, the distinction between ‘this’
and ‘that’ is purely relative.
From the standpoint of ‘that’ (alone) ‘that’ cannot appear (as ‘that ).
It is only when 1 (i.e., ‘this’) know myself (as ‘this’) that it (i.e., ‘that’)
comes to be known (as ‘that’).
‘That’ establishes itself as ‘that’ only when ‘this’ establishes itself
and looks upon the former as its object, or as something other than
‘this’. Only when we realize the fundamental relativity of ‘this’ and
‘that’ can we hope to have a real understanding of the structure of
things.
Beyond This and That
Of course the most important point is that this relativity should be
understood through ‘illumination’. The understanding of this
ontological relativity by Reason - which is by no means a difficult
thing to achieve - is useless except as a preparatory stage for an
‘illuminative’ grasp of the matter. It will be made clear in the
following chapter that ‘relativity’ does not exhaust the whole of the
ontological structure of things. ‘Relativity’ is but one aspect of it.
For, in the view of Chuang-tzu, the ontological structure of things in
its reality is that ‘chaotic undifferentiation’ to which reference has
often been made in the foregoing. The ‘chaotic undifferentiation’ is
something which stands far beyond the grasp of Reason. If, in spite
of that, Reason persists in trying to understand it in its own way, the
‘undifferentiation’ comes into its grasp only in the form of ‘relativ-
ity’ . The ‘relativity’ of things represents, in other words, the original
ontological ‘undifferentiation’ as brought down to the level of logi-
cal thinking. In the present chapter we are still on that level.
Hence it is held: 27 ‘that’ comes out of ‘this’, and ‘this’ depends upon
‘that’. This doctrine is called the Fang Sheng theory, 28 the theory of
‘mutual dependence’.
However (this reciprocal relation between ‘this’ and ‘that’ must be
understood as a basic principle applicable to all things). Thus, since
there is ‘birth’ there is ‘death’, and since there is ‘death’ there is
‘birth’. Likewise, since there is ‘good’ there is ‘not-good’, and since
there is ‘not-good’ there is ‘good’.
Chuang-tzu means to say that the real Reality is the One which
comprehends all these opposites in itself ; that the division of this
original One into ‘life’ and ‘death’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, or ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ etc., is due to various points of view taken by men. In truth,
everything in the world is ‘good’ from the point of view of a man
who takes such a position. And there is nothing that cannot be
regarded as ‘not-good’ from the point of view of a man who chooses
to take such a position. The real Reality is something prior to this
and similar divisions. It is something which is ‘good’ and ‘not-good’ ,
and which is neither ‘good’ nor ‘not-good’.
Thus it comes about that the ‘sacred man’ 29 does not base himself
(upon any of these oppositions), but illuminates (everything) in the
light of Heaven. 30
Certainly, this (attitude of the ‘sacred man') is also an attitude of a
man who bases himself upon (what he considers) ‘right’ . But (since it
is not the kind of ‘right’ which is opposed to ‘wrong’, but is an
absolute, transcendental Right which comprises in itself all opposi-
tions and contradictions as they are), ‘this’ is here the same as ‘that’,
and ‘that’ is the same as ‘this’. (It is a position which comprehends
and transcends both ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, so that here) ‘that’ unifies
‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but ‘this’ also unifies ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
328
Sufism and Taoism
(Viewed from such a standpoint) is there still a distinction between
•that’ and ‘this’? Or is there neither ‘that’ nor ‘this’ any longer ? 31
This stage at which each ‘that’ and ‘this’ has lost its companion to
stand opposed to - this stage is to be considered the Hinge of the
Way. ... . . .. .
The hinge of a door can begin to function infinitely only when it is
fitted into the middle of the socket. (In the same way, the Hinge of the
Way can respond infinitely and freely to endlessly changing situations
of the phenomenal world only when it is placed properly in the
middle of the absolute One which transcends all phenomenal opposi-
tions.) (In such a state) the ‘right’ is one uniform endlessness; the
‘wrong’ too is one uniform endlessness.
This is why I assert that nothing can be better than ‘illumination .
The absolute One is of course the Way which pervades the whole
world of Being; rather it is the whole world of Being. As such it
transcends all distinctions and oppositions. Thus from the point of
view of the Way, there can be no distinction between ‘true’ and
‘false’. But can human language properly cope with such a situa-
tion? No, at least not as long as language is used in the way it is
actually used. ‘Language’, Chuang-tzu says, ‘is different from the
blowing of wind, for he who speaks is supposed to have a meaning to
convey .’ 32 However, language as it is actually used does not seem to
convey any real meaning, for those people, particularly the Dialec-
ticians, who are engaged in discussing ‘this being right and that
being wrong, or ‘this’ being good and ‘that being bad etc., are
‘simply talking about objects which have no definitely fixed
contents’ .
Are they really saying something (meaningful)? Are they rather
saying nothing ? 33 They think that their speech is different from the
chirpings of fledglings. But is there any difference? Or is there not
any difference at all? . , 4 ,
Where indeed, is the Way hidden (for those people) that there
should be ‘true’ and ‘false’? Where is Language (in the true sense)
hidden that there should be ‘right’ and ‘wrong’?
(The fact is that) the Way is concealed by petty virtues , 34 and Lan-
guage is concealed by vainglories . 35 This is why we have the right
‘wrong’ discussions of the Confucians and the Mohists, the one party
regarding as ‘right’ what the other party regards as ‘wrong’, and the
one regarding as ‘wrong’ what the other regards as right .
If we want to affirm (on a higher level) what both parties regard as
‘wrong’, and to deny what they regard as ‘right’, we have no better
means than ‘illumination ’. 36
Thus we see ourselves brought back again to the problem of illumi-
nation’ . The passages here quoted have made it already clear that
the ‘illumination’ represents an ‘absolute’ standpoint which tran-
scends all ‘relative’ standpoints. It is a state of mind which is above
329
Beyond This and That
and beyond the distinctions between ‘this’ and ‘that’, ‘I’ and ‘you’.
But how can one attain to such a spiritual height, if in fact it really
exists? What is the content and structure of this experience? These
are the main problems that will occupy us in the following two
chapters.
Notes
1. Chuang-tzu , II, p. 93.
2. i.e., there is no absolutely’ proper place; for each being, the place in which it lives
customarily is the right place, but the latter is ‘right’ only in a relative sense.
3. Two women famous for their supreme beauty.
4. That these concepts, {z jen and M i, represented two of the most typical moral
values for Confucius and his school was pointed out in Chap. I.
5. Tao Te Ching, XX.
6. By Learning ( hsiieh ^) is meant the study of the meticulous rules of conduct and
behavior - concerning, for instance, on what occasions and to whom one should use
the formal and polite expression ‘yes, sir' and when and to whom one should use the
informal expression ‘hum!’ - the kind of learning which was so strongly advocated by
the Confucian school under the name of Ceremonies (li Ǥ).
7. op. cit., II.
8. K.
9. ® (tt) fu(-kuei), lit. ‘returning’ - ‘going-back’.
10. op. cit., XL.
11 . ».
12. op. cit., LVIII.
13. ibid., XXIX. This part of Chap. XXIX is regarded by Kao Heng (op. cit.) as an
independent chapter. He remarks in addition that the passage is typical of ‘Lao-tzu’s
relativism’ (gTifflffl&til), P- 69. The last sentence of the passage quoted in its
original form is 1 , which may be translated as ‘a thing which one wants to
crush (is not crushed), and a thing which one wants to destroy (is not destroyed).’ But
in the Ho Shang edition we find ft instead of ® (MTS 3b§/ti!j), which, as Yii
Yiieh (^fB r^T^j) remarks, is probably the right reading.
14. The followers of Mo-tzu (3rT).
15. pien che
16. ming chia %M..
330
Sufism and Taoism
Beyond This and That
32. II, p. 63.
33. See above, Note (31).
331
17. Chuang-tzu , XII, p. 427, quote by Fung Yu Lang, op. cit., I, p. 192. The reference
is to the famous thesis put forward by the Dialectician Kung Sung Lung (&&8ST),
that a ‘hard white stone’ is in reality two things: a hard stone and a white stone,
because ‘hard’ and ‘white’ are two entirely different attributes. The quoted sentence
may also be translated: The distinction between ‘hard’ and' white’ is clearly visible as
if they were hung on the celestial sphere.
18. II, p. 107.
19. IS, Mi, means usually ‘boundary’, ‘limit’, ‘division’. But here I follow the
interpretation of Lu Shu Chih (fit 1~F1S '■ TOO, s S?cf§iii-l) and
Pan KuSffi(quoted by Lu Te Ming in ) who makes it synonymous with
20. Aft.
2 1 . gffr . The lexical meaning of this expression is difficult to ascertain . In translating
it as ‘without limits’ I am simply following an old commentator (m,H quoted by
IstSM in his r£T^S§j) who says rftffi, fcffitii j, (p. 109). The same word is used in Bk.
XXVII. And in Bk. XVII it appears in the form of RKfanyen which obviously is the
same asgftf(a commentator spells itSffi) because the passage reads: ‘From the point
of view of the Way, what should we consider “precious” and what should we consider
“despicable”?’
22. ItS Cf. Kuo Hsiang’s Commentary (p. 109): r ,
fRTfEWffllE, SStlrTfSfTftilj; and Chia Shih Fu (^i£3£):
23. Chuang-tzu, II, p. 108.
24. . The term literally means ‘bright’ or ‘luminous’ . We may compare it with the
Islamic notion of ma'rifah ‘gnosis’ as opposed to, and technically distinguished from,
‘ilm ‘(rational) knowledge’.
25. I, p. 30.
26. The passage is taken from II, p. 66. I shall divide it into a number of smaller
sections and quote them one by one, each followed by a brief examination.
27. by the Dialectician Hui Shih.
28. more exactly the ‘theory of fang sheng fang ssu (A£7j 5E2.IS:)> held by
Hui Shih, meaning literally: the theory of ‘life’ giving birth to ‘death’ and ‘death
giving birth to ‘life’. See Chuang-tzu, XXXIII. For this particular meaning of the
word fang 7i , see the Shuo Wen (ȣ): T H, fang means (originally) two
ships placed side by side with each other’ .
29. sheng jen 5?A, which is synonymous with ‘true man’ or ‘divine man’, i.e., the
Perfect Man. The real meaning of the important word sheng has been elucidated
earlier in its shamanic context; see Chapter II. The expression sheng jen is more often
used by Lao-tzu than by Chuang-tzu.
30. t’ien X, meaning the great Way of Nature, the absolute standpoint of Being
itself, which is, so to speak, a viewpoint transcending all viewpoints.
34. The ‘petty virtues’/]^ -or more literally, ‘small acquirements’ -refer to the five
cardinal virtues of the Confucians - Ch’eng Hsiian Ying (fig;£A fjfETifeiKLl )•
35. i.e., the natural tendency of the human mind toward showing-off, which mani-
fests itself typically in the form of discussions and debates.
36. op. cit., II, p. 63.
3 1 . This is a peculiar expression which Chuang-tzu uses very often when he wants to
deny something emphatically.
The Birth of a New Ego
333
V The Birth of a New Ego
We have seen in what precedes how futile and absurd, in the view of
Chuang-tzu, is the ordinary pattern of thinking typified by the
this-is-‘ right’ -and-that-is-‘ wrong’ kind of discussion. What is the
source of all these futile verbalizations? Chuang-tzu thinks that it is
to be found in the mistaken conviction of man about himself,
namely, that he himself has (or is) an ‘ego’, a self-subsistent entity
endowed with an absolute ontological independence. Man tends to
forget that the ‘ego’ which he believes to be so independent and
absolute is in reality something essentially relative and dependent.
Relative to what? Relative to ‘you’ and ‘them’ and all other things
that exist around himself. Dependent upon what? Dependent upon
Something absolutely superior to himself, Something which
Chuang-tzu calls the Creator, or more literally, the Maker-of-
things . 1 Chuang-tzu describes this situation through a parable of
‘Shadow and Penumbra ’. 2
Penumbra 1 once said to Shadow: ‘I notice you sometimes walking, but
next moment you are standing still. Sometimes I notice you sitting,
but next moment you are standing up. Why are you so fickle and
unstable?
Shadow replied: It seems to me that (in acting like this) I am simply
dependent upon something (i.e., the body). But that upon which I
depend seems to be acting as it does in dependency upon something
else (i.e., the Creator). So all my activities in their dependency seem
to be the same as the movements of the scales of a snake or the wings
of a cicada . 4
How should I know, then, why I act in this way, and why I do not act
in that way?
Chuang-tzu deprives the ‘ego’ at a stroke of its seeming self-
subsistence and self-sufficiency. But such a view goes naturally
against the everyday belief and conviction of man about himself.
For according to the everyday view of things the ‘ego’ is the very
basis and the core of man’s existence, without which he would lose
his personality, his personal unity, and be nothing. The ‘ego is the
point of co-ordination, the point of synthesis, at which all the
disparate elements of his personality, whether physical or mental,
become united. The ‘ego’ thus understood is called by Chuang-tzu
the ‘mind ’. 5
if;-'
I think it proper to introduce at this point a pair of key terms which
seem to have played a decisive role in the formation of the main
I lines of thought of Chuang-tzu concerning the nature of the mind:
V tso ch’ih 6 lit. ‘sitting-galloping’ and tso wang 1 lit. ‘sitting-forgetting’ .
The first of them, tso ch’ih, refers to the situation in which the
mind of an ordinary person finds itself, in constant movement, going
this way at this moment and that way at the next, in response to
myriad impressions coming from outside to attract its attention and
to rouse its curiosity, never ceasing, to stop and rest for a moment,
even when the body is quietly seated. The body may be sitting still
but the mind is running around. It is the human mind in such a state
that the word hsin (Mind) designates in this context. It is the exact
opposite of the mind in a state of calm peaceful concentration.
It is easy to understand conceptually this opposition of the two
states of the mind, one ‘galloping around’ and the other ‘sitting still
and void’. But it is extremely difficult for ordinary men to free
themselves actually from the dominance of the former and to realize
in themselves the latter. But in truth, Chuang-tzu teaches, man
himself is responsible for allowing the Mind to exercise such a
tyrannical sway over him, for the tyranny of the Mind is nothing else
than the tyranny of the ‘ego’ - that false ‘ego’ which, as we have seen
above, he creates for himself as the ontological center of his person-
ality. Chuang-tzu uses a characteristic expression for this basic
situation of man: shih hsin or ‘making the Mind one’s own
teacher’ . 8
The ‘ego’, thus understood, is man’s own creation. But man clings
to it, as if it were something objective, even absolute. He can never
imagine himself existing without it, and so he cannot abandon it for
a moment; thus he makes out of his Mind his venerated ‘teacher’.
This Mind, on a more intellectual level, appears as Reason, the
faculty of discursive thinking and reasoning. Sometimes Chuang-
tzu calls itch’ eng hsin or ‘finished mind ’. 9 The ‘finished mind’ means
the mind which has taken on a definitely fixed form, the mind in a
state of coagulation, so to speak. It is the Reason by whose guidance
- here again we come across the expression: ‘making the Mind the
teacher’ - man discriminates between things and passes judgments
on them, saying ‘this is right’ and ‘that is wrong’, etc., and goes on
falling ever deeper into the limitless swamp of absurdities.
Everybody follows his own ‘finished mind’ and venerates it as his own
teacher. In this respect we might say no one lacks a teacher. Those
who know the reality of the unceasingly changing phenomena and
accept (this cosmic law of Transmutation) as their standard (of
334
335
Sufism and Taoism
judgment) are not the only people who have their teachers. (In the
above-mentioned sense) even an idiot has his own teacher. It is
impossible for a man to insist on the distinction between ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ without having a ‘finished mind’. This is as impossible as a
man departing (from a northern country) to-day and arriving in the
country of Yiieh (in the southern limit of China) yesterday ! 10
Thus we see that all the pseudo-problems concerning the ‘right’ and
‘wrong’ or ‘good’ and ‘bad’, whose real nature was disclosed in the
preceding chapter, arise from man’s exercising his own ‘finished
mind’. The Mind, according to Chuang-tzu, is the source and origin
of all human follies.
This idea of the Mind is shared by Lao-tzu, although his approach is
a little different from Chuang-tzu’ s. That the idea itself is basically
the same will immediately be perceived if one reads carefully, for
example, Ch. XLIX of the Tao Te Ching. Interestingly enough,
Lao-tzu in this passage uses the term ch’ang hsin ," i.e., ‘constant or
unchangeable mind’. The term reminds us of Chaung-tzu s ch eng
hsin ‘finished mind’. By ch’ang hsin Lao-tzu designates a rigidly
fixed state of mind deprived of all natural flexibility, or as he likes to
say, the state of the mind that has lost the natural ‘softness’ of an
infant. As the passage quoted shows, this unnatural rigidity of the
mind is typically manifested in the distinguishing and discriminating
activity of the mind which perceives everywhere ‘good’ and ‘bad’,
‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and regards these categories as something objec-
tive and absolute.
For Lao-tzu, it is not simply a matter of one’s becoming partial,
prejudiced, and bigoted. In his view the exercise of this function of
the mind affects the very core of human existence. It is a question of
the existential crisis of man. Man stands in a woeful predicament
because he is - almost by nature, one would say - so made that he
directs the activity of his mind toward distinguishing and dis-
criminating things from one another.
The ‘sacred man’ has no rigidly fixed mind of his own. He makes the
minds of all people his mind . 12 (His principle is represented by the
dictum): ‘Those who are good I treat as good. But even those who are
not good I also treat as good. (Such an attitude I take) because the
original nature of man is goodness. Those who are faithful I treat as
faithful. But even those who are not faithful I also treat as faithful.
(Such an attitude I take) because the original nature of man is
faithfulness.’
Thus the ‘sacred man’, while he lives in this world, keeps his mind
wide open and ‘chaotifies ’ 13 his own mind toward all.
The ordinary men strain their eyes and ears (in order to distinguish
between things). The ‘sacred man’, on the contrary, keeps his eyes
and ears (free) like an infant . 14
The Birth of a New Ego
Lao-tzu sometimes uses the word chih 1S , ‘knowing’ , to designate the
discriminating activity of the mind here in question. But caution is
needed in understanding this word, because for Lao-tzu it is not the
act of ‘knowing’ itself that is blameful; its blamefulness is con-
ditioned by the particular way in which ‘knowing’ is exercised and
by the particular objects toward which it is directed.
The kind of ‘knowing’ which is wrong in the eyes of Lao-tzu is the
same distinguishing and discriminating activity of intelligence as the
one which we have seen is so bitterly denounced by Chuang-tzu.
Unlike Chuang-tzu, however, who develops this idea on a logical
level as a problem of dialectics, taking his examples from the discus-
sions on ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as he observes them among the Dialecti-
cians of his day, Lao-tzu is prone to consider the disastrous effects of
this type of ‘knowing’ on a more practical level. He draws attention
to the evaluational attitude which is the most immediate result of
the ‘distinguishing’ activity of the mind. Here the this-is-‘ right’ -
and- that-is-‘ wrong’ is not a logical problem. It is a matter of practi-
cal evaluation. And as such it is directly connected with the concrete
facts of life. ‘Knowing’ understood in this sense, is denounced
because it disturbs the minds of the people in an unnecessary and
wrong way. And the disturbance of the mind by the perception of
values, positive and negative, is regarded by Lao-tzu as wrong and
detrimental to human existence because it tempts it away from its
real nature, and ultimately from the Way itself. In the following
passage , 16 the word chih, ‘knowing’, is evidently used in this sense.
If (the ruler) does not hold the (so-called) wise men in high esteem,
the people will (naturally) be kept away from vain emulation. If (the
ruler) does not value goods that are hard to obtain, the people will be
kept away from committing theft. If (the ruler) does not display
things which are liable to excite desires, the minds of the people will
be kept undisturbed.
Therefore, the ‘sacred man’ in governing the people empties their
minds , 17 while making their bellies full; weakens their ambitions 18
while rendering their bones strong.
In this way, he keeps his people always in the state of no-knowledge 19
and no-desire, so that the so-called ‘knowers ’ 20 might find no occa-
sion to interfere.
The baneful influence of the discriminating activity of the Mind is so
powerful that even a modicum of it is liable at any moment to make
man deviate from the Way.
If I happen to have even a modicum of ‘knowing’, I would be in grave
danger of going astray even if I am actually walking on the main road
(i.e., the Way). The main road is level and safe, but men tend to
choose narrow by-ways . 21
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Sufism and Taoism
However, it is not ‘knowing’ itself that is so baneful; the quality of
‘knowing’ depends upon the particular objects on which it is exer-
cised. The ‘knowing’ , when its usual tendency of turning toward the
outside and seeking after external objects is curbed and brought
back toward the inside, transforms itself into the highest form of
intuition, ‘illumination’ ( ming ).
He who knows others (i.e., external objects) is a ‘clever’ man, but he
who knows himself is an ‘illumined’ man . 22
It is significant that here we come across exactly the same word,
ming ‘illumination’, which we encountered in the Chuang-tzu. It is
also very significant that in the passage just quoted the ‘illumina-
tion’ is directly connected with man’s knowledge of himself . 23 It
evidently refers to the immediate and intuitive knowledge of the
Way. It is described as man’s ‘self-knowledge’ or ‘self-knowing’,
because the immediate intuitive grasp of the Way is only obtainable
through man’s ‘turning into himself’.
Certainly, according to the view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the
Way is all pervading. It is everywhere in the world; the world itself is
a self- manifestation of the Way. In this sense, even ‘external’ things
are actually manifesting the Way, each in its own way and own form.
But man alone in the whole world of Being is self-conscious. That is
to say, man alone is in a position to grasp the Way from inside. He
can be conscious of himself as a manifestation of the Way. He can
feel and touch within himself the palpitating life of the Absolute as it
is actively working there. He can /n-tuit the Way. But he is unable to
m-tuit it in external objects, because he cannot go into the ‘inside’ of
the things and experience their manifestation of the Way as his own
subjective state. At least the first subjective personal encounter
with the Way must be made within himself.
For this purpose the centrifugal tendency of the mind must be
checked and turned to the opposite direction; it must be made
centripetal. This drastic turning of direction is described by Lao-tzu
as ‘closing’ up all the openings and doors’ of the body. By obstruct-
ing all the possible outlets for the centrifugal activity of the mind,
man goes down deep into his own mind until he reaches the very
existential core of himself.
This existential core of himself which he finds in the depth of his
mind may not be the Way perse, because after all it is an individual-
ized form of the Way. But, on the other hand, there is no real
distinction or discrepancy between the two. Lao-tzu expresses this
state of affairs symbolically by calling the Way per se the Mother,
and the Way in its individualized form the Child. He who knows the
Child, knows by that very knowledge the Mother herself.
In the passage which I am going to quote , 24 the importance of the
337
The Birth of a New Ego
‘closing up of all the openings and doors’ is emphasized as the sole
means by which man can come to know the Child, and through the
Child, the Mother. And the ultimate state thus attained is referred
to by the term ‘illumination’. It may be pointed out that the Child
( tzu ) 25 which in this understanding represents an individualized
duplicate of the Mother (mu ), 26 is nothing other than what Lao-tzu
calls elsewhere Virtue (te) - or perhaps more strictly, an individual
embodiment of the Way having as its existential core the creative
and vital force, which is the Way itself as distributed among the ‘ten
thousand things’ . As we shall see later, this creative and vital force
of each individual, existent as an individual determination of the
Way, is called by Lao-tzu ‘Virtue ’. 27
All things under Heaven have a Beginning which is to be regarded as
the Mother of all things . 28
If you know the ‘ mother’ , you thereby know her ‘ child’ . And if, after
having known the ‘child’ , you go back to the Mother and hold fast to
Her, you will never fall into a mistake till the very end of your life.
Block the openings, shut the doors (i.e., stop the normal functioning
of the sense organs and the usual centrifugal activity of the Mind),
and all through your life you (i.e., your spiritual energy) will not be
exhausted.
If, on the contrary, you keep the openings wide open, and go on in-
creasing their activities till the end of your life, you will not be saved.
To be able to perceive the minutest thing (i.e., the supra-sensible
thing, which is the Child of the Way within yourself) is properly to be
called Illumination. To hold on to what is soft and flexible (i.e.,
abandoning the rigidity of the Mind enslaved by the ‘essential’ dis-
tinctions among things and accepting ‘softly’ all things in their real
state of mutual transformations) is properly to be called strength.
If, using your external light, you go back to your internal Illumina-
tion, you will never bring misfortune upon yourself. Such an (ulti-
mate) state is what is to be called ‘stepping into the eternally real’ 29
The ‘closing up all openings and doors’ means, as I have indicated
above, stopping the functioning of all the organs of sense perception
in the first place, and then purifying the Mind of physical and
material desires. This is made clear by our comparing the passage
just quoted with XII which reads:
The five colors (i.e., the primary colors: white, black, blue, red and
yellow) make man’s eyes blind. The five musical notes make man’s
ears deaf. The five flavors (i.e., sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter)
make man’s taste dull. (Games like) racing and hunting make man’s
mind run mad. Goods that are hard to obtain impede man’s right
conduct.
Therefore the ‘sacred man' concentrates on the belly (i.e., endeavors
to develop his inner core of existence) and does not care for the eye
338
339
Sufism and Taoism
(i.e., does not follow the dictates of his senses). Verily he abandons
the latter and chooses the former.
The ‘sacred man’ cares for the belly and does not care for the eye,
because he is aware that the centrifugal activity of the Mind does
nothing other than lead him away from the Way. The Way is there in
his own ‘inside’ in the most concrete and palpable form. The further
one goes toward ‘outside’ , the less he is in touch with the Absolute.
What one should try to do is to ‘stay at home’ and not to go
outdoors.
Without going out of the door, one can know everything under
Heaven (i.e., the reality of all things). Even without peeping out of
the window, one can see the working of Heaven. The further one
goes out, the less one knows.
Therefore the ‘sacred man’ knows without going out. He has a clear
view of everything 30 without looking. He accomplishes everything
without acting . 31
The passages which have now been quoted from the Tao Te Ching
concern the epistemological aspect of the problem of the Way; the
problem, namely, of how and in what way man can ‘intuit’ the
Absolute. The answer given by Lao-tzu is, as we have seen, that the
only possible way for man to take in order to achieve this aim is to
obstruct totally the centrifugal tendency of his own mind and to
replace it by a centripetal activity leading ultimately to
‘illumination’.
Lao-tzu, however, is not so much concerned with the epis-
temological process itself by which man cultivates such an ‘inner
eye’ as with the result and effect of this kind of intuition. Indeed, he
usually starts his argument precisely from the point at which such a
process reached completion. Two things are his main concern. One
is the practical and visible effect produced by the illuminative
intuition on the basic attitude and behavior of man. How does the
‘sacred man’ act in the ordinary situations of social life? That is one
of his primary problems. This problem will be dealt with in a later
chapter devoted to a discussion of the concept of the Perfect Man.
The second of Lao-tzu’s main problems is the metaphysical struc-
ture of the world of Being, with the Way as the very source and basis
of all things. Here again the epistemological aspect of the problem is
either almost totally discarded or simply hinted at in an extremely
vague way. Lao-tzu is more interested to describe the ontological
process by which the Way as the absolutely Unknown-Unknowable
goes on making itself gradually visible and determined until finally it
reaches the stage of the infinite Multiplicity of the phenomenal
world. He also refers to the backward movement of all things, by
which they ‘return’ to the original state of absolute Unity.
The Birth of a New Ego
What is remarkable about this is that all this description of the
ontological process is made from the standpoint of a man who has
already experienced ‘illumination’, with the eye of a man who
knows perfectly the secret of Being. Chuang-tzu is different from
Lao-tzu in this respect. He is vitally interested in the process which
itself precedes the final stage of ‘illumination’ and by which the
latter is reached. Chuang-tzu even tries to describe, or at least to
indicate by means of symbolic descriptions, the experiential content
of ‘illumination’ which he knows is by its very nature ineffable. The
rest of the present chapter and the next will be concerned
specifically with this aspect of the problem, which we might call the
epistemological or subjective side of the Way-experience.
At the outset of this chapter, I drew attention to two cardinal
concepts relating to the subjective side of the Way-experience,
which stand diametrically opposed to each other: tso ch’ih ‘sitting-
galloping’ and tso wang ‘sitting-forgetting’. In the preceding pages
we have been examining mainly the structure of the former concept.
Now it is time we turned to the latter concept.
A man in the state of ‘sitting-forgetting’ looks so strange and so
different from ordinary men that he is easily recognizable as such by
an outsider-observer. In Bk II of his Book, Chuang-tzu gives a
typical description of such a man. The man here described is Nan
Kuo Tzu Ch’i, or Tzu Ch’i of the Southern Quarter. He is said to
have been a great Sage of Ch’u , 32 living in hermitic seclusion in the
‘southern quarter’. For Chuang-tzu he was surely a personification
of the very concept of the Perfect Man.
Once Tzu Ch’i of the Southern Quarter sat leaning against a
tabouret. Gazing upward at the sky, he was breathing deeply and
gently. Completely oblivious of his bodily existence, he seemed to
have lost all consciousness of ‘associates’ (i.e., oppositions of ‘I’ and
‘things’, or ‘ego’ and the ‘others’).
Yen Ch’eng Tzu Yu (one of his disciples), who was standing in his
presence in attendance, asked him, ‘What has happened to you,
Master? Is it at all possible that the body should be made like a
withered tree and the mind should be made like dead ashes? The
Master who is now leaning against the tabouret is no longer the
Master whom I used to see leaning against the tabouret in the past!’
Tzu Ch’i replied, ‘It is good indeed that you ask that question , 33 Yen!
(I look different from what I have been) because I have now lost
myself . 34 But are you able to understand (the real meaning of) this?
Following this introductory remark, the great Master goes on to
describe for the bewildered disciple the state of ‘having lost the ego’ ,
telling him what is actually experienced in that state. As a result, we
have the very famous vision of the Cosmic Wind, one of the most
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beautiful and forceful passages in the whole book of Chuang-tzu.
The passage will be given in translation in the following chapter.
Here we have only to note that the Master’s words: ‘I have now lost
myself’, refer to nothing other than the state of ‘sitting-forgetting’
or ‘sitting in oblivion’ as opposed to the ‘sitting-galloping’.
But what exactly is ‘sitting in oblivion’? How can one experience
it at all? This is something extremely difficult - or more properly we
should say, almost absolutely impossible - to explain in words.
Chuang-tzu, however, tries to do so.
In Bk VI he gives his own definition of ‘sitting in oblivion’. The
passage reads as follows.
What is the meaning of ‘sitting in oblivion’?
It means that all the members of the body become dissolved, and the
activities of the ears and eyes (i.e., the activities of all the sense
organs) become abolished, so that the ifian makes himself free from
both form and mind (i.e., both bodily and mental ‘self-identity’), and
becomes united and unified with the All-Pervader (i.e., the Way
which ‘pervades’ all). This is what I call ‘sitting in oblivion ’. 35
Externally, or physically, all the parts of the body become ‘dissol-
ved’ and forgotten. That is to say, the consciousness of the bodily
‘ego’ is made to disappear. Internally, all mental activities are
‘abolished’. That is to say, there no longer remains the conscious-
ness of the inner ‘ego’ as the center and all-unifying principle of
man’s mental activity. The result of this total ‘forgetting’ of the
inside and outside of the ‘I’ is called by Chuang-tzu hsu , 36 the Void,
or a spiritual-metaphysical state in which there is nothing what-
soever to obstruct the all-pervading activity of the Way.
The word ‘Void’ must not be understood in this context in a
purely negative sense. It does have a positive meaning. And in its
positive aspect, the Void must be connected with the concept of the
All-Pervader which appears in the passage just quoted.
I have translated the Chinese expressions t’ung, lit. ‘great perva-
sion’, as the All-Pervader following the interpretation given by
Ch’eng Hsiian Ying, who identifies ta t’ung with ta tao, the ‘great
Way’, and says: ‘to t’ung is the same as ta tao; since the Way
pervades all things and enlivens them, it is in this sense entitled to be
called All-Pervader’. 37 This interpretation seems to be right, but it
must be supplemented by an understanding of another aspect of the
matter, namely, that in the experience of the spiritual state here in
question, all things in their infinite multiplicity interpenetrate each
3ther freely, without any obstruction, and that the man who has lost
his ‘ego’ rediscovers in this experience his ‘ego’ in a totally different
form, reborn as what we might call the Universal, Cosmic, or
Transcendental Ego which transforms itself freely into all things
that are transforming themselves into each other.
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Such must be the real implication of the use of the particular
expression ta t’ung in place of the more usual word tao, the Way.
The point is brought to light very clearly by Kuo Hsiang who
explains this passage by saying: ‘in the “inside” the man has no
consciousness of his own bodily existence; in the “outside” he has
no awareness of the existence of Heaven and Earth. It is only in such
a state that he becomes completely identified with the (cosmic)
process of Change (i.e., “transformations”) itself without there
being any obstruction at all. Once in such a state, there can be
nothing he does not freely pervade.’ 38
Chuang-tzu himself expresses the same idea in a far more laconic
way:
Being unified, you have no liking. Being transmuted, you have no
fixity . 39
In the light of the explanation that has been given in the preceding,
the meaning of this laconic expression can easily be clarified as
follows. Being completely unified and identified with the Way itself,
the man can have no likes and dislikes. The man in such a spiritual
state transcends the ordinary distinctions between ‘right’ and
‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’. And since he is now identical with the
Way, and since the Way is constantly manifesting itself in myriad
forms of Being, the man himself is ‘being transmuted’ from one
thing to another, without there being any obstruction, as if he were
moving around in the great Void. He is not actually in the ‘void’,
because there are things throbbing with all-pervading Life, appear-
ing and disappearing in infinitely variegated forms. The point is,
however, that in this metaphysical Void these things no longer
present any obstacles to his absolute freedom. For he himself is, in
this state, completely identical with every one of these things,
participating from within in the cosmic flux of Transmutation; or
rather he is the cosmic Transmutation itself. This is what is meant by
the expression: ‘you have no fixity’ 40 ‘No fixity’ means boundless
flexibility and absolute freedom.
It will be clear from what has preceded that the hsu is both the
metaphysical Void and the spiritual Void. In truth, this very distinc-
tion between ‘metaphysical’ and ‘spiritual’ is in this context some-
thing artificial, because the state in question refers to a total and
complete identification of man with the All-Pervader. Theoreti-
cally, however, there is some point in making such a distinction. For
when the question is raised on a more practical level as to what
concretely one should do in order to become so completely
identified with the Way, we have to have recourse to the idea of
making the mind ‘void’. Only when one has succeeded in making
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the mind completely ‘void’, does one find oneself in the very midst
of the metaphysical Void. This part of Chuang-tzu’s teaching takes
on the form of practical instruction regarding the proper method by
which man can hope to attain to such a state. This method is called
by him ‘fasting’ or the purification of the Mind.
The purification of the Mind constitutes the pivotal point in the
development of man from the state of an ‘ordinary’ man to that of
the Perfect Man. An ‘ordinary’ man can never become a Perfect
Man unless he passes through this turning point. The significance of
this experience will be clear if one remembers what we have seen
above concerning Chuang-tzu’s characteristic expression: ‘making
the Mind one’s own teacher ’. 41 Man naturally tends to cling to his
Mind - and Reason - and thinks and acts according to its dictates.
Whatever the Mind tells him to believe is absolutely true, and
whatever it commands him to do is absolutely good. In other words,
man venerates his own ‘ego’ as his ‘teacher’.
In the light of this observation, the ‘purification of the Mind’
means precisely that man should abolish this habit of the ‘venera-
tion’ of the Mind, that he should cast away his own ‘ego’. And that
will mark the first step toward his being transformed into a Perfect
Man.
In an imaginary conversation which Chuang-tzu fabricates with a
view to endorsing his thesis, Confucius - who is here ironically made
into a Taoist sage - teaches his disciple Yen Hui how to proceed in
order to succeed in purifying the Mind.
In this dialogue, Yen Hui is represented as a zealous disciple who
has desperately struggled to know the right way to become a Perfect
Man, but in vain. As the final resort, he turns to Confucius and
humbly asks for instruction. The following is the passage . 42
Yen Hui: I cannot proceed any further. May I venture to ask
you to tell me the proper way?
Confucius: Fast, first. Then I will teach you. Do you think it easy
(to see the Truth) while maintaining your Mind? If
anybody does think it easy, the vast and bright
Heaven will not approve of him.
The word translated here as ‘fast’, chai, 43 means the act of ‘fasting’
which man practises in the period immediately preceding sacrificial
ceremonies in order to put himself into the state of religious ‘purity’ .
In the present context, Confucius uses the word not in this original
religious sense, but figuratively in the sense of the ‘fasting of the
Mind’, that is, the ‘purification of the Mind’. Yen Hui, however,
does not understand this, and takes the word in its usual sense. He
imagines that Confucius means by the word the observance of the
The Birth of a New Ego
343
ritual fasting which concerns eating and drinking. Hence the follow-
ing ridiculous reply he gives to the Master:
Yen Hui: My family is poor, so much so that I have neither
drunk liquor nor eaten garlic and onions for the past
several months. Cannot this be considered fasting?
Confucius: What you are talking about is the fasting as a ritual
proceeding. That is not the fasting of the Mind.
Yen Hui: May I ask what you mean by the fasting of the Mind?
Confucius: Bring all the activity of the Mind to a point of union.
Do not listen with your ears, but listen with the Mind
(thus concentrated).
(Then proceed further and) stop listening with the
Mind; listen with the Spirit (c/z’f). 44
The ear (or more generally, sense perception) is
confined to listening 45 (i.e., each sense grasps only its
proper objects in a physical way).
The Mind is confined to (forming concepts) corres-
ponding to their external objects. 46 The Spirit, how-
ever, is itself ‘void’ (having no definite proper objects
of its own), and goes on transforming limitlessly in
accordance with the (Transmutation of) things (as
they come and go). The Way in its entirety comes
only into the ‘void’ (i.e., the ‘ego-less’ Mind). Making
the Mind ‘void’ (in this way) is what 1 mean by the
‘fasting of the Mind’.
As I pointed out before, hsii, ‘void’, is a key term of the philosophy
of Chuang-tzu. It represents in this context the subjective attitude
of man corresponding to the very structure of the Way which is itself
a Void. This latter point is very much emphasized by Lao-tzu, as we
shall see in detail in a later chapter which will be devoted to a
discussion of the metaphysics of the Way. Here we are still mainly
concerned with the subjective aspect of the matter. The main idea is
that when a man ‘sits in oblivion’ with his mind completely ‘void’,
into this ego-less ‘void’ all things come exactly as they are, as they
come and go in the cosmic process of Transmutation. In such a state,
his mind is comparable to a clear mirror which reflects everything
without the slightest distortion or disfigurement.
All this is of course a matter which must be directly experienced;
a mere conceptual understanding is of little help. Yen Hui whose
mind has already been fully ripened - in the anecdote we are now
reading - for this kind of personal transformation, becomes sud-
denly ‘illumined’ by the teaching of his Master, and makes the
following observation about himself.
Yen Hui: Before Hui (i.e., I) received this instruction, Hui was
really nothing but Hui (i.e., ‘I’ have been my small
‘ego’, nothing else). However, now that I have
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received this instruction, I have realized that from the
very beginning there never was (an ‘ego’ called) Hui.
Is this state worthy to be considered the ‘void’ (which
you have just spoken of)?
Confucius: So it is, indeed!
Then Confucius contrasts this state with the state of ‘sitting-
galloping’, and goes on to describe the former by comparing it to a
firmly closed empty room which mysteriously and calmly illumines
itself with a white light of its own. 47
Look into that closed room and see how its empty ‘interior’ produces
bright whiteness. All blessings of the world come in to reside in that
stillness . 48
If, on the contrary, (your Mind) does not stand still, you are in the
state of what I would call ‘sitting-galloping’.
But if a man turns his ears and eyes toward the ‘interior’, and puts his
Mind and Reason in the ‘exterior’ (i.e., nullifies the normal function-
ing of the Mind and Reason), even gods and spirits come to reside
freely (in his ego-less ‘interior’) not to speak of men. This is the
Transmutation of ten thousand things . 49
The last sentence represents one of the cardinal points of Chuang-
tzu’s metaphysics. The peculiar meaning of the key term hua has
been explained above. What is important here to note is that in the
passage just quoted, the hua , Transmutation, is evidently described
as a subjective state of man, as something that occurs in his
‘interior’. Rather, his ‘interior’ is the Transmutation of the ten
thousand things, that is, of all the phenomenal things and events of
the world. The man in the state of perfect ‘sitting in oblivion’ does
experience subjectively, as his personal experience, the Transmuta-
tion of all things.
The whole matter may be reformulated more theoretically in terms
of the process of the spiritual development of man toward
illumination.
In ordinary human experience, the constant flux and reflux of )
infinitely changing phenomena are in the position of the Lord. They
positively act upon man, influence him, push him around, and bind f
him up. In such a situation man is a servant or slave. His mind
becomes torn asunder and runs in all directions in pursuit of 4
chameleonic forms of things and events.
Once man frees himself from this bondage and transcends the
common pattern of experience, the scene before his eyes takes on a I
completely different appearance. The kaleidoscopic view is still §
there. The things and events still continue their changes and trans- $
formations as before. The only essential difference between the two
The Birth of a New Ego
345
stages is that in the second all these things and events that go on
appearing and disappearing are calmly reflected in the polished
mirror of the man’s ‘interior’ . The man himself is no longer involved
in the hustle and bustle of incessantly changing phenomena.
The man at this stage is a calm observer of things, and his mind is
like a polished mirror. He accepts everything as it comes into his
‘interior’, and sees it off, unperturbed, as it goes out of sight. There
is for him nothing to be rejected, but there is nothing wilfully to be
pursued either. He is, in short, beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and
‘wrong’.
A step further, and he reaches the stage of ‘undifferentiation’,
where, as we saw earlier, all things become ‘chaotified’ . On this level
there still are things. But these things show no limits and borderlines
separating them ‘essentially’ from one another. This is the stage of
the cosmic Transmutation. It goes without saying that in its subjec-
tive aspect, the Transmutation represents a spiritual stage of the
man himself.
As a result of the ‘fasting of the Mind’ , the man is now completely
‘ego-less’ . And since he is ‘ego-less’ he is one with the ‘ten thousand
things’; he becomes the ‘ten thousand things’. And he himself goes
on changing with the infinite change of all things. He is no longer a
calm ‘observer’ of the changing things. He is the subject of the
Transmutation. A complete and perfect harmony is here realized
beween the ‘interior’ and the ‘exterior’; there is no distinction
between them.
Borrowing the terminology of Ibn ‘Arab! we might say that the
man on this high level of spiritual development is subjectively
placed in the position of the Unity of Existence ( wahdah al-wujud),
and personally experiences the whole world of Being in that posi-
tion. The situation is described by Chuang-tzu in the following
way: 51
Dying and being alive, being subsistent and perishing, getting into a
predicament and being in the ascendant, being poor and being rich,
being clever and being incompetent, being disgraced and being hon-
ored, being hungry and thirsty, suffering from cold and heat - all
these are but constant changes of (phenomenal) things, and results of
the incessant working of Fate.
All these things go on replacing one another before our own eyes, but
no one by his Intellect can trace them back to their real origin.
However, these changes are not powerful enough to disturb (the man
who ‘sits in oblivion’ because he is completely one with the Transmu-
tation itself), nor can they intrude into the ‘innermost treasury ’ 52 (of
such a man).
On the contrary, he maintains (his ‘innermost treasury’) in a peaceful
harmony with (all these changes) so that he becomes one with them
without obstruction, and never loses his spiritual delight.
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Sufism and Taoism
Day and night, without ceasing, he enjoys being in spring-tide with all
things. Mingling with (the infinitely changing things on a supra-
sensible level of existence) he goes on producing within his ‘interior’
the ‘time ’ 53 (of the world).
Such a state I would call the perfection (i.e., perfect actualization) of
the human potentiality . 54
When a man attains to this height of spiritual development, he fully
deserves the title of Perfect Man. This, however, is not the last and
ultimate stage of ‘sitting in oblivion’. There is a still higher stage
beyond. That is the stage of ‘no more Death, no more Life’.
Chuang-tzu sometimes calls it the ‘extreme limit ( chihf 55 of know-
ledge ( chih ). 56 At this last stage, the man is completely unified not
with the ever changing ‘ten thousand things’ - as was the case when
he was in the previous stage - but with the ‘Mystery of Mysteries ’, 57
the ultimate metaphysical state of the Absolute, at which the latter
has not yet come down to the sphere of universal Transmutation.
The man is here so completely one with the Way that he has not
even the consciousness of being one with the Way. The Way at this
stage is not present as the Way in the consciousness of the man. And
this is the case because there is no ‘consciousness’ at all anywhere,
not even a trace of it. The ‘oblivion’ is complete. And the actualiza-
tion of such a perfect ‘oblivion’ is to be accounted for in reference to
the metaphysical fact that the ultimate Absolute, the Way, is in its
absolute absoluteness Something which one cannot call even ‘some-
thing’ . Hence the usual custom in oriental philosophies of referring
to the Absolute as Nothing.
The stages of the above-described spiritual development of ‘sitting
in oblivion’ are variously discussed by Chuang-tzu in several places
of his book. Sometimes he takes an ascending course, and some-
times a descending course. The former corresponds to the real
process by which the mind of a man gradually proceeds toward
spiritual perfection. A typical example of this type of description is
found in a passage 58 which claims to reproduce a conversation
between a certain Nan Po Tzu K’uei and a Perfect Man (or
Woman?) called Nii Yii. In this passage, Chuang-tzu gives a
description of the stages which are traversed by a man who is born
with a special potentiality to be a Perfect Man until he really
reaches the last stage. The description is very interesting when it is
considered as a Taoist counterpart to the Islamic fana' or
self-annihilation’.
The conversation starts from Nan Po Tzu K’uei’ s astonishment at
the complexion of old Nii Yii, which, as he observes, is like that of a
child.
The Birth of a New Ego
Nan Po Tzu You are old in years, Master, and yet your com-
K’ u ei: plexion is like that of a child. Why?
Nii Yii: (This is because) I have come to know the Way.
Nan Po: Is it possible for me to learn the Way?
Nii Yii: No. How could it be possible? You are not the right
kind of man to do so.
You know Pu Liang I. He had (from the beginning)
the natural potentiality to be a ‘sacred man’, but he
had not yet acquired the Way, whereas I had the Way
but lacked the ‘potentiality ’. 59 I wanted to give him
guidance to see if, by any chance, he could become a
‘sacred man’ . Even if I should fail to achieve my goal,
it was, (I thought), easy for a man in possession of the
Way to communicate it to a man in possession of the
potentiality of a ‘sacred man’.
Thus I persistently taught him. After three days, he
learnt how to put the world outside his Mind.
The ‘putting the world outside the Mind’ i.e., forgetting the exist-
ence of the world, marks the first stage. The ‘world’ being some-
thing objective - and therefore relatively far from the Mind - is the
easiest thing for man to erase from his consciousness.
After he had put the world outside himself, I con-
tinued persistently to instruct him. And in seven days
he learnt how to put the things outside his Mind.
The ‘putting the things outside the Mind’ represents the second
stage. Forgetting the existence of the world was not so difficult, but
‘things’ which are more intimately related with man resist being
erased from the consciousness. As Kuo Hsiang remarks: ‘The things
are needed in daily life. So they are extremely close to the ego. This
is why they are so difficult to put outside the Mind ’. 60 And Ch’eng
Hsiian Ying : 61 ‘The states of the whole world are foreign and far
removed from us; so it is easy for us to forget them. The things and
utensils that actually serve us in our everyday life are familiar to us;
so it is difficult for us to forget them’ .
By forgetting the familiar things that surround us and are con-
nected with us in various ways in daily life, the external world
completely disappears from our consciousness.
After he had put things outside his Mind, I still con-
tinued to instruct him. And in nine days he learnt how
to put Life outside the Mind.
This is the third stage. It consists in the man’s forgetting Life, that is
to say, erasing from his consciousness the fact of his own Life, i.e.,
his own personal existence. This is the stage of dropping the ‘ego’.
As a result, the world, both in its external and internal aspects.
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Sufism and Taoism
disappears from the consciousness. This stage is immediately fol-
lowed by the next which is the sudden coming of the dawn of
‘illumination’.
After he had put Life outside his Mind, (his inner eye
was opened just as) the first light of dawn breaks
through (the darkness of night).
Once this ‘illumination’ is achieved, there are no more stages to
come. Or should we say, there are stages to come, but they do not
come successively; all of them become actualized simultaneously. If
they are to be considered ‘stages’, they must be described as hori-
zontal stages which occur at once and all together the moment the
inner eye is opened by the penetrating ray of spiritual daybreak.
The first of such stages is ‘perceiving the absolute Oneness’.
The moment the day dawned, he saw the Oneness.
This is the moment when all things and T become absolutely one.
There is no more opposition of subject and object - the subject that
‘sees’ and the object ‘seen’ being completely unified - nor is there
any distinction between ‘this’ and ‘that’, ‘existence’ and ‘non-
existence’. ‘I’ and the world are brought back to their absolute
original unity.
And after having seen the Oneness, there was (in his
consciousness) neither past nor present.
At the stage of the absolute Oneness, there is no more conscious-
ness of the distinction between ‘past’ and ‘present’. There is no
more consciousness of ‘time’. We may describe this situation in a
different way by saying that the man is now in the Eternal Now. And
since there is no more consciousness of ever-flowing ‘time’ , the man
is in the state of ‘no Death and no Life’.
After having nullified past and present, he was able to
enter the state of ‘no Death and no Life’.
The state of ‘no Death and no Life’ can be nothing other than the
state of the Absolute itself. The man at this stage is situated in the
very midst of the Way, being identified and unified with it. He is
beyond Life and Death, because the Way with which he is one is
beyond Life and Death.
The state of the Way or the Absolute, however, is not simply
being beyond Life and Death. As is clearly shown by the very
epistemological process by which man finally attains to it, this state
is not sheer ‘nothing-ness’ in the purely negative sense. It is rather
the ultimate metaphysical state, the absolute Unity, to which the
dispersion of the ontological Multiplicity is brought back. It is a
The Birth of a New Ego
Unity formed by the unification of ‘ten thousand things’, a Unity
in which all the things are existent, reduced to the state of
Nothing-ness.
There is ‘no Death and no Life’ here. That is to say, it is a state of
complete Tranquillity and Stillness. There is no more even a trace of
the noise and fuss of the world of sensible existence. And yet the
Stillness is not the stillness of Death. There is no more movement
observable. But it is not a state of non-movement in a purely
negative sense. It is rather a dynamic non-movement, full of inter-
nal ontological tensions, and concealing within itself infinite pos-
sibilities of movement and action.
Thus it is, in both of the aspects just mentioned, a coincidentia
oppositorum. The Absolute, in this view, is Something which goes
on realizing and actualizing ‘ten thousand things’ in their myriad
forms and transforming them in a limitless process of Transmuta-
tion, and yet at the same time keeping all these things in their
supra-temporal and supra-spatial Unity. It is a Unity which is itself a
Multiplicity. It is Stillness which is itself Ebullition.
In the end of the passage Chuang-tzu refers to this aspect of the
Way in the following words.
That which kills Life does not die . 62 That which brings to Life every-
thing that lives does not live . 63 By its very nature it sends off every-
thing, and welcomes everything. There is nothing that it does not
destroy. There is nothing that it does not perfect. It is, in this aspect,
called Commotion-Tranquillity . 64 The name Commotion-
Tranquillity refers to the fact that it (i.e., the Way) sets (all things) in
turmoil and agitation and then leads them to Tranquillity.
We must keep in mind that at this highest stage of spirituality, the
man is completely unified and identified with the Way. Since, how-
ever, the Way is nothing other than Commotion-Tranquillity, the
man who is in complete union with the Way, goes through this
cosmic process of the absolute Unity being diversified in turmoil
and agitation into ‘ten thousand things’, and the latter going back
again to the original state of Tranquillity . The ontology of Taoism is
an ontology which is based upon such an experience. It would be
natural for us to imagine that the view of Being in the spiritual eyes
of a Taoist sage will be of an essentially different nature and struc-
ture from that of an Aristotle, for example, who founds his
philosophical edifice upon the ordinary ontological experience of an
average man looking at the world around him at the level of sound
and solid common sense. The most natural standpoint of
philosophers of the latter kind is essentialism. In ancient China, the
essentialist standpoint is represented by Confucius and his school.
Both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu take a determined position against it.
351
350 Sufism and Taoism The Birth of a New Ego
The next chapter will be devoted to an elucidation of this particular 15
point.
K 16. Tao Te Ching, III.
Notes
1. tsao wuche see VII, p. 280). The name designates the Way in its ‘personal’
aspect. This aspect of the Way is referred to also by the name Great Lord, ta shih
The word Heaven, t’ien ^ is also sometimes used with the same meaning. More
details will be given later when we discuss the concept of ‘determinism’ (Chap. IX).
2. II, pp. 110-111.
3. is explained by Kuo Hsiang as r , ‘faint darkness surrounding the
shadow’ .
4. The scales of a snake and the wings of a cicada have no independence in their
movements. On the contrary all their movements are dictated by the snake and the
cicada respectively.
5. hsin <{j.
6. The word appears in an important passage (IV, p. 150) which will be given
in translation presently.
7.
8. mb , IV, p. 145.
9. J&'L , II, p. 56. My interpretation of this word is based on that given by Kuo
Hsiang and Ch’eng Hsiian Ying. The latter says: ,
mzunmmmm, (P- 61). Some commen-
tators (like Lin Hsi I , for instance, in his famous sfET p $ ) interpret the word in
the opposite sense, as the inborn, naturally given mind, which is the mind in its
celestial purity. But this latter interpretation does not, I think, do justice to the basic
thought of Chuang-tzu on this problem.
10. ibid.
11. The word ch'ang is an ambiguous term in the Tao Te Ching, because
Lao-tzu uses it in two diametrically opposed meanings. Sometimes - as is the case
with the usage of the word in this passage - it means ‘unflexible’, ‘rigidly fixed’, which
is the worst possible state of things in the philosophy of Lao-tzu. Sometimes -
particularly in many of the passages of primary importance, as we shall see later - it is
used in the sense of ‘never-changing’, ‘eternal’, and ‘absolute’.
12. Having no ‘fixed mind’ of his own, he accepts everything, whether ‘good’ or
‘bad’; rather, he does not distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’.
13. hun fflt, a characteristic word, whose meaning has been explained in an earlier
passage in connection with Chuang-tzu’ s concept of the ‘chaotification’ of things.
17. hsin ijj, the discriminating activity of the intellect, the natural tendency of the
Mind toward gaining ‘knowledge’.
18. chih ^ , that aspect of the Mind, which manifests itself in insatiably desiring
more and more.
19. wu chih fata.
20. chih che, ill£ lit. ‘knowing men’, those men who claim to know the reality of
things; who, therefore, are convinced that they are capable of giving the best advice
on every important matter of human life.
21. LIII.
22. XXXIII.
23. We are reminded of the Islamic adage: Man ‘arafa najsa-hu ‘arafa rabba-hu'He
who knows himself knows his Lord’, which, as we saw in the first Part of this study,
plays an important role in the philosophy of Ibn ‘Arabi.
24. LII.
25. T.
26. m.
27. That the word te gSj, here translated as Virtue, is one of the most important of all
the key terms of Lao-tzu, will be seen from the very fact that the Book itself is known
by the title Tao Te Ching, i.e., the ‘Canonical Book of the Way and the Virtue’.
28. ‘All things under Heaven’ represent the Multiplicity of the phenomenal world,
while the Beginning is the Unity as their ultimate ontological origin and source.
29. hsich’angQI?;. For the meaning of the word ch ’ang , see above, note (1 1). The
word hsi means‘step into’, ‘enter’, here in the mystical sense of the ‘inner’ grasp of a
thing, m-tuition. The word is used in XXVII in a very characteristic combination: hsi
ming, ‘stepping into illumination’.
30. £. The word is here the same as both having the same pronunciation. As
quoted by Han Fei Tsii ( ) we see actually used in this passage ( )•
31. XLVII.
32. Jg . On the relevance of his being a man of Ch’u to the whole topic of the present
study, see above, Chap. I.
33. i.e., I am glad that you are keen enough to notice the difference.
34. i.e., I have lost my ‘ego’ and have stepped into the state in which there is no more
distinction between ‘ego’ and ‘things’ . Lin Hsi I (fa#j®) says in his commentary: As
14. XLIX.
352
353
Sufism and Taoism
long as there is'ego’ there are'things’. But when I lose my ‘ego’, there is no I’. And
since there is no ‘I’, there are no ‘objects’. (BrTnJS; ad loc.)
35. VI, p. 284.
36. dt; cf. Ch’eng Hsuan Ying: [ftfe-mtu J, p. 285.
37. r*a»*aiib. p- 285 -
38. p. 285.
39. ibid.
40. The word used here for ‘fixity’ is ch’ang 'ft; , whose double meaning has been
explained above; see notes 11 and 29.
41. See above, Chap. IV.
42. IV, pp. 146-148.
43. IS.
44. ^C. The word has already been explained before, Ch. II, Note 19. It is a
proto-material and formless cosmic ‘reality’ which pervades the whole world of
Being and which constitutes the ontological core of every single thing, whether
animate or in-animate. Man is, of course, no exception to this. Thus man, on the level
of the ch’i is homogeneous with all things as well as with the universe itself. Man
cannot ‘listen with the ch’i,’ unless he has been completely unified with the universe.
The ‘ego’ which listens, i.e., perceives, with the ch’i is no longer an ordinary epis-
temological ‘subject’; it is the Cosmic Ego.
45. The text reads: rigikS^J, ‘listening stops with the ears’, which gives but a poor
meaning. Following Yu Yiieh (fifcHi) I read r^ihRi8£ (cf.£5fe* adloc.).
46. i.e., the Mind is confined to elaborating the images received from the sense
organs and fabricating out of them concepts that correspond to external objects
which are fixed once for all in terms of ‘essences’ . It cannot identify itself, with infinite
flexibility, with each of the infinitely varying phenomenal forms of ‘reality’.
47. IV, p. 150.
48. The repetition of the word ikinr^jj&ihikjis a little difficult to account for. Y u
Yiieh simply disposes of the second as a scribal error on the ground that the
sentence as quoted in other books does not have it. ( riLikiS;#!,
However, the second
lb can very well be understood also in the sense of ‘stillness’ or ‘no-motion’ as
I have done following Ch’eng Hsuan Ying who says:
P-151.
49. ‘The hua of ten thousand things’.
50. In doing this, I shall strictly follow Chuang-tzu’ s own description which he gives
in Bk. II, p. 74. The passage itself will be given in translation at the outset of the
following chapter.
The Birth of a New Ego
51. V, p. 212.
52. ling /M,gjfrthe most secret part of the heart which is the central locus of all
spiritual activity.
53. i.e. he goes on experiencing within himself, without being perturbed, the alter-
nation of the four seasons, which is the ‘time’ of all phenomenal things. That is to say
he is completely one with all things which are in the incessant process of
transformation.
54. ts’ai ch’iian one of the key terms of Chuang-tzu. It means the natural human
ability brought to the highest degree of perfection.
55 . m.
56. to II, p. 74, r&toi3f#Sj.
57. Hsuan chih yu hsuan r£;£X£ j, the expression is from the Tao Te Ching. It
denotes the Way, but with a peculiar connotation which will be explained in the
chapter concerning the concept of Way.
58. VI, pp. 252-253.
59. i.e., I had not the ‘ability’ or ‘potentiality’ to become a Perfect Man; I had
‘actually’ the Way from the very beginning.
60. rfci-, WBJiJgJ, p. 253.
61. mzvoms., p- 254 .
62. The Way brings everything existent to naught. But if it brings everything to
naught and death, it must itself be something beyond Death.
63. Since the Way brings into existence everything that exists, it must itself be
something that transcends Life, i.e., Becoming.
64. Ying ning }f It is one of the key terms of Chuang-tzu. According to Ch’eng
Hsiian Ying, ying means ‘commotion’, ‘agitation’, and ning ‘tranquillity’, ‘stillness’
(rasw&m, p. 255).
VI Against Essentialism
Toward the end of the preceding chapter I pointed out the fact that
in the Chuang-tzu, the stages of the ‘sitting in oblivion’ are traced in
two opposite directions: ascending and descending. The first con-
sists in starting from the lowest stage and going up stage by stage
toward the ultimate and highest one. A typical example of this kind
of description has just been given.
The second, the descending course, is the reverse of the first. It
starts from the highest stage and comes down to the lowest. As a
proper introduction to the main topic of the present chapter, we
shall begin by giving in translation a passage 1 from the Chuang-tzu
in which the stages are described in this way. In this passage,
Chuang-tzu, instead of speaking of ‘sitting in oblivion’, divides
human knowledge of Reality into four classes which constitute
among themselves a chain of successive degrees. These degrees are
the epistemological stages corresponding to the ontological stages
which Lao-tzu in his Tao Te Ching distinguishes in the process by
which all things in the world of Being issue forth continuously from
the absolute Unity of the Way.
What is the ultimate limit of Knowledge? It is the stage represented
by the view that nothing has ever existed from the very beginning.
This is the furthest limit (of Knowledge), to which nothing more can
be added.
As we saw in the previous chapter, this is the ultimate stage to which
man attains at the end of ‘sitting in oblivion’. Here the man is so
completely unified with the Way and so perfectly identified with the
absolute Reality, that the Way or the Reality is not even felt to be
such. This is the stage of Void and Nothing-ness in the sense that has
been explained above.
About this stage Kuo Hsiang says: 2 ‘The man at this stage has
completely forgotten Heaven and Earth, has put all existent things
out of his mind. In the outside, he does not perceive the existence of
the whole universe; in the inside, he has lost all consciousness of his
own existence. Being limitlessly “void” , he is obstructed by nothing.
Against Essentialism 355
He goes on changing as the things themselves go on changing, and
there is nothing to which he does not correspond.’
Next is the stage at which there is the consciousness of ‘things’ being
existent. But (in this consciousness) ‘boundaries’ between them have
never existed from the very beginning.
At this second stage, the man becomes conscious of the Way which
contains all things in a state of pure potentiality. The Way will
diversify itself at the following stage into ‘ten thousand things’. But
here there are no ‘boundaries’ yet between them. The ‘things’ are
still an undivided Whole composed of a limitless number of poten-
tially heterogeneous elements. They are still an even plane, a
Chaos, where things have not yet received ‘essential’ distinctions.
Next (i.e., the third) is the stage at which ‘boundaries’ are recognized
(among the things). However, there is as yet absolutely no distinction
made between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
Here the Chaos begins to disclose the definite forms of the things
which it contains within itself. All things show their own demarca-
tions, and each thing clearly marks its own ‘boundary’ by which it
distinguishes itself from others. This is the stage of pure ‘essences’.
The original Unity divides itself, and is diversified into Multiplicity,
and the Absolute manifests itself as numberless ‘relative’ existents.
As a result, the Reality which has previously been beyond the ken of
human cognition comes for the first time into the limits of its grasp.
And yet, even at this stage, the distinction is not made between
‘right’ and ‘wrong’ . This indicates that at this third stage we are still
in touch with the Way in its original integrity, although, to be sure,
the contact with the Way is already indirect, because it is made
through the veil of the ‘essences’. We may recall the myth of the
Emperor Chaos (Hun Tun), which we read in Chapter II, who died
as soon as his friends bored holes in his ‘featureless’ visage. In the
light of the present passage, there is in this myth an oversim-
plification. For Chaos does not ‘die’ simply by ‘holes’ (i.e., ‘essen-
tial’ distinctions) being made in it. The true death of the Chaos
occurs at the next stage.
As soon as, however, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ make their clear appear-
ance, the Way becomes damaged. And as soon as the Way is thus
damaged, Love is born.
With the appearance of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, Chaos loses its natural
vitality and becomes fossilized as ‘essential forms’ stiff and inflex-
ible as corpses. As Wang Hsien Ch’ien says: ‘When “right” and
“wrong” are recognized, the “chaotic” integrity of the Way is
immediately injured’. 3
356 Sufism and Taoism
And no sooner this happens than Love is born. The birth of Love
symbolizes the activity of such human emotions as love and hate,
like and dislike. This is the last and lowest stage of Knowledge.
Of course there is another aspect to the problem. The Way is here
said to die with the appearance of human emotions like love and hate.
But this is so only when one considers the situation in refence to the
original ‘chaotic’ integrity, i.e., the original ‘undifferentiation’ of
the Absolute. Otherwise, everything is a particular manifestation
of the Way itself. And as such even a fossilized ‘essence’ is nothing
other than a ‘self-determination’ of the Absolute. This aspect of the
matter, however, is irrelevant to our present topic.
As I remarked before several times - and it is particularly important
to recall it once again for the right understanding of the philosophi-
cal position Chuang-tzu takes against ‘essentialism’ - the descrip-
tion just given of the four stages is not an abstract theory; it is a
description of an experiential fact. It is a phenomenological descrip-
tion of the experience of ekstasis. In the passage which has just been
quoted, the process of ekstasis is described in a descending order.
That is to say, Chuang-tzu describes the ‘return’ of consciousness.
He starts from the highest stage of contemplation at which the
‘oblivion’ has been completed, and goes down step by step until he
reaches the stage of normal consciousness.
What is to be kept in mind in connection with this problem is that
the whole process of ekstasis , whether considered in a descending or
ascending order, is composed of two aspects which exactly corres-
pond to each other. One is the subjective aspect, which we might
call ‘epistemological’, and the other is the objective, or ‘metaphysi-
cal’ aspect.
Take, for example, the highest stage. On its subjective side, it is,
as I have just said, a stage at which the contemplative in actual
contemplation has consummated the ekstasis. He is now in com-
plete ‘oblivion’ of everything, the world and himself included. This
would naturally mean that he is in the state of Nothing-ness,
because he is conscious of nothing, because there is no ‘conscious-
ness’. And this subjective Nothing-ness corresponds to the objec-
tive Nothing-ness of the Way. For the Way, too, is in its original
absolute purity Nothing-ness, a state ‘where nothing has ever
existed from the very beginning’ , that is, a metaphysical state where
nothing whatsoever is distinguishable as^n existent.
From such a state of perfect Void, subjective and objective, the
contemplative starts coming back toward the daily state of mind.
There begins to stir something in himself. Consciousness awakes in
him to find ‘things’ existent. The consciousness, however, is still at
this stage a dim and subdued light. It is not yet the glaring brilliance
Against Essentialism 357
of full daylight. It is the crepuscule of consciousness, a twilight in
which all things are only indistinctly and confusedly observable.
Such a description of the situation might strike one as a negative
evaluation. The state of consciousness at this stage is described as
being a dim light merely because the description is made from the
point of view of the ‘ normal’ consciousness of an ordinary mind. For
the latter, the light of the ecstatic consciousness looks dim and
indistinct because it does not distinguish and discriminate things
from each other. In reality, however, such indistinctiveness is, for a
Chuang-tzu, Reality as it really is.
And since the real state of Reality is itself ‘dim’ and ‘indistinct’,
the consciousness must of necessity be correspondingly ‘dim’, and
‘indistinct’. Only with such a dim light can Reality in its integrity be
illumined. The glaring and dazzling light of normal consciousness
does cast a strong spotlight on this or that particular object. But by
concentrating the light on the particular object, it makes all the rest
of the world sink into darkness. Referring to this point Chuang-tzu
remarks: 4
Therefore, the diffused and indistinct Light is what is aimed at by the
‘sacred man’. He does not, however, use this Light (in order to
illumine particular things), but lends it to all things universally. This is
what is called ‘illumination’.
The phrase here translated as ‘diffused and indistinct Light’ 5 means
a kind of light of which one cannot be certain as to whether it exists
or not; a light which, instead of being concentrated upon this or that
particular object, is ‘diffused’ and pervades all. It is not a glaring,
dazzling light. It is a dim, indistinct light, neither bright nor dark. In
reality, however, it is the Universal Light which illumines every-
thing as it really is.
Chuang-tzu calls this kind of spiritual Light also the ‘shaded
Light’ (pao kuang). 6 The word pao means ‘to cover’, ‘to conceal
within’. As Ch’eng Hsiian Ying explains: ‘(The mind of the “sacred
man”) forgets (to distinguish between things) and yet illumines all.
And as it illumines them, it forgets them. That is why it shades and
obscures its light, yet becomes ever more brilliant.’
The corresponding ‘objective’ side of this stage is ontologically the
most important of all stages for Chuang-tzu. For this precisely is the
stage of ‘chaotification’. In the subdued and diffused Light of the
consciousness of the contemplative, the ‘ten thousand things’ loom
up as if through the mist. They appear dim and indistinct because
there are no ‘boundaries’, i.e., definite ‘essences’ or ‘quiddities’, to
differentiate them one from the other.
I say that this is ontologically the most important stage for
358 Sufism and Taoism
Chuang-tzu, because the higher stage, that of the Absolute in its
absoluteness, is properly speaking beyond all thinking and reason-
ing, 7 while the lower one is the stage of ‘essences’ or ‘quiddities’,
where all things appear to the consciousness distinctly separated
from each other through their ‘boundaries’ . And Chuang-tzu fights
against the view that this latter stage does represent Reality as it
really is.
Thus we see that the stage of ‘chaotification’, at which all things
are observed in their original 4 undifferentiation’ , that is, beyond and
apart from their ‘essences’, constitutes the pivotal point of Chuang-
tzu’ s metaphysics. We might call this metaphysics ‘existentialism’,
taking the word ‘existence’ ( existentia ) in the same sense as wujud in
the metaphysical system of Ibn ‘Arabi.
From the very outset I have been emphasizing implicitly as well as
explicitly the ‘existentialist’ attitude of Chuang-tzu. I think I have
made it sufficiently clear by now that its real meaning becomes
understandable only when we relate it to the second stage (from
above) of the ‘sitting in oblivion’ . It is a philosophical position based
on the vision of Chaos. In this respect it stands opposed to the
position taken by ‘essentialism’ which is based on a vision of Reality
peculiar to, and typical of the epistemological-ontological stage
where the ‘ten thousand things’ appear, each with a clearly marked
‘boundary’ of its own. In terms of the process of ‘sitting in oblivion’ -
the Return process from the complete ekstasis back toward the
‘normal’ world of common sense -the ‘essentialist’ position belongs
to the third stage explained above.
Thus in the framework of such an experience, ‘existentialism’
represents a vision of Reality which is a stage higher than ‘essential-
ism’. It is important to note that the latter is regarded as the third
stage in the Return process of the ecstatic contemplation only as
long as it is considered within this particular framework. In reality,
however, the contemplative, when he comes down to this stage and
becomes conscious of the things with clear ‘boundaries’, he is actu-
ally already on a par with any ordinary man who knows nothing
about the experience of ekstasis. His view of Being at this particular
level is nothing unusual from the standpoint of common sense. On
the contrary, it is a view of Being common to, and shared by, all men
who are at all endowed with a ‘sound’ and ‘normal’ mind. ‘Essential-
ism’, in other words, is the typical ontology of common sense.
This statement, however, should not be understood as implying
that, for a Chuang-tzu or a Lao-tzu, ‘essentialism’ is a wrong and
mistaken view of Being, and that it distorts and disfigures the real
structure of things. For ‘essentialism’ does represent and corres-
pond to a certain definite stage in the evolving process of the
Against Essentialism 359
Absolute itself. Besides, on its subjective side, ‘essentialism’ consti-
tutes, as we have just seen, the third stage of the ‘sitting in oblivion’
in the Return process of the contemplation. And as such, there is
nothing wrong about it.
The serious problem arises only when the common sense refuses
to see any difference in terms of ontological ‘levels’ between ‘exis-
tentialism’ and ‘essentialism’ and begins to assert that the latter is
the right view of Being. It is only then that a Chuang-tzu rises in an
open revolt against ‘essentialism’. Since, however, it is of the very
nature of common sense to view the things in an ‘essentialist’ way,
Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu constantly find themselves forced to mani-
fest the attitude of revolt against such a view. Their philosophy, in
this respect, may properly be characterized as a revolt against the
‘tyranny’ of Reason.
Chuang-tzu sees a typical exemplification of the ‘essentialist’
position in the moral philosophy of Confucius. Confucian philos-
ophy is, in Chuang-tzu’ s view, nothing but an ethical elaboration of
ontological ‘essentialism’. The so-called cardinal virtues of Con-
fucius like ‘humaneness’, ‘justice’, etc., are but so many products of
the normal activity of the Mind which naturally tends to see every-
where things rigidly determined by their own ‘essences’. The Real-
ity in its absoluteness has no such ‘boundaries’. But a Confucius
establishes distinctions where there are none, and fabricates out of
them rigid, inflexible ethical categories by which he intends to
regulate human behavior.
Stop! Stop approaching men with (your teaching of) virtues!
Dangerous, dangerous, indeed, is (what you are doing), marking off
the ground and running within the boundaries ! 8
Ontological ‘essentialism’ is dangerous because as soon as we take
up such an attitude, we are doomed to lose our natural flexibility of
mind and consequently lose sight of the absolute ‘undifferentiation’
which is the real source and basis of all existent things. ‘Essential-
ism’ will not remain in the sphere of ontology; it naturally grows into
a categorization of values which, once established, begins to domi-
nate our entire behavioral system.
Chuang-tzu in the following passage 9 gives with keen sarcasm a
symbolic picture of those people who are vainly engaged in ani-
mated discussions over the ‘values’ of things, considering them as
something absolute, something unalterably determined.
The spring has dried up, and the fish are all on the ground. (In the
agonies of death) they are spewing each other with moist breath and
trying to moisten each other with froth and foam. It would be far
better for them if they could forget each other in a wide river or sea.
Likewide, the people praise a ‘great man’ and condemn a ‘bad man’.
360 Sufism and Taoism
But it would be much better if they could forget both (‘good’ and
‘bad’) together and be freely ‘transmuted’ with the Way itself.
‘Essentialism’ would seem to be a philosophical position which is
most suitable to the human mind. At any rate the Reason and the
common sense which is but a vulgarized form of Reason naturally
tend to take an ‘essentialist’ position. And the latter is that upon
which our ordinary thinking depends.
The gist of the ‘essentialist’ view may be concisely presented as a
thesis that all things are endowed with ‘essences’ or ‘quiddities’,
each thing being clearly marked off by its ‘essence’ from all others.
A table is a table, for example, and it can never be a chair. The book
which is upon the table is ‘essentially’ a book, and it is ‘essentially’
different from, or other than the table. There are ‘ten thousand’,
i.e., innumerable, things in the world. But there is no confusion
among them, for they are separated from one another by clear-cut
lines of demarcation or ‘boundaries’ which are supplied by their
‘essences’.
As I have said before, this ‘essentialist’ ontology in itself is
nothing to be rejected. It gives a true picture of things, if it is put in
the right place, that is to say, as long as one understands it to be the
picture of things at a certain ontological level. Chuang-tzu takes no
exception to this. The point he wants to make is that ‘essentialism’
should not be regarded as the one and ultimate view of things. And
he does rise in revolt against it the moment one begins to make such
a claim . For he is convinced that it is not the ultimate view of things.
From the standpoint of a man who has seen things in a different
light in his ecstatic vision, there is ontologically a stage at which the
‘essences’ become annihilated. This would simply mean for a
Chuang-tzu that there are ‘from the very beginning’ - as he says - no
such things as ‘essences’ in the sense of hard and solid ontological
cores of things. In any event, the so-called ‘essences’ lose, in this
view, their solidity, and become liquefied. ‘Dream’ and ‘reality’
become confused in the vast, limitless world of ‘undifferentiation’.
There is no longer here any marked distinction to be drawn between
a table and a chair, between a table and a book. Everything is itself,
and yet, at the same time, all other things. There being no ‘essences’ ,
all things interpenetrate each other and transform themselves into
one another endlessly. All things are ‘one’ - in a dynamic way. We
might properly compare this view with Ibn ‘ ArabFs concept of the
Unity of Existence, waljdah al-wujud. And we know already that
this is what Chuang-tzu calls Chaos.
Ibn ‘Arabi could speak of the Unity of Existence because he
looked at the world of Multiplicity, the illimitable existents, as so
many self-determinations or self- manifestations of the Absolute
§ Against Essentialism 361
§ which is itself the absolute Unity. In a similar way, Chuang-tzu came
to the idea of the ‘chaotification’ of things because he looked at
them from the point of view of the Way, which is also the absolute
metaphysical Unity.
In contemporary Western philosophy, special emphasis has often
been laid upon the ‘tyrannical’ power of language, the great forma-
tive influence exercised by linguistic patterns on the molding of our
thought. The influence of language is particularly visible in the
formation of the ‘essentialist’ view of things.
From the point of view of an absolute ‘existentialism’, there are
no watertight compartments in the world of Being. Man, however,
I ‘articulates’, that is, cuts up - arbitrarily, in most cases - this origi-
j nally undivided whole into a number of segments. Then he gives a
f particular name to each of these segments. A segment of Reality,
I thus given a name, becomes crystallized into a ‘thing’. The name
f gives it an ‘essential’ fixity, and thus ensures it from disintegration.
I For better or for worse, such is in fact the power of language.
I Language, in other words, positively supports ‘essentialism’.
I Once a ‘thing’ is established with a definite name, man is easily led
I into thinking that the thing is essentially that and nothing else. If a
l thing is named A , it acquires A -ness, that is, the ‘essence’ of being A .
i And since it is A ‘by essence’, it can never be other than A. One
I could hardly imagine under such conditions the thing’s being B,
C or D. The thing thus becomes something unalterably fixed and
determined.
This fundamental relation between ‘essentialism’ and language is
noticed by Chuang-tzu. He notices it because he looks at the matter
from the point of view of the absolute Way in which, as we have
repeatedly pointed out, there is not even a trace of ‘essential’
determinations.
The Way has absolutely no ‘boundaries’. Nor has language (which
produces and expresses such ‘boundaries’) absolutely any perma-
nency . 10
But (when the correspondence becomes established between the
two) there arise real (essential) ‘boundaries ’. 11
Referring to the sophistic logic of the school of Kung Sun Lung,
Chuang-tzu points out that this kind of logic is a product of linguistic
‘essentialism’. 12
Rather than trying to prove by means of ‘finger’ that a ‘finger’ is not a
‘finger’, why not prove by means of ‘non-finger’ that a ‘finger’ is not a
‘finger’?
The meaning of this passage will become clear only when we under-
stand it against the background of the sophistic logic which was
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Sufism and Taoism
prevalent in Chuang-tzu’ s time. The argument of the Sophists of the
school of Kung Sun Lung may be summarized as follows. The
concept of ‘finger’ comprises within itself the concepts of the thumb,
the index, the middle, the third, and the little fingers. Actually there
is no ‘finger’ other than these five. That is to say, the ‘finger’ must
necessarily be one of these five. And yet, if we take up any one of
them, the ‘index finger’ for example, we find it negating and exclud-
ing all the rest, because the ‘index finger’ is not any of the other four
fingers. Thus it comes about that the ‘index finger’ which is a real
‘finger’, is not a ‘finger’, because its concept applies exclusively to
itself, not to the others.
Against this Chuang-tzu remarks that such an argument is simply
a shallow and superficial piece of sophistry. We do not gain anything
even if we prove in this manner that a ‘finger’ is not a ‘finger’.
However, there is a certain respect in which a ‘finger’ is properly to
be considered a ‘non-finger’. And this latter view - although
superficially it gives the same conclusion; namely, that a ‘finger’ is
not a ‘finger’ - is not a piece of sophistry. It is a view standing on the
‘chaotification’ of things, and it goes to the very heart of the struc-
ture of Reality.
The term ‘non-finger’ which appears in the second half of the
above-quoted statement is not intended to be the logical contradic-
tory of ‘finger’. It means something like a ‘super-finger’, or an
ontological state in which a ‘finger’ is no longer a ‘finger’. ‘Why not
prove by means of “non-finger”?’, Chuang-tzu asks. He means to
say: instead of wasting time in trying to prove by logical tricks - as
Kung Sun Lung and his followers are doing - that ‘a finger is not a
finger’ on the very level of ‘a finger is a finger’, we had better
transcend at a stroke the ontological level of ‘essential’ distinctions
and see with the eye of ‘illumination’ the reality of the situation.
For, in fact, on the level of ‘chaotification’, a ‘finger’ is no longer
necessarily a ‘finger’, it is no longer so solidly fixed that it can never
be anything other than itself. All things are one, and we have no
reason to stick obstinately to the idea that since A is A, it cannot be
anything other than A. Thus the statement: ‘a “finger” is not a
“finger” ’ is found to be true; but, this time, on a higher level than
the one on which the Sophists are trying hard to establish the same
statement.
Chuang-tzu gives one more example, that of a ‘horse’ not being
a ‘horse’, which was also a notorious topic of the Sophists of his
time.
Rather than trying to prove by means of ‘horse’ that a ‘horse’ is not a
‘horse’ , why not prove by means of ‘non-horse’ that a ‘horse is not a
‘horse’?
Against Essentialism
363
The structure of the argument is exactly the same as the previous
one. The Sophists claim that a ‘horse’ is not a ‘horse’ on the basis of
the following observation. The concept of ‘horse’, they say, must be
applicable to horses of different colors like ‘white horse’, ‘yellow
horse’, ‘black horse’ etc., and no ‘horse’ which is actually existent is
colorless. Every actually existent horse is either white, or black, or
yellow, etc. And there can be no exception. Let us take a ‘white
horse’ as an example. The ‘white horse’, being white, naturally
excludes all horses of other colors. The concept cannot apply to a
‘black horse’, for instance, or a ‘yellow horse’. And the same is true
of any horse of any color. Since, however, the concept of ‘horse’
must be such that it applies to all horses of all colors, we must
conclude that no actually existent horse is a ‘horse’.
The Sophists in this way establish, or claim to establish, that a
‘horse’ is not a ‘horse’. Against this, Chuang-tzu takes the position
that, even admitting that they are right in this argument, the conclu-
sion which they reach thereby is devoid of real significance. As in
the case of the preceding argument about ‘finger’, Chuang-tzu
points out that there is a respect in which exactly the same conclu-
sion can be maintained, but with an entirely new meaning. Here
again the term ‘non-horse’ refers to the metaphysical level at which
all ‘essential’ distinctions are eliminated through ‘chaotification’.
Once we put ourselves on such a level, we perceive that a ‘finger’
is a ‘finger’ and yet, at the same time, is not a ‘finger’ , that a ‘horse’ is
a ‘horse’ and yet is not a ‘horse’. And the same holds true of
everything else. We can even go to the extreme of asserting that the
whole world is a ‘finger’, and the whole world is a ‘horse’.
Heaven and Earth (i.e., the whole universe) are a ‘finger’. All things
}; are a ‘horse’.
| Heaven and Earth with ‘ten thousand things’ that exist therein are
l; but an ‘undifferentiated’ whole, in which all things ontologically
interpenetrate one another. In such a state, a ‘horse’ is not unalter-
ably a ‘horse’; it can be anything else. Looking at this particular
situation from the reverse side we could say that all things are
entitled to be regarded as a ‘horse’ or ‘finger’, or indeed, anything
else.
From such a standpoint, Chuang-tzu goes on to criticize the
‘essentialist’ position in the following manner . 13
(Instead of looking at the matter from the viewpoint of ‘non-finger’
and ‘non-horse’, people divide up the originally undifferentiated
whole of Being into various categories which, again, they classify into
‘right’ and ‘not-right’) and insist on the ‘right’ being unalterably
‘right’ and the ‘not-right’ being unalterably ‘not-right’. (The distinc-
tion, however, between ‘right’ and ‘not-right’, far from being
364
Sufism and Taoism
something 'essential', i.e., something based on the very nature of
Being, is but a matter of custom and habit, just as) a road is formed
(where there was none before) merely by people walking constantly
upon it. Likewise, the ‘things’ are formed by their being designated
by this or that particular name (simply by virtue of a social custom or
convention ). 14
(And once the ‘things' are thus crystallized, they are considered as
either ‘right’ or ‘not-right’, ‘so’ or ‘not-so’). On what ground does
man judge a thing to be ‘so?’ He judges to be ‘so’ whatever (other
people or ‘society’ by custom) judge to be ‘so’. On what ground does
man judge a thing to be ‘not-so’? He is merely judging it to be ‘not-so’
because (other people) judge it (by custom) to be ‘not-so’.
(However, from the viewpoint of ‘illumination’, the reality of things
can only be grasped when one puts oneself on a higher level of
non-discriminating acceptance which transcends all such relative
distinctions. And viewed from such a place) there is a certain respect
in which everything without exception is to be regarded as being ‘so’
(i.e., affirmable and acceptable), and everything without exception is
to be regarded as ‘right’. There is nothing that is not ‘so’. There is
nothing that is not ‘right’. Whether a stalk of grain or a great pillar,
whether a leper or a (beautiful lady like) Hsi Shih, however strange ,
bizarre, ugly and grotesque things may be, the Way makes them all
one.
The Reality perceived on such a level is called by Chuang-tzu
Heavenly-Equalization , 15 or Walking-Two- Ways (at the same
time ). 16 The former term means a ‘natural’ metaphysical state in
which all things, without being disturbed by the distinctions be-
tween ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, etc., repose in their
original harmony or equality. And since, as Ch’eng Hsiian Ying
observes, the ‘sacred man’ always sees things in such a state of
Equality, his mind too reposes in an eternal peace, being never
disturbed by the distinctions and differences among things. The
second term, literally meaning ‘going both ways’, refers to the same
metaphysical state in which ‘good’ and ‘bad’ , or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ,
are both equally acceptable; a state, in other words, in which all
opposites and contradictories become acceptable in the ultimate
Unity of coincidentia oppositorum.
It is highly significant that the second chapter of the Chuang-tzu is
entitled Ch’i Wu Lun, 11 i.e., ‘Discourse on Equalizing (All) Things’.
The chapter is so entitled because it is mainly concerned with the
view according to which all things are ‘equal’, that is, ultimately
One. And since, according to this view, such ‘equalization’ of things
is justifiable only at the level of ‘existence’ , not at that of ‘ essences’ , I
consider this theory rightly comparable with Ibn ‘Arabi’s Unity of
Existence.
Against Essentialism
365
‘ Essentialism’ , if it is to be a philosophical view of existents, must be
able to explain the whole of the world of Being. And it does intend -
and does claim, implicitly at least - to be comprehensive enough to
cover all things. But how, in actual fact, could it be so when its very
nature consists in isolating single ontological units, making them
‘essentially’ independent of one another? If one makes such an
approach to things, and yet wants to comprehend all of them, one is
forced to have recourse to the method of enumeration and addition.
But, however far one may go in this direction, one will never reach
the ultimate end. For no matter how many independent units one
may pile up one upon another, one will be left with an infinite
number of things still untouched and uncomprehended.
Thus essentialism’ is by its very nature utterly incapable of
grasping the reality of the world of Being in its infinite complexity
and in its limitless development and transformation. In order to
comprehend the whole of the world of Being as it really is and as it
really works, we must, Chuang-tzu maintains, abandon the level of
essential’ distinctions, and, by unifying ourselves with ‘existence’
itself which pervades all things, look at all things in their original
state of ‘chaotification’ and ‘undifferentiation’. Instead of formulat-
ing this thesis in such a theoretical form, Chuang-tzu explains his
point through the concrete example of Chao Wen, a famous lute
player.
That a thing can become ‘perfect’ and ‘defective’ (at the same time)
may aptly be exemplified by what happens when Chao Wen plays the
lute. That a thing can remain ‘not-perfect’ and ‘not-defective’ may
aptly be exemplified by what happens when Chao Wen does not plav
the lute . 18
The meaning of the passage may be explicated as follows. Chao
Wen is a musician of genius. When he plays the lute, the particular
piece of music which he plays becomes actualized in a perfect form.
This is what is referred to by the expression: ‘that a thing can
become perfect’.
However , by the very fact that Chao Wen plays a particular piece
of music and actualizes it in a perfect form, the infinite number of
other pieces which are left behind become darkened and nullified.
This is what is meant by the thing being ‘defective’ at the same time.
Thus a perfect actualization of one single piece of music is at the
same time the negation and nullification of all other possibilities.
Only when Chao Wen does not actually play, are we in a position to
enjoy all the pieces of music which he is capable of actualizing. And
only in such a form is his music ‘perfect’ in an absolute sense, that is,
in a sense in which it transcends the very distinction between ‘per-
fection’ and ‘imperfection’ (or ‘defectiveness’).
366 Sufism and Taoism
The ‘equalization’ of all things thus brings us into the very core of
the reality of Being. If, however, one sticks to this idea and discards
completely the phenomenal aspect of things, one falls into an
equally inexcusable error. For, after all, the infinitely various and
variegated phenomena are also an aspect of Reality. Certainly, the
music of Chao Wen is ‘perfect’ in an absolute sense, only when he
does not play his lute. But it is also true that the possibilities that lie
hidden in his ability are destined to be ‘perfected’ in a relative sense
and will never cease to work up their way from possibility to
actuality even to the detriment of one another. Both forms of
‘perfection’, absolute and relative, fundamental and phenomenal,
are essential to the reality of his music.
Likewise, in the ontological structure of things, both the original
‘undifferentiation’ and the phenomenal ‘differentiation’, or Unity
and Multiplicity, are real. If Chuang-tzu emphasizes so much the
former aspect, it is chiefly because at the common sense level of
human experience the phenomenal aspect is so prominent and so
dominant that it is commonly considered the reality.
The root of Being is absolutely one. But it does not repose forever
in its original Unity. On the contrary, it belongs to the very nature of
Being that it never ceases to manifest itself in infinite forms. It goes
on diversifying itself into ‘ten thousand things’ which, again, go on
endlessly transforming themselves into one another. This is the
phenomenal aspect of Being. But by going through this very process
of ontological ‘diversification’ and ‘differentiation’ all things are
returning to their ultimate metaphysical source. The process of
‘descent’ and the process of ‘ascent’ are paradoxically one and the
same thing. The relation between Unity and Multiplicity must be
understood in this way. Just as Unity is not a static ‘oneness’ of
death and rigidity, but is a never-ceasing dynamic process of a
coincidentia oppositorum , Multiplicity is not a static ‘differentia-
tion’ of things that are rigidly fixed once for all, but is a constant life
process which contains within itself the ontological tension of Unity
in Multiplicity.
If looked at from the viewpoint of ‘differentiation’, (nothing is the
same as anything else), and even liver and gall (a typical example of
two things closely resembling each other), are as different and as far
apart as the country of Ch’u and the country of Yiieh.
However, looked at from the viewpoint of ‘sameness’, all things are
one and the same . 19
Unfortunately, the eyes of ordinary men are dazzled by the pheno-
menal scintillations of Multiplicity and cannot perceive the pro-
found Unity that underlies the whole. They cannot, as Chuang-tzu
says, ‘unify the objects of their knowledge’. 20
Against Essentialism 367
The only right attitude we can take in such a situation is to ‘let our
minds be at ease in the harmony of spiritual perfection’ . 21 The word
‘harmony’ {ho) here refers, as Ch’eng Hsiian Ying remarks, to the
fact that when we ‘unify the objects of our knowledge’ and ‘chaotify’
all things, our mind enjoys a perfect peace, being no longer dis-
turbed by ‘what our ears and eyes approve’ ; it refers also to the fact
that all things at this level are peacefully together, there being no
‘essential’ oppositions between them. We must not be blind to the
phenomenal aspect of Being, Chuang-tzu says; but it is wrong for us
to remain confined in the same phenomenal world and observe the
Multiplicity of things exclusively from the phenomenal point of
view. We must transcend such a stage, go up to a higher level, and
looking down from that height observe the kaleidoscope of the
ever-shifting Multiplicity of things. Only when we do this, are we in
a position to know the reality of Being.
The dynamic relation between the original absolute Unity and the
phenomenal Multiplicity, that is to say, the process by which the
Absolute, stepping out of its metaphysical darkness, diversifies
itself into a myriad of things of the phenomenal world is something
which, as I have repeatedly pointed out discloses its reality only to a
mind in the state of ekstasis, or as Chuang-tzu calls it, ‘sitting in
oblivion’. Particularly difficult to understand for a non-ecstatic
mind is the ontological status of ‘essences’.
As the Absolute divides itself through a process of ontological
evolvement into ‘ten thousand things’, each one of the latter does
seem to acquire a particular ‘essence’. For, after all, what is the
meaning of talking about ‘ten thousand things’, if they are not
distinguishable from each other? How could they be distinguishable
from each other if they were devoid of ‘essences’? When we recog-
nize A as being different and distinguishable from B, are we not at
the same time recognizing A as being endowed with an ‘essence’
which is different from that of B1
From the viewpoint of Chuang-tzu, however, the things being
endowed with ‘essences’ and their being ‘essentially’ distinguish-
able from one another is simply a matter of appearance. Each of the
‘ten thousand things’ appears to have its own ‘essence’ unalterably
fixed once for all. In fact, it merely appears or seems to have such an
‘essence’.
But our picture inevitably becomes complicated by the fact that
those seeming ‘essences’ are not sheer nothing, either. They are not
mere products of hallucination. They do have an ontological status
peculiar to them. They are not ontologically groundless. The abso-
lute all-pervading ‘existence’ can take on an infinite variety of forms
because there is a kind of ontological basis for them. We cannot
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Sufism and Taoism
certainly say that the ‘essences’ exist in the ordinary sense of the
world. But we cannot say either that they are absolutely non-
existent.
It is at this point that Ibn ‘Arab!, as we remember, introduced the
concept of ‘permanent archetypes’ ( a‘yan thabitah ) into his
metaphysical system. And the concept did work admirably well. For
Ibn ‘Arab! succeeded thereby in philosophically settling the
difficulty raised by this paradoxical situation. The ‘permanent
archetypes’ are those metaphysical principles which can ‘be said
neither to exist nor not to exist’, and through which the all-
pervading divine Existence becomes inflected into a myriad of
‘things’. But for him, too, it was not basically a philosophical ques-
tion; it was rather a matter of an ecstatic vision.
Chuang-tzu has no such philosophical device. Instead, he resorts
directly, as he often does, to a symbolic presentation of the content
of his metaphysical vision. As a result, we now have what is unanim-
ously acknowledged to be one of the most masterly descriptions of
Wind in Chinese literature. It is not, of course, a mere literary piece
of work. It is a philosophical symbol which Chuang-tzu uses for the
purpose of expressing verbally what is verbally inexpressible.
Furthermore, the whole passage is philosophically of supreme
importance, because, as we shall see immediately, it constitutes
what we might call a Taoist ‘proof of the existence of God’.
The beginning part of the passage is purely symbolic. Its real
philosophical meaning may best be understood if, in reading it, one
keeps in mind that the Cosmic Wind symbolizes ‘existence’, or the
Absolute in its all-pervading actus, and that the hollow ‘ openings’ of
the trees symbolize ‘essences’.
The Great Earth eructates; and the eructation is called Wind . 22 As
long as the eructation does not actually occur, nothing is observable.
But once it does occur, all the hollows of the trees raise ringing
shouts.
Listen! Do you not hear the trailing sound of the wind as it comes
blowing from afar? The trees in the mountain forests begin to rustle,
stir, and sway, and then all the hollows and holes of huge trees
measuring a hundred arms’ lengths around begin to give forth differ-
ent sounds.
There are holes like noses, like mouths, like ears; some are (square)
like crosspieces upon pillars; some are (round) as cups, some are like
mortars. Some are like deep ponds; some are like shallow basins.
(The sounds they emit are accordingly various): some roar like
torrents dashing against the rocks; some hiss like flying arrows; some
growl, some gasp, some shout, some moan. Some sounds are deep
and muffled, some sounds are sad and mournful.
As the first wind goes away with the light trailing sound, there comes
the following one with a deep rumbling sound. To a gentle wind the
Against Essentialism
369
hollows answer with faint sounds. To a stormy wind they answer with
loud sounds.
However, once the raging gale has passed on, all these hollows and
holes are empty and soundless. You see only the boughs swaying
silently, and the tender twigs gently moving . 23
As I said before, this is not intended to be a mere literary description
of wind. Chuang-tzu’s real intention is disclosed by what follows this
passage. The philosophical intention of Chuang-tzu may be formu-
lated in the following way. The ‘hollows’ and ‘holes’ of the trees
imagine that they are independently existent, that they emit these
sounds. They fail to notice that they emit these sounds only by the
active working of the Wind upon them. It is, in reality, the Wind that
makes the ‘hollows’ resound.
Not that the ‘hollows’ do not exist at all. They are surely there.
But they are actualized only by the positive activity of the Wind. As
is evident, this is a very apt description of the ontological status of
‘essences’, which was mentioned earlier.
It is also evident that the Wind here is not an ordinary physical
wind. It is the Cosmic Wind corresponding exactly to Ibn ‘Arabi’s
concept of sarayan al-wujud, lit. the ‘spreading of Existence’. It is
interesting and, indeed, extremely significant, that both Ibn ‘Arab!
and Chuang-tzu conceive of ‘existence’ as something moving -
‘blowing’, ‘flowing’, or ‘spreading’. For both of them, ‘existence’ is
actus.
(One and the same Wind) blows on ten thousand things in different
ways, and makes each hollow produce its own peculiar sound, so that
each imagines that its own self produces that particular sound. But
who, in reality, is the one who makes (the hollows) produce various
sounds ? 24
Who is it? In order to give the right answer to this crucial question,
we must remark first of all that the Cosmic Wind has no sound of its
own. The ‘sound of Heaven’ ( t’ien lai) is soundless. What is audible
to our physical ears are only the ten thousand sounds produced by
the hollows of the trees. They are not the sound of Heaven; they are
but the ‘sound of Earth’ (ti lai). But, Chuang-tzu insists, we must
hear the soundless sound of Heaven behind each of the ten
thousand sounds of Earth. Rather, we must realize that in hearing
the sound of Earth we are really hearing nothing other than the
sound of Heaven. The infinitely various sounds which the hollows
emit are no other than the one, absolute sound of Heaven.
It is to be remarked that exactly the same question: ‘Who is it?’ can
and must be asked of what actually is observable in the ‘interior’
region of our own being. Just as the ‘hollows’ of the trees emit all
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Sufism and Taoism
kinds of sounds as the Wind blows upon them, the ‘interior’ of man
is in a state of constant turmoil. Who causes all this commotion?
That is the central question. Are the minds of men themselves
responsible for it? Or are the stimuli coming from external things its
causes? No, Chuang-tzu answers. But let us first see how he
describes the inner ‘hollows’ interminably producing noises and
sounds.
Even while asleep, the souls of men are (tormented) by coming into
touch with various things (in dreams). When they wake up, the bodily
functions begin to be active; they get entangled with external things,
and all kinds of thoughts and emotions are aroused in them. And this
induces them to use their mind every day in quarreling with others.
Some minds are idle and vacant. Some minds are abstruse. Some are
scrupulous. Those who have petty fears are nervous; those who are
assailed by great fears are simply stupefied.
The way they argue about the rightness and wrongness of matters
reminds us of those who shoot arrows and missiles (i.e., they are
extremely quick and active). They endeavor to secure a victory (in
disputes) as if they had sworn before the gods. The way they go on
consuming (their mental energy) day by day reminds us of (the leaves
of trees) fading away in autumn and winter.
They have gone so far into delusion and perlexity that it is no longer
possible for them to be brought back. The way they fall deeper and
deeper into infatuation as they grow older reminds us of minds firmly
sealed with seals (of cupidity). Thus, when their minds draw near to
death, there is no means of bringing them back to youthful bright-
ness.
Indeed (the movements of human minds are infinitely various as are
the sounds produced by the hollows of the trees): joy, anger, sadness,
and delight! Sometimes they worry about the future; sometimes they
vainly bewail the irretrievable past. Sometimes fickle, sometimes
obstinate. Sometimes flattering, sometimes self-conceited. Some-
times candid, sometimes affected.
They remind us of all kinds of sounds emerging from the empty holes
(of a flute), or mushrooms coming up out of warm dampness. Day
and night, these changes never cease to replace one another before
our eyes.
Where do these (incessant changes) sprout from? No one knows their
origin. It is impossible to know, absolutely impossible! It is an unde-
niable fact, however, that morning and evening these things are
actually happening (in ourselves). Yea, precisely the fact that they
are happening (in ourselves) means that we are alive ! 25
After describing in this way the endless psychological events which
are actually taking place in our minds day and night, Chuang-tzu
proceeds to an interpretation of this bewildering phenomenon.
What is the real and ultimate cause of all this? He asks himself
whether the ultimate cause of this psychological turmoil is our ‘ego’ .
Against Essentialism 371
To say that the ‘ego’ is the cause of all this is nothing other than
recognizing - indirectly - that the stimuli coming from the external
world are the causes of our psychological movement. He describes
this relation between the external stimuli and the changing states of
our minds in terms of a relation between ‘that’ (i.e., the objects) and
‘ego’.
Without ‘that’, there would be no ‘ego’. Without ‘ego’, ‘that’ would
have nothing to lay hold of. (Thus our ‘ego’, i.e., the whole of our
psychological phenomena, would seem to owe its existence to exter-
nal stimuli). This view appears to come close to the truth. And yet it
still leaves the question unanswered as to what really does make (our
minds) move as they do . 26
Chuang-tzu admits that external stimuli do excite commotions in
our minds. Such a view, however, does not reach the very core of the
matter. Those who imagine that this view is capable of fully account-
ing for the psychological changes that are taking place in ourselves
are comparable to the ‘holes’ and ‘hollows’ of the trees that naively
imagine that they themselves are producing the sounds they pro-
duce, without paying attention to the activity of the Wind.
Beyond the stimuli coming from the external objects, there is
Something which is the ultimate cause, Something which induces
external objects to act upon our minds and thereby cause the latter
to become agitated. Beyond and behind all these phenomena there
seems to be a real Agent who moves and controls all movements
and all events in our minds, just as there is a Wind behind all the
sounds produced by the ‘holes’. However, just as the Wind is
invisible and impalpable, so is this Agent unknowable and unseen.
But just as we can feel the existence of the Wind - although it is
invisible - through its activity, we can feel the existence of the Agent
through His actus.
It would seem that there is some real Ruler . 27 It is impossible for us to
see Him in a concrete form. He is acting - there can be no doubt
about it; but we cannot see His form. He does show His activity, but
He has no sensible form . 28
It is philosophically very important that Chuang-tzu asserts that the
Absolute in its personal aspect, i.e., as the absolute Agent, is only
accessible to our understanding as actus. The Absolute in this aspect
is actus \ it is not a ‘thing’. Without having any sensible form, that is,
without being a ‘thing’, it never ceases to manifest its activity. We
can only follow its trace, everywhere, in everything. But we can
never see its form because it has no form and because it is not a
‘thing’ . However, the human mind is by its own nature an ‘essential-
ist’. It finds it extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible to
represent anything except in the form of a ‘thing’. It cannot, except
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Sufism and Taoism
in very rare cases, conceive of anything as Nothing. The conception
of the Absolute as Something which is Nothing is to an ordinary
mind simply an intolerable paradox, if not sheer nonsense.
In order to render this metaphysical paradox a bit more accept-
able, Chuang-tzu compares the situation with the complicated
functioning of the members and organs of the body, the whole
mechanism of which is governed and controlled by an invisible
‘something’: the soul.
One hundred joints, nine openings, six entrails - these constitute a
human body. Now of all these, which one should we respect most
(i.e., which should we regard as the Ruler of the body)? Do you say
that you respect (as the Rulers) all of them equally? (No, that is
impossible). Then, do you favor one of them as particularly your
own? (No, that again is impossible). But, if not (i.e., if neither all of
them nor any particular one of them is in a position to rule over the
body), is it the case that all of them are mere servants and maids?
(However, if they were all servants and maids), how could the country
(i.e., the body) be kept in order? Or is it the case that they rule and
are ruled, occupying the positions of the Ruler and the subjects by
turns?
No, there does exist a real Ruler (who governs them all). And
whether or not man knows the concrete form of this Ruler, his reality
is never affected thereby; it neither increases nor decreases
thereby . 29
The true Ruler in this case is the soul whose concrete form is known
to nobody. But of course this is here put forward as an image which
would clarify the relation between the Absolute and all events and
all phenomena in the world of Being. Just as the bodily organs and
members are under the domination of the invisible soul, all that
exists and happens in the world is under the dominion of the
unknown-unknowable Ruler.
As I pointed out earlier, it is highly significant that Chuang-tzu
here presents the ‘true Ruler’ of the world as actus. No one can see
the Absolute itself as ‘something’ existent, but no one can deny,
either, the presence of its actus. And that actus is philosophically
nothing other than Existence.
We have to notice also that the actus of the Absolute which, in the
earlier passage, was described as the Cosmic Wind, i.e., a cosmic
force, is here presented as something personal - God. In the world-
view of Chuang-tzu, the Absolute or the Way has two different
aspects, cosmic and personal. In its cosmic aspect the Absolute is
Nature, a vital energy of Being which pervades all and makes them
exist, grow, decay, and ultimately brings them back to the original
source, while in its personal aspect it is God, the Creator of Heaven
and Earth, the Lord of all things and events. As conceptions and
Against Essentialism
373
representations, the two are totally different from one another, but
in reality both point to exactly one and the same thing. The differ-
ence between Nature and God is merely a matter of points of view,
or the ways in which the human mind conceives of the Absolute
which is in itself wholly unknown and unknowable. To this ultimate
metaphysical mystery we shall try to come closer in the following
chapter.
>; Notes
I' 1. II, p. 74.
n 2 - ibid -i P- 75: nitrite, ft,
'j 3. [Jim,
T 4. II, p. 75.
i\ 5. rmmzmj.
0
6. SI*,II,p.83*S*:r«icife. II,p. 89.
7. Lao-tzu, however, does think and talk about this ‘ineffable’ Something. We shall
come to this point in the following chapter.
8. Chuang-tzu IV, p. 183.
9. VI, p. 242.
10. i.e., the words which correspond to these ‘boundaries’ have no unalterable
semantic fixity.
11. II, p. 83.
12. II, p. 66.
13. II, pp. 69-70.
14. Note again how Chuang-tzu attributes ‘essence’ -forming power to language. A
thing which in its original state, is ‘nameless’, turns into something rigidly fixed and
unchangeable, once it is given a definite name.
15. t’lenchun p. 70. Ch’eng Hsuan Ying:r^jtj(=^)
p. 74.
16. Hang hang Wit, p. 70.
17. This can also be understood as meaning ‘Equalization of Various Views
on Being , i.e., the nullification of the opposition among various views on Being on
the level of absolute transcendence.
374
Sufism and Taoism
18. II, p. 74.
19. V, p. 190.
20. V, p. 193. r-*o£f?r£oj, lit. ‘to unify what is known by the knowledge’.
21. V, p. 191 Commenting upon this phrase Ch’eng Hsiian Ying
says: P- 192.
22. The issuing forth of the phenomenal things from the absolute One is here
compared to the great Earth belching forth the Wind. Note the remarkable similarity
of this mythopoeic image to that used by Ibn ‘ Arabi when the latter tries to describe
the ontological inner tension of the Divine Names within the Absolute, which is so
acute that it cannot but be relieved by the Names ‘bursting out’; see Pa*rt I, pp.
125-126.
23. pp. 45-46.
24. II, p. 50.
25. II, p. 51.
26. II, p. 55.
27. chentsai , .
28. II, p. 55.
29. II, pp. 55-56.
VII The Way
Up to this point we have been following the footprints of Chuang-
tzu as he tries to describe analytically the process by which a vision
of the Absolute is revealed to the Taoist Perfect Man, opening up in
his mind a new vista of the whole world of Being which is totally
different from, and radically opposed to, that shared by ordinary
men on the level of common sense. In so doing we have discarded
Lao-tzu except in a few places. Nor have we analyzed in a systematic
manner the philosophical thought expressed in the Tao Te Ching.
We have adopted this course for several reasons, the most impor-
tant of them being that Chuang-tzu, as I have pointed out a number
of times, is vitally interested in describing the epistemological
aspect of the problem of the Tao, while Lao-tzu is almost exclu-
sively interested in giving the result of the experience of the Abso-
lute, i.e., what comes after, and out of, that experience.
We have seen in the preceding chapter how Chuang-tzu submits
to an elaborate theoretical analysis the process of the gradual
development of the human mind toward a Taoist perfection. He
attempts to give an accurate description of the Taoist variety of
metaphysical or spiritual experience by which man ‘ascends’ toward
the Absolute until he becomes completely unified with it. Certainly,
Chuang-tzu is equally interested in the ‘descending’ movement of
the mind, from the state of ekstasis back to the level of daily
consciousness, that is, from the stage of the absolute Unity back to
that of ‘essential’ Multiplicity. But even then, his description of the
Descent is epistemological as well as ontological. That is to say, his
description is made so that to each objective stage of Being there
corresponds a subjective stage of spiritual experience, so that the
ontological system, in the case of Chuang-tzu, is at the same time a
complete epistemological system, and vice versa. Moreover, it is
typical of Chuang-tzu that these two aspects are so completely fused
together that it is at times difficult for us to decide whether a given
passage is intended to be a description of the subjective side of the
matter or of the objective, ontological structure of things. The
‘sitting in oblivion’ is an example in point.
376
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Sufism and Taoism
Lao-tzu, on the contrary, does not seem to be very much
interested in the experiential stages which precede the ultimate
vision of the Absolute. He does not take the trouble to explain how
and by what process we can obtain the vision of the Absolute. He
seems to be more interested in the questions: (1) What is the
Absolute, i.e., the Way?; and (2) How is the ‘sacred man expected
to behave in ordinary circumstances of social life on the basis of his
vision of the Way?
From the very outset he utters his words in the name of the
Absolute, as a representative of those who have already attained to
the highest stage of Taoist perfection. Behind the pages of the Tao
Te Ching we feel the presence of a man who has experienced the
most intimate union with the Absolute, who, consequently knows
what the Absolute is.
Quite abruptly Lao-tzu sets out to talk about the Way. He tries to
impart to us his personal knowledge of the Absolute, and his strange
- so it seems to common sense understanding - vision of the world.
If it were not for Chuang-tzu, we would hardly be able to know for
sure what kind of experiential background this extraordinary vision
of the world has as its unstated ‘prehistory’ . This is why we have up
till now intentionally refrained from turning systematically toward
an analysis of Lao-tzu’s thought, and confined ourselves to the task
of clarifying this ‘prehistory’ in the light of what Chuang-tzu says
about it.
But the particular situation which we have just mentioned con-
cerning Lao-tzu’s basic attitude would seem to suggest that the Tao
Te Ching is the best possible thing for us to have recourse to, if we
want to obtain a clear understanding of the Taoist conception of the
Absolute, its reality and its working. As we shall realize immedi-
ately, the Absolute as conceived by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu is by its
very nature beyond all verbal description. Despite that, Lao-tzu
does endeavor to describe, at least symbolically, this ineffable
Something. And he succeeds marvellously. In point of fact, the Tao
Te Ching is a remarkable work in that it attempts to delineate to the
utmost limit of possibility the Absolute which is essentially inde-
scribable. This is why we shall be greatly dependent in the present
chapter upon this book for elucidating the metaphysical structure of
the Absolute.
We must remark, however, that here again, Lao-tzu does not
explain how and why it is ineffable, and indescribable. He simply
states that the Way is ‘nameless’, ‘formless’, ‘imageless , invisible ,
‘inaudible’ , etc., that it is ‘nothing’ (wu wu) x or Nothing (wu) 2 . As to
the psychological or logical process by which one reaches this
conclusion, he says nothing positive. This process is clarified
in an interesting way by Chuang-tzu in a passage which
The Way
bears ample witness to his being an excellent dialectician. Let us
begin by reading the passage in question as an illuminating
theoretical introduction to Lao-tzu’s conception of the
Absolute.
Chuang-tzu is keenly conscious of the fact that the Way, or the
Absolute in its absoluteness, defies all verbalization and reasoning;
that, if brought down to the level of language, the Way will immedi-
ately and inevitably turn into a concept. As a concept, even the
Absolute is exactly in the same rank as any other concept. He makes
this observation the starting-point of his argument. People, he says,
distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in all matters and thus take
the position of there being a fundamental distinction between ‘right’
and ‘wrong’. Chuang-tzu, on his part, puts forward the thesis that
there is no distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. 3 Ordinary
people and Chuang-tzu are in this respect diametrically opposed to
each other. And yet, he goes on to say, as a logical proposition,
‘there-is-no-distinction-between-right-and-wrong’ is no less a
logos 4 than the opposite proposition: ‘there-is-a-distinction-
between-right-and-wrong’. In this respect, both belong to one and
the same category. 5
In reality, the two propositions refer to two completely different
levels of discourse. The difference, as we already know, comes out
only when one realizes that the positive statement is a statement
typical of the empirical level of discourse, while the negative one is
orginally intended to represent the ontological ‘chaotification’
which is experienced by the Perfect Man in the moments of his
ecstatic union with the Absolute. As an expression of this original
experience, the statement is not a logical proposition except in its
outward form. But as long as it does have a logical form, it is a logical
proposition; and as such, it does not properly represent the unique
experience of ‘chaotification’, being as it is nothing but the con-
tradictory of the proposition: ‘there-is-a-distinction-between-
right-and-wrong’. If such is the case, could there be any other
attitude for us to take than maintaining a complete silence? ‘Despite
this’, he says, ‘I would dare to discuss the problem (on the logical or
conceptual level).’ With these preliminary remarks, he sets out to
develop an extremely interesting argument in the following way.
The argument, in brief, establishes that the Absolute in its original
absoluteness is conceptually the negation-of-negation-of-negation,
that is, the negation of the Absolute’s being Nothing which, again, is
the negation of Being. And that is the furthest limit to which our
logical thinking can go in its venturesome attempt at grasping the
Absolute on the level of concepts.
We have seen in the preceding chapter how Chuang-tzu, in
describing the stages of the spiritual development of ‘sitting in
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379
Sufism and Taoism
oblivion’, mentions as the ultimate limit of ecstatic cognition the
view that ‘nothing has ever existed from the very beginning’.
What is the ultimate limit of Knowledge? It is the stage represented
by the view that nothing has ever existed from the very beginning.
This is the furthest limit (of Knowledge), to which nothing more can
be added . 6
‘Nothing has ever existed from the very beginning’ appearing in this
quotation is the key-phrase for the right understanding of the
passage we are going to read . 7 It is important to keep in mind,
however, that in this latter passage we are no longer concerned with
the epistemological question of the utmost limit of human cogni-
tion. Our problem here is essentially of a metaphysical nature. For it
concerns the ultimate origin of Being, or of the Universe. The
‘beginning’ here in question means the beginning point of the world
of Being. Whenever we think logically of the formation of the world
of Being, we have to posit a ‘beginning’. Our Reason cannot con-
ceive of the world of Being without imagining a point at which it
‘began’ to exist.
So we posit Beginning. (But the moment we posit Beginning, our
Reason cannot help going further back and) admit the idea of there
having been no Beginning. (Thus the concept of No-Beginning is
necessarily established. But the moment we posit No-Beginning, our
logical thinking goes further back by negating the very idea which it
has just established, and) admits the idea of there having been no
‘there-having-been-no-Beginning’. (The concept of ‘No-No-
Beginning’ is thus established.)
The concept of Beginning, i.e., the initial point of the whole world of
Being, is but a relative concept. It can be conceptually pushed
further and further back. But no matter how far we may push it
back, this conceptual process does not reach an end. In order to put
a definite end to this process we have to transcend it at one stroke by
negating the Beginning itself. As a result, the concept of No-
Beginning is obtained.
However, the concept of No-Beginning is, again, a relative one,
being as it is a concept that subsists only by being opposed to that of
Beginning. In order to remove this relativity and attain to the
absolute No-Beginning, we have to transcend the No-Beginning
itself by negating it and establishing No-No-Beginning. The
No-No-Beginning - which must be articulated as No- [No-
Beginning] - is, however, a concept whose real significance is dis-
closed only to those who are able to understand it as signifying a
metaphysical state of affairs which is to be grasped by a kind of
metaphysical intuition. And this would seem to indicate that
The Way
No-No-Beginning, although it is something that has been posited by
Reason, lies beyond the grasp of all logical reasoning.
In the same manner, (we begin by taking notice of the fact that) there
is Being. (But the moment we recognize Being, our Reason goes
further back and admits that) there is Non-Being (or Nothing). (But
the moment we posit Non-Being we cannot but go further back and
admit that) there has not been from the very beginning Non-Being.
(The concept of No-[Non-Being] once established in this way, the
Reason goes further back and admits that) there has been no ‘there-
having-been-no-Non-Being’ (i.e., the negation of the negation of
Non-Being, or No-[No Non-Being]).
This concept of No- [No Non-Being] or No-No-Nothing represents
the ultimate logical stage which is reached by our negating - i.e.,
transcending - the negation itself of the opposition of Being and
Non-Being. This is the logical and conceptual counterpart of the
Way or the metaphysical Nothing which is not a simple ‘nothing’,
but a transcendent Nothing that lies beyond both ‘being’ and ‘non-
being’ as ordinarily understood.
We have thus seemingly succeeded in conceptualizing the Way as
an absolutely transcendent Nothing. However, does the Absolute
thus conceptualized mirror faithfully the reality of the Absolute? To
this question, we can say neither Yes nor No. As in the case of the
concept of No-No-Beginning, we must remark that the concept of
No-No-Nothing does justice to the reality of the Absolute only
when we transcend, in understanding it, the sphere of logical think-
ing itself into that of ecstatic or mystic intuition. But when we do so,
the concept of No-No-Nothing will immediately cease to be a
concept. And we shall end up by realizing that all the logical
reasoning that has preceded has in reality been futile and of no use.
If, on the contrary, we refuse to transcend the level of reasoning, the
concept of No-No-Nothing will remain for ever an empty concept
devoid of all positive meaning and, therefore, in no position to do
justice to the reality of the Absolute. Thus, either way, the concep-
tualizing activity of the mind proves powerless in grasping the
Absolute as it really is.
(When Reason begins to be active), all of a sudden we find ourselves
confronted with ‘being’ and ‘non-being’. (Since, however, these are
relative concepts in the sense that ‘being’ at this stage turns into
‘non-being’ at the next stage, and so on and so forth), we can never
know for sure which is really ‘being’ and which is really ‘non-being’.
Now I have just established something (that looks) meaningful, (i.e.,
I have established the Absolute as No-No-Nothing). But I do not
know whether I have truly established something meaningful or
whether what I have established is, after all, nothing meaningful.
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Sufism and Taoism
At this point, Chuang-tzu suddenly changes the direction of his
thinking and tries another approach . This time he turns to the aspect
of Unity which, as we have seen earlier, is one of the most salient
features of the Absolute. But before discussing the problem on the
level of logical reasoning, he reminds us by way of caution of what is
to be understood by the statement that the Absolute is ‘one’. The
Absolute, he says, is ‘one’ as a coincidentia oppositorum. We have
already examined in Chapter IV Chuang-tzu’ s position concerning
this problem. The key-term is ‘equalization’ of all things in the
Absolute.
The Way or the Absolute, according to Chuang-tzu, is the
metaphysical state of Heavenly Equalization, that is, the absolute
One which ‘equalizes’ all oppositions and contradictions. At this
stage, the smallest is at the same time the biggest, and a moment is
eternity.
(The state of Heavenly Equalization defies common sense and
reason, for we admit at this stage that) there is in the world nothing
bigger than the tip of a hair of an animal in autumn, while Mount Tai
(which is usually mentioned as an example of a very big thing) is
considered extremely small. No one lives longer than a child who dies
before coming of age, while P’eng Tsu (who is related to have lived
800 years) is considered to have died young. Heaven and Earth
endure for the same length of time as I do (i.e., the eternal duration of
Heaven and Earth is equivalent to the momentary duration of my
individual existence in this world). And the ten thousand things are
exactly the same as my own self.
Thus, from the viewpoint of Heavenly Equalization, all things
become reduced to a single unity in terms of both time and space.
How does logical reasoning grasp such an absolute Oneness? That is
the question we are faced with now.
All things (at this stage) are absolutely ‘one’. But if so, how is it
possible for us to say something? (i.e., Since all things are absolutely
‘one’, there is no longer anything whatsoever opposed to anything
else whatsoever. And since there is no opposition, it is meaningless
even to say: ‘one’).
(But in order to reason, I have to posit something). So I have said:
‘one’. But how could I judge that (it is, or they are) ‘one’ without
explicitly positing the term (i.e., word or concept: ‘one’)? However,
(the moment I posit the term ‘one’), the (original) ‘one’ (i.e., the
absolute One which is a coincidentia oppositorum) and the term (or
concept of) ‘one’ necessarily make ‘two’. (This would mean that the
least amount of reasoning makes the original One split itself into Two
and thus produces dualism.)
Then, these ‘two’ (i.e., the two-term judgment: ‘The Way is One’)
together with the ‘one’ (i.e., the absolute One which is prior to any
judgment) make ‘three’.
The Way
And from this point on the process extends endlessly, so much so that
even a talented mathematician will not be able to count out the
number, much less ordinary people.
If, in this way, moving from Non-Being to Being leads us inevitably to
(at least) ‘three’, where shall we get if we move from Being to Being
(i.e., if, instead of starting from the absolute One, we take a relativist
point of view and begin to pursue the individual things which go on
being endlessly diversified)? Better not to make any move (i.e.,
better not to exercise reasoning concerning the Absolute and the
things). Let us content ourselves with abiding by the (great) Yes
(which transcends all oppositions and contradictions, and leaves
everything as it is)!
Thus after developing an elaborate reasoning on the nature of the
Absolute, Chuang-tzu, ironically enough, ends by asserting the
futility of reasoning. He advises us to abandon all logical thinking
about the Absolute and to remain immersed ecstatically in the
absolute intuitive Knowledge. For only by doing so can we hope to
be in direct contact with the absolute One.
Thus the highest stage of Knowledge is remaining motionless in what
cannot absolutely be known (by reasoning). Is there anyone who
knows the Word which is no longer a ‘word’? Is there anyone who
knows the Way which is not even a ‘way’ ? If there is a man who knows
such a thing, he deserves to be named the ‘Treasury of Heaven’ (i.e.,
he who is in possession of the key to the limitless treasure house of
Being. Nay, he is the same as the ‘treasury’ itself). (The Treasury of
Heaven with which such a man is completely identical and unified is
like an unbounded ocean); no matter how much you pour water into
it, it will never become full; and no matter how much you dip up
water therefrom, it will never run dry. And nobody knows how and
from where all these (limitless) things come into being.
It is the Knowledge of such a man that is properly to be called the
‘shaded Light’.
Thus by following step by step Chuang-tzu’s argument we have
been led to the conclusion that the Way or the Absolute in its
ultimate reality transcends all reasoning and conceptualization.
This conclusion forms the starting-point for the metaphysical think-
ing of Lao-tzu. As I remarked at the outset of this chapter, Lao-tzu
does not take the trouble of explaining the logical or epistemologi-
cal process which underlies his metaphysical system. But we are
now in a position to understand the background against which this
metaphysics must be set.
Quite naturally, the metaphysics of Lao-tzu begins by mentioning
negative attributes of the Way. The Way, to begin with, is
‘nameless ’. 8
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Sufism and Taoism
The Way in its absolute reality ( ch’ang ) has no name . 9
Interminably continuous like a thread, no name can be given to it . 10
The Way is hidden and nameless."
That the Way is ‘nameless’ implies that the very name ‘Way’ ( tao ) is
nothing other than a makeshift. Lao-tzu forcibly calls it ‘Way’
because without naming it he cannot even refer to it. This fact is
clearly indicated by the very famous opening sentence of the Tao Te
Ching.
The ‘way’ which can be designated by the word ‘way’ is not the real 12
Way.
The ‘name’ which can be designated by the word ‘name’ is not the
real 12 Name . 13
It is interesting and important to remark that this passage, besides
being a clear statement to the effect that the Absolute is ‘nameless’,
is designed to be an implicit criticism of Confucian realism. The
‘way’ which is here said to be not the real Way is the human (or
ethical) ‘way’ as understood in the Confucian school. And the
‘name’ which is said to be not the real Name refers to the so-called
‘names’ of the Confucianists, such as ‘benevolence’ , ‘righteousness’ ,
‘wisdom’, etc., which the Confucianists consider cardinal virtues.
As to the meaning of the word ‘way’ (tao) as it was originally used
by Confucius himself and his circle, authentic information is fur-
nished by the Lun Yu (‘The Analects’). Entering into the fine details
of the problem would lead us too far beyond the scope of the present
study. Here I shall confine myself to giving a few examples just to
clarify the most essential characteristics of the Confucian concept of
tao.
Master Yu (one of the disciples of Confucius) once remarked: Those
who are by nature filial and fraternal (i.e., those who behave with an
inborn goodwill toward their parents and elder brothers) at home are
seldom inclined (in public life) toward comporting themselves
against the will of their superiors. And (of those who do not comport
themselves against the will of their superiors) none, indeed, has ever
wanted to stir up confusion (in society).
(The observation of this fact makes us realize that) the ‘princely man’
should strive (to establish) the root, for the root once established, the
‘way’ (tao) will naturally grow up. The right attitude toward parents
and elder brothers may, in this respect, be considered the root of
‘benevolence’ (or ‘human love ’). 14
It is contextually clear that the ‘way’ in this passage means the
proper ethical attitude of man toward his brethren in society. The
argument is typical of Confucianists. It recognizes man’s inborn
goodwill toward those closest in blood as the ‘root’ or ‘origin’ of
y The Way
human morals. This inborn goodwill, when expanded into a univer-
sal goodwill toward all fellow-members of society, turns into the
§ highest principle of ethical conduct, the ‘way’, as exemplified by the
| virtue of ‘benevolence’.
I Clearly, the conceptual structure of the argument is based on the
*. terms ‘filial piety’, ‘fraternal respect’, and ‘benevolence’. The word
‘way’ is mentioned almost in a casual way. It is not even a key term
p in the real sense of the word.
The Master (Confucius) said: O Shen , 15 my ‘way’ is a unity running
through (all forms of my behavior). Master Tseng respectfully
| replied: Yes!
When the Master left the place, the other disciples asked (Master
Tseng) saying: What did he mean?
Master Tseng said: Our Master’s ‘way’ consists in ‘loyalty’ (i.e., being
loyal or faithful to one’s own conscience) and, ‘kindness’ (i.e., being
■. thoughtful for others, as if their problems were one’s own ). 16
In this passage, the ‘way’ means again the leading principle of
ethical conduct. By the statement: ‘my way is a unity running
through Confucius means to say that although his behavior appears
Y concretely in various forms, there underlies them all a unique
ethical principle. The ‘way , in other words, is here the unifying
principle of all forms of moral conduct.
'■ The Master said: In case the ‘way’ prevails in a state, you may be
fj daring in both speech and action. But in case the ‘way’ does not
prevail, you may be daring in action, but you should be reserved in
speech . 17
Ip Confucius often speaks of the ‘way’ prevailing in a state — or more
literally ‘a state’s possessing the way ’. 18 What is meant by the word
in such contexts is too clear to need elucidation.
"
| The Master said: The ‘way’ of the ‘princely man’ is (manifested) in
&, three (forms). But I myself am equal to none of them. He who is
really virtuous does not worry. He who is really wise is never per-
</ plexed. He who is really bold does not fear.
Master K'ung (one of the disciples of Confucius) said: Master, these
•}' precisely are your own ‘way ’! 19
Vt
ft The interpretation of the word tao may vary more or less in accor-
i dance with contexts, but the fundamental meaning is observable in
: all the uses of the word. It means the right or proper ‘way’ of acting
in social life. The ‘way’ for Confucius is the highest principle of
P ethical conduct.
, It would be going too far to assert that this Confucian concept of
p the ‘ way’ is exclusively human. For, although it is essentially human
and ethical in its concrete manifestation, the concept would seem to
| have in the moral consciousness of Confucius something cosmic as
384
Sufism and Taoism
its metaphysical core. The ‘way’ in its original metaphysical form is
the all-pervading supreme law of Being. The supreme law govern-
ing the working of the universe in general, and governing man as a
part of the whole universe in particular, is called ‘way’ when it is
comprehended by, or reflected in, the consciousness of man. The
highest principle of ethical conduct is, in this sense, nothing other
than a particular manifestation of the universal law of Being in the
form of the supreme law governing the right forms of human life.
The principle of ethical conduct is, for Confucius, by no means a
man-made rule, or set of rules, regulating from outside the behavior
of man. It is a reflection in the human consciousness of the highest
law of the universe. And as such, it is the ‘internalized’ cosmic law
regulating human behavior from within.
Thus to know the ‘way’ does not consist merely in learning the
formal rules of good manners and correct behavior. It consists in
man’s coming into contact with the all-pervading metaphysical law
of the Cosmos through becoming conscious of it. The following very
forceful and passionate statement would sound absurd or even
ridiculous if the Confucian ‘way’ were merely a matter of etiquette
and correct behavior.
The Master said: If a man hears (i.e., understands the profound
meaning of) the ‘way’ in the morning, he may die contented in the
evening . 20
In this ‘cosmic’ aspect, the Confucian conception of the ‘way’ might
be said to have something in common with the Taoist counterpart.
The difference between the two, however, is far more conspicuous
and essential than the point of contact, as we shall see presently.
There is, in any case, a conscious attitude noticeable on the part of
Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu to reject the ‘way’ as understood by Con-
fucius and his followers. The ‘way’, Lao-tzu says, which can be
recognized as the ‘way’ by ordinary people - Confucius and his
followers being their representatives - is not the real Way. The real
Way, or the Absolute in its absoluteness, is not something which an
ordinary mind can become conscious of. How could one ‘know’ it?
How could one ‘hear’ it? It is by nature something unknown,
unknowable and inaudible.
Being essentially unknown and unkowable, the Way is ‘name-
less’. Here agin we encounter Lao-tzu consciously taking up a
position against the Confucian attitude toward the ‘names .
Certainly, Lao-tzu too speaks of ‘names’. The ‘nameless’ Way,
he says, goes on assuming various ‘names’ in its process of
self-determinations.
The Way in its absolute reality has no ‘name’. It is (comparable to)
uncarved wood . 21 . . . Only when it is cut out are there ‘names ’. 22
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385
But there is a basic difference between Lao-tzu and Confucius with
regard to ‘names’ in that Lao-tzu does not regard these ‘names’ as
absolutely established. As we have learnt from the explanation
given by Chuang-tzu of ‘chaotification’ as well as from Lao-tzu’s
thesis that everything in this world is ‘relative’, all ‘names’ - and
ultimately the ‘things’ designated by the ‘names’ - are but of a
relative nature. Confucian ‘realism’ on the contrary, takes the posi-
tion that behind every ‘name’ there is a corresponding objective and
permanent reality. And to the highest Names there correspond the
highest realities. These Names represent the cardinal virtues:
‘benevolence’ , ‘righteousness’ , ‘decorum’ , ‘wisdom’ , ‘truthfulness’ .
Against this, Lao-tzu puts forward the view that Ihese ‘names which
may be mentioned as names’ are not real ‘names’. In his mind, the
Names, or the cardinal virtues, which are so highly valued by the
Confucians are but so many symptoms of degeneration and corrup-
tion, that is, symptoms of men’s having alienated themselves from
the Absolute.
Only when the great Way declines, do ‘benevolence’ and ‘righteous-
ness’ arise. Only when cleverness and sagacity make their appear-
ance do wiles and intrigues arise. Only when the six basic kinship
relations (i.e., the relationships between father and son, elder and
younger brothers, husband and wife) are out of harmony do filial sons
make their appearance. Only when the state falls into confusion and
disorder, do loyal subjects make their appearance . 23
It is only after Virtue is lost that ‘benevolence’ becomes prominent. It
is only after ‘benevolence’ is lost that ‘righteousness’ becomes prom-
inent. And it is only after ‘righteousness’ is lost that ‘decorum’
becomes prominent.
Indeed, ‘decorum’ emerges in an age in which ‘loyalty’ and ‘faithful-
ness’ have become scarce. It marks the beginning of disorder (in
society ). 24
Far from being real values as the Confucians assert, all these so-
called Names are but signs of man’s alienation from Reality. In the
very establishment of these Names as absolute and permanent
values there is an unmistakable indication that the Absolute has
been lost sight of. Speaking more generally, no ‘name’ is absolute.
For, as Lao-tzu says, a ‘name which can be designated by the word
“name” ’ is not the real Name. The only ‘real Name’ (ch’ang ming)
which is absolute is the Name assumed by the Absolute. However,
that absolute Name is, paradoxically, ‘Nameless’, or as we shall see
presently, the ‘Mystery of Mysteries’, the ‘Gate of all Wonders’.
I have just used the phrase: ‘the Name assumed by the Absolute’ .
And in fact, as Lao-tzu himself explicitly admits, the ‘nameless’
Way does assume a more positive ‘name’ at its very first stage of
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self- manifestation or self-determination. That first ‘name’ assumed
by the Absolute in its creative activity is Existence (yu). 2s Lao-tzu,
making a concession to popular parlance, sometimes calls the latter
Heaven and Earth ( t’ien ti ). 26 Strictly speaking, the Way at this stage
is not yet actually Heaven and Earth. It is Heaven and Earth only in
potentia. It is that face of the Absolute by which it turns, so to speak,
toward the world of Being which is to appear therefrom. It refers to
the Absolute as the principle of eternal and endless creativity.
The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The Named is
the Mother of the ten thousand things . 27
But before we go into the details of the problem of the Named, we
must pursue further the ‘nameless’ aspect of the Way.
With a view to making a fresh start in the consideration of this
aspect of the Way, we may conveniently begin by recalling the
opening words of the Tao Te Ching, which has been quoted above 28
and which has led us into a sort of long digression on the fundamen-
tal difference between Confucianism and Taoism regarding the
understanding of ‘way’ (tao) and ‘name’ ( ming ). The passage reads:
The ‘way’ which can be designated by the word ‘way’ is not the real
Way. The ‘name’ which can be designated by the word ‘name’ is not
the real Name.
The same conception of the Way is expressed by Chuang-tzu in a
somewhat different way as follows.
If the Way is made clear, it is no longer the Way . 29
He means to say by this that a thing which can be pointed to as the
Way is not the real Way. And again,
Is there anyone who knows the Way which is not a ‘way ’? 30
This, of course, means that the real Way has no visible form by
which one could designate it by the word ‘way’.
To say that the Way or the Absolute in its absoluteness is ‘name-
less’ , that it refuses to be designated by any ‘name’ whatsoever, is to
say that it transcends all linguistic comprehension. And this is the
same as to say that the Way is beyond the grasp of both thought and
sense perception. The Way is of such a nature that Reason cannot
conceive of it nor the senses perceive it. The Way, in other words, is
an absolute Transcendent.
Even if we try to see it, it cannot be seen. In this respect it is called
‘figureless ’. 31
Even if we try to hear it, it cannot be heard. In this respect it is called
‘inaudibly faint’.
Even if we try to grasp it, it cannot be touched. In this respect it is
called ‘extremely minute’.
The Way
In these three aspects, it is totally unfathomable. They merge into
One . 32
(Ordinarily, the upper part of a thing is brightly visible, while the
lower part is dark and obscure. But this is not the case with the Way.)
Upward, it is not bright. Downward, it is not dark.
It continues interminably like a thread, but no name can be given to
it. And (this interminable creative activity) ultimately returns to the
original Nothingness.
Shall we describe it as a shapeless Shape, or imageless Image? Shall
we describe it as something vague and undeterminable? Standing in
front of it, we do not see its head. Following behind it, we do not see
its rear . 33
Thus the ‘namelessness’ of the Way is the same as its being Non-
Being. For whatever is absolutely imperceptible and inconceivable,
whatever has no ‘image’ at all, is, for man, the same as ‘non-
existent’. It is ‘Nothing’ (wu ). i4
It is important to notice that the Way appears as ‘Nothing’ only
when looked at from our point of view. It is Nothing for us because it
transcends human cognition. It is, as Islamic philosophers would
say, a matter oiitibar or (human) ‘viewpoint’. Otherwise, the Way
in itself is - far from being ‘nothing’ - Existence in the fullest sense
of the term. For it is the ultimate origin and source of all Being.
For ordinary human consciousness the Way is Nothing. But it is
not ‘nothing’ in a purely negative sense. It is not a passive ‘nothing’ .
It is a positive Nothing in the sense that it is Non-Being pregnant
with Existence.
It goes without saying that this positive aspect of the Way is far
more difficult to explain than its negative side. Properly speaking it
is absolutely impossible to explain it verbally. As we have just seen,
the reality of the Way is indescribable and ineffable. And yet
Lao-tzu does try to describe it, or at least to give some hints as to
how we should ‘feel’ its presence in the midst of the world of Being.
Quite naturally, the hints are extremely dim and obscure. They are
of necessity of a symbolic nature.
The Way in its reality is utterly vague, utterly indistinct . 35
Utterly indistinct, utterly vague, yet there is within it an Image.
Utterly vague, utterly indistinct, yet there is within it Something.
Utterly profound, utterly dark, yet there is within it the purest
Essence.
The purest Essence is extremely real.
(Eternally and unchangingly its creativeness is at work, so that) from
of old till now its Name 36 has never left it. Through this Name it
governs the principles of all things.
How do we know that it is so with the principles of all things? From
what I have just said . 37
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Sufism and Taoism
Thus the Way in its purely negative aspect which is absolutely
beyond human cognition is Nothing and Non-Being. In this aspect
the Way has no ‘name’ whatsoever. Even the word ‘way’ ( tao ) is
properly inapplicable to it. It is ‘nameless’.
This absolutely intangible and impenetrable Mystery steps out of
its own darkness and comes a stage closer to having a ‘name’ . It is, at
this stage of self- manifestation, a faint and shadowy ‘Image’. In the
Image we feel vaguely the presence of Something awful and mys-
terious. But we do not yet know what it is. It is felt as Something but
it has still no ‘name’.
In the first part of the present study we saw how, in the metaphys-
ical system of Ibn ‘ Arab!, the Absolute in its absoluteness is ‘name-
less’ . We saw how the Absolute in such a state is even beyond the
stage at which it is properly to be designated by the name Allah.
Likewise in Lao-tzu, this Something is made to be antecedent even
to God (lit. the heavenly Emperor).
Unfathomably deep it is like the ancestor of the ten thousand things
Like a deep mass of water it is (and nothing is visible on the surface),
yet Something seems to be there.
I know not whose son it is . 38
It would seem to be antecedent even to the Emperor (i.e., God . 39
This ‘nameless’ Something, in its positive aspect, i.e., in its eternal
and everlasting creativeness, may be ‘named’ provisionally the
‘way’. Lao-tzu himself admits that it is a provisional ‘name’. But of
all the possible provisional ‘names’, the ‘way’ is the representative
one. Actually, Lao-tzu proposes several other ‘names’ for the Way,
and points out several typical ‘attributes’, each one of which refers
to this or that particular aspect of the Way . 40
There is Something, formless but complete , 41 born before Heaven
and Earth.
Silent and void, it stands alone , 42 never changing. It goes round
everywhere, never stopping . 43 It may be considered the Mother of
the whole world . 44
I know not its ‘name’. Forging a pseudonym, I call it the ‘Way’.
Being forced to name it (further), I call it ‘Great’.
Being ‘Great’ would imply ‘Moving-forward ’. 45 ‘Moving-forward’
would imply ‘Going-far ’. 46 And ‘Going-far’ would imply ‘Turning-
back’ . 47
In the passage just quoted Lao-tzu suggests the possibility of the
Absolute being named in various ways. At the same time, however,
he makes it clear that all these ‘Names’ or ‘attributes’ are provi-
sional, relative, and partial. For instance, he proposes to call the
Absolute the ‘Great’. He is justified in doing so because the Abso-
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lute or the Way is ‘great’. But it is, we have to remember, ‘great’
only in a certain sense, from a particular standpoint. To look upon
the Way as something ‘great’ represents but one particular point of
view which we human beings take with regard to the Absolute. This
naturally implies that there is also a certain respect in which the Way
should be called ‘small’. It can be considered ‘great’; it can be
considered ‘small’. Both ‘names’ are right, but neither of them can
do full justice to its reality.
In this respect, the Way is comparable to a water plant adrift,
turning this way or that. It has no fixity. Having no fixity, it accepts
any ‘name’, but no ‘name’ can represent it perfectly.
The great Way is like a thing drifting on the water. It goes every-
where, left and right.
The ten thousand things owe their existence to it. And yet it does not
boast (of its own creative activity). It accomplishes its work, yet
makes no claim. It clothes and nourishes the ten thousand things, yet
never domineers over them. Being absolutely free of desire, it may be
called ‘Small’.
The ten thousand things go back to it, yet it makes no claim to being
their Master. In this respect, it may also be called ‘Great ’. 48
This difficulty which we inevitably encounter in attempting to give a
proper ‘name’ to the Absolute is due not only to the fact that it is
essentially ‘nameless’ but also to the fact that the Absolute is not a
‘thing’ in the sense in which we usually understand the term ‘thing’.
The descriptive power of human language is tragically limited. The
moment we linguistically designate a state of affairs, whether
metaphysical or empirical, by a noun, it becomes reified, that is, it
turns into a ‘substance’ in our representation. We have earlier
referred to the Absolute as Something; but ‘Something’ is in our
imagination some substance, however mysterious it may be. And
exactly the same is true of such ‘names’ as ‘Mother’, ‘Way’, etc., or
even ‘Nothing’.
The Absolute which we designate by these ‘names’, however, is
not a ‘substance’. And it should not be understood as a ‘substance’.
This is the reason - or at least one of the main reasons - why Lao-tzu
emphasizes so much that all the ‘names’ he proposes are nothing
but makeshifts. Whatever ‘name’ he may use in referring to the
Absolute, we should try not to ‘reify’ it in understanding what he
says about it. For as a ‘thing’ in the sense of a ‘substance’, the
Absolute is ‘nothing’. How can a thing be a ‘substance’ when it is
absolutely ‘formless’ , ‘invisible’ , ‘inaudible’ , ‘intangible’ , and ‘taste-
less ’? 49 The Absolute is ‘Something’ only in the sense of an Act, or
the act of Existence itself. Scholastically we may express the concep-
tion by saying that the Absolute is Actus Purus. It is Actus Purus in
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the sense that it is pre-eminently ‘actual’ , and also in the sense that it
exists as the very act of existing and making ‘things’ exist. The
following words of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu makes this point clear.
Lao-tzu says:
He who goes through the world, holding in hand the great Image , 50
wherever he may go will meet with no harm . 51 Safe, tranquil and calm
he will always remain.
Beautiful music and delicious food will make wayfarers stop. The
Way, on the contrary, uttered in words is insipid and flavorless.
One looks at it, and finds it unworthy to be seen.
One listens to it, and finds it unworthy to be heard.
Yet when one uses it, one finds it inexhaustible . 52
The loudest sound is hardly audible.
The greatest Image has no form.
The Way is hidden and has no name. And yet it is the Way alone that
really excels in bestowing help and bringing things to completion . 53
And Chuang-tzu:
The Way does have a reality and its evidence . 54 But (this does not
imply that it) does something intentionally. Nor does it possess any
(tangible) form. So it may be transmitted (from heart to heart among
the ‘true men’), but cannot be received (as in the case of a thing
having an external form). It may be intuited, but cannot be seen.
It is self-sufficient. It has its own root in itself.
It existed even before Heaven and Earth existed. It has unmistakably
existed from ancient times . 55
It is the thing that confers spirituality upon the Spirits. And it is the
thing that makes the Heavenly Emperor (i.e., God) divine.
It produces Heaven. It produces Earth.
It exists even above the highest point of the sky. And yet it is not
‘high ’. 56 It exists even beneath the six directions . 57 And yet it is not
‘deep’.
It was born before Heaven and Earth. And yet it is not ‘ancient’. It is
older than the oldest (historical) time. And yet it is not ‘old ’. 58
Thus Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu agree with each other in asserting
that the Way is actus. It goes without saying that actus exists. But it
does not exist as a ‘substance’ . It should not be ‘reified’ . In order not
to reify it, we have to intuit it. For we cannot possibly imagine,
represent, or conceive the Absolute without turning it into a kind of
‘substance’. Metaphysical or ecstatic intuition is the only possible
means by which we can approach it without doing serious harm to its
image. But an intuition of this sort is open only to those who have
experienced to the utmost limit what Chuang-tzu calls ‘sitting in
oblivion’.
The Way
However this may be, the preceding explanation has at least made it
clear that the Way has two opposite aspects, one positive and the
other negative. The negative side is comparable with the metaphys-
ical Darkness of Ibn ‘Arab!. In the world-view of the latter too, the
Absolute (haqq) in itself, i.e., in its absoluteness, is absolutely
invisible, inaudible and ungraspable as any ‘form’ whatsoever. It is
an absolute Transcendent, and as such it is ‘Nothing’ in relation to
human cognition. But, as we remember, the Absolute in the
metaphysical intuition of the Arab sage is ‘Nothing’, not because it
is ‘nothing’ in the purely negative sense, but rather because it is too
fully existent - rather, it is Existence itself. Likewise, it is Darkness
not because it is deprived of light, but rather because it is too full of
light, too luminous - rather, it is the Light itself.
Exactly the same holds true of the Way as Lao-tzu intuits it. The
Way is not dark, but it seems dark because it is too luminous and
bright. He says:
A ‘way’ which is (too) bright seems dark . 59
The Way in itself, that is, from the point of view of the Way itself, is
bright. But since ‘it is too profound to be known by man ’ 60 it is, from
the point of view of man, dark. The Way is ‘Nothing’ in this sense.
This negative aspect, however, does not exhaust the reality of the
Absolute. If it did, there would be no world, no creatures. In the
thought of Ibn ‘Arab!, the Absolute by its own unfathomable Will
comes down from the stage of abysmal Darkness or ‘nothingness’ to
that of self-manifestation. The Absolute, although it is in itself a
Mystery having nothing to do with any other thing, and a completely
self-sufficient Reality — has another, positive aspect in which it is
turned toward the world. And in this positive aspect, the Absolute
contains all things in the form of Names and Attributes. In the same
way, the Way of Lao-tzu too, although it is in itself Something
‘nameless’, a Darkness which transcends all things, is the ‘Named’
and the ‘Mother of the ten thousand things’. Far from being Non-
Being, it is, in this respect, Being in the fullest sense.
The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The Named is
the Mother of ten thousand things . 61
This passage can be translated also as follows:
The term ‘Non-Being’ could be applied to the beginning of Heaven
and Earth. The term ‘Being’ could be applied to the Mother of ten
thousand things.
Whichever translation we may choose, the result comes to exactly
the same thing. For in the metaphysical system of Lao-tzu, the
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‘Nameless’ is, as we have already seen, synonymous with ‘Non-
Being’, while the ‘Named’ is the same as ‘Being’.
What is more important to notice is that metaphysically the
Nameless or Non-Being represents a higher - or more fundamental
- stage than the Named or Being within the structure of the Abso-
lute itself. Just as in Ibn ‘Arab! even the highest ‘self-manifestion’
(tajalli) is a stage lower than the absolute Essence ( dhat ) of the
Absolute, so in Lao-tzu Being represents a secondary metaphysical
stage with regard to the absoluteness of the Absolute.
The ten thousand things under Heaven are born out of Being (yu ),
and Being is born out of Non-Being (wu). 62
If we put these two passages side by side with each other, we
understand that in Lao-tzu’s conception the Absolute in its ultimate
metaphysical stage is the Nameless and Non-Being, while at the first
stage of the emergence of the world it becomes the Named and
Being. The expression: ‘the beginning of Heaven and Earth’ , which
Lao-tzu uses in reference to the Nameless, would seem to suggest
that he is here considering the Absolute in terms of a temporal
order. And we must admit that only from such a point of view can
we properly talk about the ‘creation’ or ‘production’ of the world.
The temporal expression, however, does not do full justice to the
reality of the matter. For, as in the case of the successive stages of
Divine self-manifestation in Ibn ‘Arabl’s metaphysics, the ‘begin-
ning’ here in question is not properly speaking a temporal concept.
It simply refers to that aspect of the Absolute in which it embraces in
itself ‘the myriad things under Heaven’ in the state of potentia.
Otherwise expressed, the Absolute qua the myriad things in the
state of metaphysical concealment is the Beginning. The Beginning
in this sense is the same as Non-Being. We would make the meaning
of the word ‘Beginning’ more understandable if we translate it as
the ‘first principle’ or the Urgrund of Being.
The concept of ‘production’, or ‘coming-into-being’ of all exist-
ent things, is also non-temporal. In our temporal representation,
the ‘coming-into-being’ is a process , the initial stage of which is
Non-Being and the last stage of which is Being. Metaphysically,
however, there can be no temporal development in the Absolute.
The Absolute, for Lao-tzu, is both Non-Being and Being, the
Nameless and the Named at the same time.
Lao-tzu describes the relationship between Non-Being and
Being in the following way.
In its state of eternal (or absolute) Non-Being one would see the
mysterious reality of the Way. In its state of eternal Being one would
see the determinations of the Way.
These two are ultimately one and the same. But once externalized,
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The Way
they assume different names (i.e., ‘Non-Being’ and ‘Being’). In (the
original state of) ‘sameness’, (the Way) is called the Mystery. The
Mystery of Mysteries it really is! And it is the Gateway of myriad
Wonders. 63
The Non-Being (or Nameless) in which the mysterious Reality
{miao) M is to be observed would correspond to the state of the
Absolute ( haqq ), in the conception of Ibn ‘ Arabi, before it actually
begins to work in a creative way. And the Being (or Named) in
which the Way manifests itself in infinite ‘determinations’ ( chiao ) 65
would find its counterpart, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’s thought, in the state of the
Absolute when its creative activity spreads itself, as the Breath of
the Merciful, being ‘determined’ in an infinite number of things.
It is remarkable that in this passage Lao-tzu goes beyond even the
distinction between Being and Non-Being. Non-Being is surely the
ultimate metaphysical principle, the most fundamental source of
Being. It is the Way, just as Being also/5 the Way. And yet, since it is
here conceptually opposed to ‘Being’, it cannot be the last thing.
The basic opposition itself must be transcended. And Lao-tzu sees
beyond the opposition of Being and Non-Being Something abso-
lutely ineffable which he symbolically calls hsiian . 66 The word origi-
nally means ‘black’ with a mixture of redness, a very appropriate
term for something absolutely ‘invisible’ , an unfathomable Mystery
(‘black’), but revealing itself, at a certain stage, as being pregnant
with the ten thousand things (‘red’) in their state of potentiality. In
this Mystery of Mysteries Lao-tzu sees the Absolute in a state in
which even Being and Non-Being are not yet distinguished from
each other, an ultimate metaphysical state in which ‘these two are
one and the same thing’.
The Absolute or the Way, in so far as it is the Mystery of
Mysteries, would seem to have nothing to do with the phenomenal
world. But, as we have just observed, in the utter darkness of this
great Mystery (‘black’), we already notice a faint foreboding (‘red’)
of the appearance of phenomenal things. And the Mystery of Mys-
teries is at the same time said to be the ‘Gateway of myriad Won-
ders’. In the following chapter we shall be concerned with the
process by which the ten thousand things stream forth out of this
Gateway.
Notes
1 . m®, xiv.
2. m, XL.
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Sufism and Taoism
3. See Chapter IV.
4. yen, = .
5. lei, m.
6. See above, Chapter VI.
7. II, p. 79.
8 . .
9. Tao Te Ching, XXXII. The word ch’ang here is synonymous with ig ( chen )
meaning ‘true’ or ‘real’. Fora similar use of the word, see XVI, XXVIII, LII, LV. The
original meaning of the word ch’ang is ‘constant’ or ‘(eternally) unalterable’. Han Fei
Tzu in his chapter on the Interpretation of Lao-tzu says: ‘Those
things that flourish first but later decay cannot be called ch’ang. Those things only
deserve to be called ch’ang which came into being together with the separation of
Heaven and Earth and which will neither die nor decay even when Heaven and Earth
will be dispersed into nothing. That which is really ch’ang never changes.’ The ch’ang
is, in brief, the true reality which remains for ever unalterable.
10. XIV.
11. XLI.
12. Note again the use of the word ch’ang in the sense of ‘real’, ‘eternal’, ‘unalter-
able’ or ‘absolute’.
13. I.
14. Confucian Analects, I, 2.
15. Confucius addresses himself to his disciple Master Tseng.
16. Analects, IV, 15.
17. ibid., XIV, 4.
18. See VIII, 13; XIV, 1.
19. ibid., XIV, 30.
20. ibid., IV, 8.
21. p’u , meaning ‘uncarved block’. The uncarved block from which all kinds of
vessels are made is still ‘nameless’. Only when it is carved into vessels does it acquire
various ‘names’.
22. Tao Te Ching, XXXII. ‘Being cut out’ (chih $J ) is a symbolic expression for the
‘nameless’ Way becoming ‘determined’ into myriad things.
23. ibid., XVIII.
24. ibid., XXXVIII.
5 .
25. *.
26.
27. op. cit., I.
28. See p. 99.
29. Chuang-tzu, II, p. 83.
30. ibid., II, p. 83.
31. % meaning ‘dim and figureless’.
32. The three aspects represent sense perception in general. The Way is beyond the
reach of sense perception so that at the ultimate limit of the latter the Way only
appears as an unfathomable and imperceptible One. Everything supposedly percept-
ible is ‘merged into’ it; that is to say, it has absolutely no articulation.
33. Tao Te Ching, XIV.
34. ibid., XL.
35. i.e., a metaphysical state in which Being and Non-Being are indistinguishable
from each other.
36. In this passage Lao-tzu is trying to describe the absolute One which is both
Non-Being and Being at the same time. The two aspects are in fact indistinguishable
from one another. But if we concentrate our attention upon the positive side, the
Way appears first as a vague and obscure Image of Something, then as a pure Reality
which is eternally creative. In this aspect and at this stage the Way has an eternal
Name: yu or Existence.
37. op. cit., XXL
38. ‘Nobody knows who is the father of the Absolute.’ That is to say, the Way has no
‘cause’ for its existence; it is its own cause.
39. op. cit., IV.
40. op. cit., XXV.
41. hun ch’eng Mlfc.
42. tu li 354, ‘standing alone’ , that is ‘self-sufficient’ , an expression corresponding to
the Arabic term ghani.
43. See SiSg 1921 ,adloc:Mh\m%%Lm. eLiUfflanf#
KSfllfl Pb&ffJ, & TT&J IgTit, f? rjHfjj #«)£_].
44. 55T,‘ all-under- Heaven’. Ma Hsu Lun proposes to read:
‘Heaven and Earth’, which is most probably right. The reading is based on an old
edition (7g®x; r of the Sung Dynasty. It accords with the expres-
sion: ‘born before Heaven and Earth’ which is found in the first sentence of the
present passage.
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396 Sufism and Taoism
45. ‘ Moving-forward’ means that the working of the ‘ Great’ permeates Heaven and
Earth without being obstructed.
46. i.e., the working of the ‘forward-mover’ goes to the extremity of the world of
Being.
47. ‘Turning-back’ means returning to the original point of departure, so that the
metaphysical movement of the Way forms a big universal circle. And being circular,
it never comes to an end.
48. op. cit., XXXIV.
49. ibid., XXXV.
50. ta hsiang (r$j=r|g<j)- For the expression ta hsiang in the sense of ‘great
Image’, see the next quotation from the Tao Te Ching. Compare also XXI which has
been quoted above (p. 106), where Lao-tzu uses the word hsiang ‘(a faint and
shadowy) Image (of Something beyond)’ in reference to the first self-manifestation
of the Absolute.
51. See Chuang-tzu, I, pp. 30-31: ‘Nothing can harm this man. Even if flood waters
reach the sky, he will never be drowned. Even if in a burning heat metals and stones
begin to flow and the earth and mountains are burned down, he alone will never feel
hot.’
52. Tao Te Ching, XXXV.
53. ibid., XLI.
54. , The Way possesses a reality as actus, and it presents unmistak-
able evidence of its existence in the effects it produces.
55. We have already seen above how Chuang-tzu solves the problem of the Begin-
ning of the Way. The statement: ‘It has unmistakably existed from ancient times’
should not tempt us into imagining that Chuang-tzu recognizes a ‘ beginning-point’ in
‘ancient times’ or ‘eternity’. It is merely a figure of speech. It is significant in this
connection that Chuang-tzu, a few paragraphs down in the same chapter, calls the
Way i shih (gft/f) meaning literally ‘likening to a beginning’. The Way is so called
because it is something to be ‘ likened to a thing having a beginning’ , or more exactly,
something which looks as if it had a beginning, though in reality it has none.
56. ‘High’ is, as we have seen, a relative concept which cannot be applied to the
Absolute.
57. The ‘six directions’ means the whole universe.
58. Chuang-tzu, VI, p. 247.
59. Tao Te Ching, XLI.
60. ibid., XV.
61. ibid., I.
I
1
i'
|
n
The Way 397
62. ibid., XL. See also XLI quoted above, which reads: The Way in its absolute
reality has no ‘name’. It is (comparable to) uncarved wood. Only when it is cut out are
there ‘names’.
63. ibid., I.
64. fcl>, meaning something unfathomably profound and mysterious.
65. (*, literally meaning a ‘fortress in a frontier district’; and by extension a ‘border’
or ‘limit’.
66 . X.
VIII The Gateway of Myriad
Wonders
We have learnt in the preceding chapter that the name ‘Way’ is,
after all, but a makeshift, a forced expression for what is properly
not to be named. The word ‘Way’ is a symbol conveniently
chosen for referring to Something which is, strictly speaking,
beyond even symbolic indication. With this basic understanding,
however, we may use - as Lao-tzu himself does - the term
in describing the metaphysical world-view of Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu.
It will be clear that, of the three primary aspects of the Absolute,
which Lao-tzu distinguishes: the Mystery ( hsuan ), Non-Being {wu),
and Being (yw), the first alone is the one to which the word ‘Way’
properly and directly applies. The rest, that is, Non-Being, Being,
and even the ‘ten thousand things’ that effuse from the latter, are, all
of them without exception, the Way, but not primarily. They are the
Way in the sense that they represent various stages of the Mystery of
Mysteries as it goes on determining itself. In other words, each one
of them is the Way in a secondary, derivative, and limited sense,
although in the- case of Non-Being, which is nothing but pure
Negativity, ‘limitation’ or ‘determination’ is so weak and slight
that it is almost the same as ‘non-limitation’.
It is true, however, that even the stage of Non-Being is not the
ultimate and absolute stage of the Way, as long as the concept of
‘Non-Being’ is understood in opposition to, and in contradistinction
from, that of ‘Being’. In order to reach the ultimate and absolute
stage of the Way in this direction, we have to negate, as Chuang-tzu
does, the concept itself of Non-Being and the very distinction
between Non-Being and Being, and conceptually posit No- [Non-
Being], more exactly, No-[No Non-Being]. This we have learnt in
the first part of the preceding chapter.
In the present chapter we shall no longer be primarily concerned
with this absolute aspect of the Way, but rather with that aspect in
which it turns toward the empirical or phenomenal world. Our
major concern will be with the problem of the creative activity of the
Way. This being the case, our description here will begin with the
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 399
stage which stands slightly lower, so to speak, than that of the
Mystery of Mysteries.
I have just used the phrase: ‘the stage which stands slightly lower
than that of the Mystery of Mysteries’ . But it is the last and ultimate
stage which we can hope to reach if we, starting from the world of
phenomenal things, go up stage after stage in search of the Abso-
lute. For, as we have seen above, the Mystery per se has nothing to
do with the phenomenal world. And this makes us understand
immediately that when Lao-tzu says:
The Way is the Granary 1 of the ten thousand things , 2
he refers by the word Way to the ‘stage which is slightly lower’ than
the Mystery of Mysteries. It is precisely at this stage that the Way is
to be considered the Granary of the ten thousand things. It is at this
stage that it begins to manifest its creativity. The word ‘granary’
clearly gives the image of the Absolute as the very ontological
source of all things in the sense that all things are contained therein
in the state of potentiality. Lao-tzu refers to this aspect of the
Absolute as ‘the eternal (or absolute) Non-Being’ or the ‘Name-
less’ . It is to be noted that the ‘ Nameless’ is said to be the ‘ Beginning
of Heaven and Earth’. 3 The Absolute at the stage of ‘Nameless’ or
‘Non-Being’ is actually not yet Heaven and Earth. But it is destined
to be Heaven and Earth. That is to say, it is potentially already
Heaven and Earth. And the expression: ‘Heaven and Earth’ is here
clearly synonymous with the more philosophical term, ‘Being’.
At this juncture, Lao-tzu introduces into his system another impor-
tant term, ‘ One’ . In the first part of the present study we saw how the
concept of ‘one’ in the forms of ahadiyah and wahidiyah plays a
decisive role in the thought of Ibn ‘Arabi concerning the ‘self-
manifestations’ ( tajalliyat ) of the Absolute. No less an important
role does the concept of ‘one’ play in the thought of Lao-tzu.
For Lao-tzu, the One is something closest to the Way; it is almost
the Way in the sense of the Mystery of Mysteries. But it is not
exactly the Way as the Mystery. Rather, it is an aspect of the latter.
It represents the stage at which the Way has already begun to move
positively toward Being.
A very interesting explanation of the whole situation is found in a
passage of the Chuang-tzu , in a chapter entitled ‘On Heaven and
Earth’. The chapter is one of the ‘Exterior Chapters’ (wai p’ien), 4
and may not be from the pen of Chuang-tzu himself. But this does
not detract from the importance of the idea itself expressed in the
passage. It reads as follows:
Before the creation of the world , 5 there is only No- [Non-Being ] 6
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Sufism and Taoism
(Then) there appears the Nameless. The latter is that from which the
One arises.
Now the One is there, but there is no form yet (i.e., none of the
existential forms is manifest at this stage). But each (of the ten
thousand things) comes into existence by acquiring it (i.e., the One,
by participation). In this particular respect, the One is called Virtue . 7
Thus (the One at the stage of being itself) does not manifest any form
whatsoever. And yet it contains already (the potentiality of) being
divided (into the ten thousand things).
Notwithstanding that, (since it is not yet actually divided) it has no
break. This (potentiality of being divided and diversified into myriad
things) is called the Command . 8
This important passage makes it definitely clear that the One is not
exactly the same as the Way qua the Mystery. For in the former
there is observable a sort of existential potentiality, whereas the
latter allows of no potentiality, not even a shadow of possibility. It is
the absolute Absolute.
At the stage of One, the Way is found to be already somehow
‘ determined’ , though it is not yet fully ‘ determined’ or ‘limited’ . It is,
according to the explanation given by Chuang-tzu, a metaphysical
stage that comes after the Nameless (or Non-Being) which, again,
comes after the original No- [Non-Being]. And as such, it is a half-
way stage between pure Non-Being and pure Being. It stands at the
end of Non-Being and at the initial point of Being.
The One is, thus, not yet actually Being, but it is potentially
Being. It is a metaphysically homogeneous single plane which is not
yet externally articulated; it is a unity which is going to diversify
itself, and in which the creative activity of the Way will be fully
manifested.
The whole process by which this creative activity of the Way is
manifested in the production of the world and the ten thousand
things is described by Lao-tzu in the following way.
The Way begets ‘one’; ‘one’ begets ‘two’; ‘two’ begets ‘three’; and
‘three’ begets the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things carry on their backs the Yin energy 9 and
embrace in their arms the Yang energy 10 and the two (i.e., Yin and
Yang) are kept in harmonious unity by the (third) energy emerging
out of (the blending and interaction of) them . 11
From the Way as the metaphysical Absolute - or more strictly, from
the metaphysical Absolute at the stage of Non-Being - there
emerges the One. The One is, as we have just seen, the metaphysical
Unity of all things, the primordial Unity in which all things lie
hidden in a state of ‘chaos’ without being as yet actualized as the ten
thousand things.
From this Unity there emerges ‘two’, that is, the cosmic duality of
401
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders
Heaven and Earth. The former symbolizes the principle of Yang,
the latter that of Yin. At this stage , the Way manifests itself as Being
and the Named. The Named, as we have learnt from a passage
quoted earlier, 12 ‘is the Mother of the ten thousand things’. Before
the ‘two’ can begin to work as the ‘Mother of ten thousand things’,
however, they have to beget the third principle, the ‘vital force of
harmony’ formed by the interaction and mixture of the Yin and the
Yang energy. The expression: ‘two begets three’ refers to this phase
of the creation of the world.
The combination of these three principles results in the produc-
tion of the ten thousand things. Thus it comes about that everything
existent, without exception, has three constituent elements: (1) the
Yin which it ‘carries on its back’ - a symbolic expression for the Yin
being negative, passive ‘shadowy’ and ‘dark’ - (2) the Yang which it
‘embraces in its arms’ - a symbolic expression for the Yang being
positive, bright and ‘sunny’ — and (3) the vital force which harmon-
izes these two elements into an existential unity.
It is to be remarked that Heaven and Earth, that is, the Way at the
stage of Being, or the Named, is considered the ‘Mother of the ten
thousand things’. There is a firm natural tie between the ‘Mother’
and her ‘children’. This would seem to suggest that the ‘ten
thousand things’ are most intimately related with Heaven and
Earth. The former as the ‘children’ of the latter provide the most
exact image of the Way qua the Named.
All things under Heaven have a Beginning, which is to be regarded as
the Mother of all things.
If one knows the ‘mother’, one knows the ‘child’. And if, after having
known the ‘child’ one goes back to the ‘mother’ and holds fast to her,
one will never fall into a mistake until the very end of one’s life . 13
These words describe in a symbolic way the intimate ontological
relationship between the Way at the stage of the Named, or Being,
and the phenomenal world. The phenomenal things are to be
regarded as the ‘children’ of the Named. That is to say, they are not
to be regarded as mere objective products of the latter; they are its
own flesh and blood. There is a relationship of consanguinity be-
tween them.
And since the Named, or ‘ Heaven and Earth’ , is nothing else than
a stage in the self-evolvement of the Way itself, the same relation-
ship must be said to hold between the Way and the phenomenal
things. After all, the phenomenal things themselves are also a stage
in the self-evolvement of the Way.
I have just used the expression: ‘the self-evolvement of the Way’ .
But we know only too well that any movement on the part of the
Way toward the world of phenomena begins at the stage of the One.
402 Sufism and Taoism
The One represents the initial point of the self-evolvement of the
Way. All things in the phenomenal world partake of the One. By
being partaken of in this way, the One forms the ontological core of
everything. The Way per se, that is, qua the Mystery, is beyond that
stage. Thus Lao-tzu often mentions the One when he speaks about
the phenomenal things partaking of the Way. In a looser sense, the
word ‘Way’ may also be used in that sense, and Lao-tzu does use it
in reference to that particular aspect of the Way. But in the most
rigorous usage, the ‘One’ is the most appropriate term in contexts of
this sort.
Heaven, by acquiring the One, is serene.
Earth, by acquiring the One, is solid.
The Spirit, by acquiring the One, exercise mysterious powers.
The valleys, by acquiring the One, are full.
The ten thousand things, by acquiring the One, are alive.
The lords and kings, by acquiring the One, are the standard of the
world.
It is the One that makes these things what they are.
If Heaven were not serene by the One, it would break apart.
If Earth were not solid by the One, it would collapse . 14
If the Spirits were not able to exercise mysterious powers by the One,
they would cease to be active . 15
If the valleys were not full by the One, they would run dry.
If the ten thousand things were not kept alive by the One, they would
perish.
If the lords and kings were not noble and lofty by the One, they would
be overthrown . 16
The first half of the passage expresses the idea that everything in the,
world is what it is by virtue of the One which ‘it acquires’, i.e.,
partakes of. Viewed from the side of the phenomenal things, what
actually happens is the ‘acquisition’ of the One, while from the side
of the Way, it is the creative activity of the Way as the One.
The second half of the passage develops this idea and emphasizes
the actual presence of the Way in the form of the One in each of the
things that exist in the world, ranging from the highest to the lowest.
The One is present in everything as its ontological ground. It acts in
everything as its ontological energy. It develops its activity in every-
thing in accordance with the latter’s particular ontological struc-
ture; thus, the sky is limpid and clear, the earth solidly settled, the
valley full of water, etc. If it were not for this activity of the One,
nothing in the world would keep its existence as it should.
The Way in this sense is an indwelling principle of all things. It
pervades the whole phenomenal world and its ontological activity
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 403
affects everything. Nothing lies outside the reach of this universal
immanence of the Way.
The Net of Heaven has only wide meshes. They are wide, yet nothing
slips through them . 17
The ‘immanence’ of the Way in the phenomenal world must not be
taken in the sense that something completely alien comes from
outside into the phenomenal world and alights on the things. To put
it in a different way, the phenomenal things are not moved by force
by something which is not of their own. On the contrary, the Way is
‘immanent’ in the sense that the things of the phenomenal world are
so many different forms assumed by the Way itself. And this must
be what Lao-tzu really means when he says that the Way is the
Mother of the ten thousand things’. There is, in this respect, no
ontological discrepancy between the Way and the things that exist
in the world.
Thus, to say that the phenomenal things are as they actually are
by virtue of the activity of the Way is to say that they are what they
are by virtue of their own natures. Lao-tzu speaks in this sense of
‘the natures - or Nature - of the ten thousand things’. 18 It is
significant that the original word here translated as ‘nature’, tzu
jan, 19 means literally ‘of-itself it-is-so’. Nothing is forced by any-
thing to be what it is. Everything ‘is-so of-itself’ . And this is possible
only because there is, as I have just said, no ontological discrepancy
between the immanent Way and the things of which it is the vital
principle. The very driving force by which a thing is born, grows up,
flourishes, and then goes back to its own origin - this existential
force which everything possesses as its own ‘nature’ - is in reality
nothing other than the Way as it actualizes itself in a limited way in
everything.
The Way, in acting in this manner, does not force anything. This is
th,e very basis on which stands the celebrated Taoist principle of
‘Non-Doing’ ( wu wei) 20 . And since it does not force anything, each
of the ten thousand things ‘is-so of-itself’. Accordingly the ‘sacred
man’ who, as we shall see later, is the most perfect image of the Way,
does not force anything.
Thus the ‘sacred man’ . . . only helps the ‘being-so-of-itself’ (i.e.,
spontaneous being) of the ten thousand things. He refrains from
interfering with it by his own action . 21
To be calm and soundless - that is the ‘natural’ (or ‘being-so-of-
itself’). This is why a hurricane does not last all morning, and a
rainstorm does not last all day. Who is it that causes wind and rain?
Heaven and Earth. Thus, if even Heaven and Earth cannot perpetu-
ate (excessive states of affairs), much less can man (hope to succeed
in maintaining an ‘unnatural’ state )! 22
404 Sufism and Taoism
This idea of the ‘nature’ or ‘being-so-of-itself’ of the existent things
leads us immediately to another major concept: Virtue (te). 22 In fact
the te is nothing other than the ‘nature’ of a thing viewed as some-
thing the thing has ‘acquired’ . The te is the Way as it ‘naturally’ acts
in a thing in the form of its immanent ontological core. Thus a
Virtue is exactly the same as Nature, the only difference between
them being that in the case of the former concept, the Way is
considered as an ‘acquisition’ of the thing, whereas in the case of the
latter the Way is considered in terms of its being a vital force which
makes the thing ‘be-so of-itself’.
Everything, as we saw above, partakes of the Way (at the stage of
the One). And by partaking of the Way, it ‘acquires’ its own existen-
tial core. As Wang Pi says; 24 ‘The Way is the ultimate source of
all things, whereas the Virtue is what all things acquire (of the
Way)’ . And whatever a thing is, whatever a thing becomes, is due to
the ‘natural’ activity of its own Virtue.
It is characteristic of the metaphysical system of Lao-tzu that
what is here considered the ‘natural’ activity or Virtue of a thing is
nothing other than the very activity of the Way. The Way exercises
its creative activity within the thing in the capacity of the latter’s
own existential principle, so that the activity of the Way is in itself
the activity of the thing. We encounter here something comparable
with Ibn ‘Arabi’s concept of the ‘Breath or the Merciful’ ( al-nafas
al-rahmani), or more generally, the concept of Divine Mercy
( rahmah ), 25 which, issuing forth from the unfathomable depth of
the Absolute, spreads itself over the whole extent of possible Being
and brings into actual existence all the phenomenal things of the
world. It is interesting to note in this connection that in the Book of
Kuan-tzu - spuriously attributed to Kuan Chung, the famous
statesman of the 7th century B.C. - we find this significant state-
ment: ‘Virtue (te) is the Way’s act of giving in charity’, 26 that is,
Virtue is the act of Mercy manifested by the Way toward all things.
And this act of Mercy is concretely observable, as Kuo Mo Jo says,
in the form of the ‘bringing up, or fostering, the ten thousand
things’ .
This conception completely squares with what Lao-tzu remarks
about the activity of Virtue in the following passage.
The Way gives birth to (the ten thousand things), the Virtue fosters
them, things furnish them with definite forms , 27 and the natural
impetus completes their development.
This is why none of the ten thousand things does not venerate the
Way and honor the Virtue. The Way is venerated and its Virtue
honored not because this is commanded by somebody, but they are
naturally so . 28
Thus the Way gives them birth. The Virtue fosters them, makes them
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 405
grow, feeds them, perfects them, solidifies 29 them, stabilizes them , 30
rears them, and shelters them.
In this way, the Way gives birth (to the ten thousand things), and
claims no possession. It does great things, yet does not boast of it.
It makes (things) grow, and yet exercises no authority upon them.
This is what I would call the Mysterious Virtue . 31
We saw earlier how Lao-tzu ‘provisionally’ and ‘by force’ gives
names to the Way, that is, describes it by various attributes. In a
similar way, he distinguishes in Virtue several attributes or qual-
ities. And, accordingly, he refers to Virtue by different ‘names’ , as if
he recognized the existence of various kinds of Virtue. The ‘Mys-
terious Virtue’ (hsuan te) which we have just come across is one of
them. Other ‘names’ are found in the following passage.
The high Virtue (shang te) looks like a valley , 32 as the purest white
seems spoiled.
The ‘wide’ Virtue ( kuang te) looks insufficient.
The ‘firm’ Virtue (chien te) looks feeble.
The ‘simple’ Virtue (chih te ) 33 looks deteriorated.
All these ‘names’, however, do not designate different ‘kinds’ of
Virtue, no less than the different ‘names’ of the Way indicate the
existence of different kinds of Way. They simply refer to different
aspects which we can forcibly’ distinguish in that which is properly
and in itself indeterminable. In this sense, and only in this sense, is
Virtue ‘high’, ‘wide’, ‘firmly-established’, ‘simple’, etc.
There is one point, however, which deserves special mention.
That is the distinction made in the Tao Te Ching between ‘high’
Virtue and ‘low’ Virtue. The distinction arises from the fact that
Virtue, representing as it does concrete forms assumed by the Way
as it actualizes itself in the phenomenal world, is liable to be affected
by ‘unnatural’, i.e., intentional, activity on the part of phenomenal
beings. Quite ironically, Man, who is by nature so made as to be able
to become the most perfect embodiment of Virtue - and hence of
the Way - is the sole creature that is capable of obstructing the full
activity of Virtue. For nothing other than Man acts ‘with intention’.
Things are naturally as they are, and each of them works in accord-
ance with its own ‘nature’. Whatever they do is done without the
slightest intention on their part to do it. Man, on the contrary, may
lower his naturally given Virtue by his very intention to be a
perfect embodiment of the Way and to make his Virtue ‘high’. 35
A man of ‘high’ Virtue is not conscious of his Virtue.
That is why he has Virtue.
A man of ‘low’ Virtue tries hard not to lose his Virtue.
That is why he is deprived of Virtue . 36
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Sufism and Taoism
The ‘high’ Virtue consists in Virtue being actualized completely and
perfectly in man when the latter is not even conscious of his Virtue.
Consciousness obstructs the natural actualization of the Way. And
in such a case, Virtue, which is nothing but the concrete actualiza-
tion of the Way, becomes imperfect and ‘low’. For when a man is
conscious of Virtue, he naturally strives hard ‘never to abandon’ it.
And this very conscious effort hinders the free self-manifestation of
the Way in the form of Virtue.
Virtue in such a case is considered ‘low’, i.e., degenerate and
imperfect, because, instead of being perfectly united with the Way
as it should, it is somehow kept away from the Way, so that there is
observable a kind of discrepancy between the two.
A man of Great Virtue in his behavior follows exclusively (the
Command) of the Way . 37
The ‘low’ Virtue, following as it does the command of human
intention as well as the Command of the Way, and not exclusively
the latter, is no longer Virtue as the most direct actualization of the
Way.
The foregoing discussion most naturally leads us to the problem of
Non-Doing (wu wei).
The Way is eternally active. Its activity consists in creating the ten
thousand things and then - in the particular form of Virtue - in
fostering them and bringing them up to the limit of their inner
possibility. This creative activity of the Way is really great. How-
ever, the Way does not achieve this great work with the ‘intention’
of doing it.
Heaven is long lasting and Earth is long enduring. The reason why
Heaven and Earth are long lasting and long enduring is that they do
not strive to go on living. Therefore they are able to be everlasting . 38
In his passage the Way is referred to as ‘Heaven and Earth’, that is,
the Way at the stage of Heaven and Earth. We already know the
metaphysical implication of this expression. The expression is here
in the proper place because it is precisely at this stage that the
creative activity of the Way is manifested. In the following passage,
Lao-tzu refers ‘Heaven and Earth’ back to their ultimate metaphys-
ical origin.
The Valley-Spirit is immortal. It is called the Mysterious Female . 39
The gateway of the Mysterious Female is called the Root of Heaven
and Earth. (The Way in these various forms) is barely visible, yet it
never ceases to exist. Unceasingly it works, yet never becomes
exhausted . 40
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 407
The Mysterious Female, Lao-tzu says, is unceasingly creative, yet it
never becomes exhausted because it ‘does not do anything’, i.e.,
consciously or intentionally. When we try hard to do something with
the definite intention of doing it, we may achieve that very thing
which we expect to achieve, but nothing else. The field of human
action is, therefore, always limited and determined in varying
degrees by consciousness and intention . The activity of the Way is of
a totally different nature from human action. For the Way acts only
by ‘not acting’.
The Way is permanently inactive, yet it leaves nothing undone . 41
Since, thus, the Way is not conscious of its own creative activity, it is
not conscious of the results of its activity either. The concept of the
Mysterious Virtue, to which reference was made a few pages back,
is based on this very idea. The Way, in this particular aspect, is
infinitely gracious to all things. Its activity is extremely beneficial to
them. And yet it does not count the benefits and favors which it
never ceases to confer upon the things. Everything is done so
‘naturally’ - that is, without any intention on the part of the Way of
doing good to the things - that what is received by the things as
benefits and favors does not in any way constitute, from the point of
view of the Way itself, benefits and favors.
(The Way) gives birth (to the ten thousand things) and brings them
up.
It gives them birth, and yet does not claim them to be its own
possession.
It works, yet does not boast of it. It makes (things) grow, and yet
exercises no authority upon them. This is what I would call the
Mysterious Virtue . 42
The principle of Non-Doing - the principle of leaving everything to
its ‘nature’, and of doing nothing consciously and intentionally -
assumes special importance in the world-view of Lao-tzu in connec-
tion with the problem of the ideal way of life in this world. We shall
come back to this concept in a later chapter. Here I shall be content
with quoting one more passage from the Tao Te Ching , in which
Lao-tzu talks about Non-Doing in reference to both the Way and
the ‘sacred man’ at one and the same time. In this particular passage
the ‘sacred man’ is represented as having made himself so com-
pletely identical with the Way that whatever applies to the latter
applies to the former.
Therefore the ‘sacred man’ keeps to the principle of Non-Doing, and
practises the teaching of No- Words.
The ten thousand things arise (through its, or his, activity), and yet he
(or it) does not talk about it boastfully. He (or it) gives life (to the
408
Sufism and Taoism
things), and yet he (or it) does not claim them to be his (or its) own.
He (or it) works, and yet he (or it) does not boast of his (or its)
own work. He (or it) accomplishes his (or its) task, and yet he (or it)
does not stick to his (or its) own merit. He (or it) does not stick to his
(or its) own merit; therefore it never deserts him (or it ). 43
Thus the Way never makes a boast of its own activity. Whatever it
does, it does ‘naturally’, without the slightest intention of ‘doing’ it.
One may express the same idea by saying that the Way is totally
indifferent to both its creative activity and the concrete results it
produces. The Way does not care about the world it has created In
one sense this might be understood as the Way giving complete
freedom to all things. But in another we might also say that the Way
lacks affection for its own creatures. They are simply left uncared-
for and neglected.
With a touch of sarcasm Lao-tzu speaks of the Way having no
benevolence’ (or ‘humaneness’, jen). The jen, as I have pointed out
earlier, was for Confucius and his disciples the highest of all for
ethical values.
Heaven and Earth lack ‘benevolence’ . They treat ten thousand things
as straw dogs . 44 6
Likewise, the ‘sacred man’ lacks ‘benevolence’. He treats the people
as straw dogs . 45 F F
What Lao-tzu wants to assert by this paradoxical expression is that
the Great Way, because it is great, does not resort, as Confucians
do, to the virtue of jen in its activity. For the jen, in his eye, implies
an artificial, unnatural effort on the part of the agent. The Way does
not interfere with the natural course of things. Nor does it need to
interfere with it, because the natural course of things is the activity
or the Way itself. Lao-tzu would seem to be suggesting here that the
on ucian jen is not the real jen ; and that the real jen consists rather
in the agent’s being seemingly ruthless and yen-less.
There is another important point which Lao-tzu emphasizes very
much in describing the creative activity of the Way. That is the
‘emptiness’ or ‘voidness’ of the Way.
W f. ^ aVC ° ften referred to the conception of the Way as
Nothing’ . There ‘Nothing’ meant the absolute transcendence of the
Way. The Way is considered ‘Nothing’ because it is beyond human
cognition. Just as a light far too brilliant for human eyes is the same
as darkness or lack of light, the Way is ‘Nothing’ or ‘Non-Being’
precisely because it is plenitude of Being. The concept of ‘Nothing’
which is m question in the present context is of a different nature It
concerns the ‘infinite’ creativity of the Way. The Way, Lao-tzu says,
can be infinitely and endlessly creative because it contains within
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders
409
itself nothing substantial. It can produce all things because it has
nothing definite and determined inside it. The Kuan-tzu clearly
reflects this idea when it says; ‘Empty and formless - that is what is
called the Way’ , 46 and ‘The Heavenly Way is empty and formless’ , 47
For this idea Lao-tzu finds in the daily experience of the people
several interesting symbols. An empty vessel, for example:
The Way is an empty vessel . 48 No matter how often you may use it,
you can never 49 fill it up . 50
It is a sort of magical vessel which, being forever empty, can never
be filled up, and which, therefore, can contain an infinity of things.
Looked at from the opposite side, this would mean that the ‘vessel’
is infinitely full because it is apparently empty. Thus we come back
exactly to the same situation which we encountered above in the
first of the two meanings of ‘Nothing’ with regard to the nature of
the Way. The Way, we saw there, is Nothing because it is too full of
Being - rather, it is Being itself - and because, as such, it is abso-
lutely beyond the reach of human cognition. Here again we find
ourselves in the presence of something which looks ‘empty’ because
it is too full. The Way, in other words, is ‘empty’ ; but it is not empty
in the ordinary sense of a thing being purely negatively and pas-
sively void. It is a positive metaphysical emptiness which is
plenitude itself.
Great fullness seems empty. But (its being, in reality, fullness is
proved by the fact that) when actually used, it will never be
exhausted . 51
The Way, in this particular aspect, is also compared to a bellows. It
is a great Cosmic Bellows whose productive activity is never
exhausted.
The space between Heaven and Earth is indeed like a bellows. It is
empty, but it is inexhaustible. The more it works the more comes
out . 52
Lao-tzu in the following passage has recourse to more concrete
and homely illustrations to show the supreme productivity of
‘emptiness’.
(Take for example the structure of a wheel) . Thirty spokes share one
hub (i.e., thirty spokes are joined together round the center of the
wheel). But precisely in the empty space (in the axle-hole) is the
utility of the wheel.
One kneads clay to make a vessel. But precisely in the empty space
within is the utility of the vessel.
One cuts out doors and windows to make a room. But precisely in the
empty space within is the utility of the house. Thus it is clear that if
Being benefits us, it is due to the working of Non-Being . 53
410
Sufism and Taoism
It is, I think, for this reason that the symbol of ‘valley’ plays such a
prominent part in the Tao Te Ching. The valley is by nature hollow
and empty. And precisely because it is hollow and empty, can it be
full. Add to this the fact that the valley always occupies a ‘low’ place
- another important trait of anything which is really high, whether
human or non-human. The valley is thus an appropriate symbol for
the Way understood as the absolute principle of eternal creative-
ness, which is the plenitude of Being because it is ‘empty’, or
‘Nothing’.
We have already quoted two passages in which Lao-tzu uses this
symbol in talking about the inexhaustible creative activity of the
Way.
The Valley-Spirit is immortal . 54
The ‘high’ Virtue looks like a valley . 55
The underlying idea is made more explicitly clear in another place
where Lao-tzu discusses the problem of anything being capable of
becoming truly perfect because it is (apparently) imperfect.
It is what is hollow that is (really) full . 56
Being ‘hollow’ and ‘low’ suggests the idea of ‘female’. This idea too
has already been met with in the foregoing pages. In fact, the
emphasis on the feminine element in the creative aspect of the Way
may be pointed out as one of the characteristic features of Lao-tzu.
It goes without saying that, in addition to the idea of ‘hollowness’
and ‘lowliness’, the ‘female’ is the most appropriate symbol of
fecundity.
The Way, for instance, is the Mother of the ten thousand things.
The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth. The Named is
the Mother of the ten thousand things . 57
All things under heaven have a Beginning which is to be regarded as
the Mother of the world.
If one knows the ‘mother’, one thereby knows the ‘child’. If, after
having known the ‘child’, one holds fast to the ‘mother’, one will
escape error, even to the end of one’s life . 58
The metaphysical implication of the Way being the Mother of all
things and the things being her ‘ children’ has been elucidated earlier
in the present chapter.
We have also quoted in this chapter in connection with another
problem a passage where mention is made of the ‘Mysterious
Female’.
The Valley-Spirit is immortal. It is called the Mysterious Female. The
gateway of the Mysterious Female is called the Root of Heaven and
Earth . 59
411
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders
In the expression: Mysterious Female ( hsuan p’in), we encounter
again the word hsuan 60 which, as we sae above, is used by Lao-tzu in
reference to the Way as the unknown-unknowable metaphysical
Absolute, that is, the Way as it lies even beyond Being and Non-
Being.
The Mystery of Mysteries it really is! And it is the Gateway of myriad
Wonders . 61
It is remarkable, further, that in both passages the endless and
inexhaustible creativeness of the Way is symbolized by the ‘gate-
way’ (men ). 62 And this clearly indicates that the ‘gateway of the
Mysterious Female’ is exactly the same thing as the ‘gateway of
myriad Wonders’ . The Absolute in its active aspect is symbolically
imaged as having a ‘gateway’, or an opening, from which the ten
thousand things are sent out to the world of Being. The image of the
‘female’ animal makes the symbol the more appropriate to the idea
because of its natural suggestion of fecundity and motherhood.
As I pointed out earlier, the image of the ‘female’ in the world-
view of Lao-tzu is suggestive, furthermore, of weakness, humble-
ness, meekness, stillness, and the like. But, by the paradoxical way
of thinking which is peculiar to Lao-tzu, to say that the ‘female’ is
weak, meek, low, etc. is precisely another way of saying that she is
infinitely strong, powerful, and superior.
The female always overcomes the male by being quiet. Being quiet,
she (always) takes the lower position. (And by taking the lower
position, she ends by obtaining the higher position ) 63
As is clear from these words, the weakness of the ‘female’ here
spoken of is not the purely negative weakness of a weakling. It is a
very peculiar kind of weakness which is obtained only by overcom-
ing powerfulness. It is a weakness which contains in itself an infinite
possibility of power and strength. This point is brought into the
focus of our attention by what Lao-tzu says in the following passage,
in which he talks about the basic attitude of the ‘sacred man’ . Since,
as we know, the ‘sacred man’ is for Lao-tzu the perfect per-
sonification of the Way itself, what is said of the former is wholly
applicable to the latter. It is to be noticed that here again the image
of the ‘female’ is directly associated with that of the ‘valley’.
He who knows the ‘male’, yet keeps to the role of the ‘female’, will
become the ‘valley’ of the whole world.
Once he has become the ‘valley’ of the whole world, the eternal
Virtue 64 will never desert him 65
And it is evidently in this sense that the following statement is to be
understood:
412 Sufism and Taoism
‘Being weak' is how the Way works. 66
We have been in what precedes trying to describe the ontological
process - as conceived by Lao-tzu - of the ten thousand things
coming out of the ‘gateway’ of the ‘Absolute. ‘The Way begets One;
One begets Two; Two begets Three. And Three begets the ten
thousand things’. 67 The ten thousand things, that is, the world and
all the things that exist therein, represent the extreme limit of the
ontological evolution of the Way. Phenomenal things, in other
words, make their appearance at the last stage of the Descent of the
Way. From the point of view of phenomenal things, their very
emergence is the perfection of their own individual natures. For it is
here that the Way manifests itself - in the original sense of the
Greek verb phainesthai - in the most concrete forms.
This, however, is not the end of the ontological process of Being.
As in the case of the world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi’ the Descent is
followed by the reversal of the creative movement, that'is, Ascent.
The ten thousand things, upon reaching the last stage of the
descending course, flourish for a while in an exuberance of colors
and forms, and then begin to take an ascending course back toward
their original pre-phenomenal form, that is, the formless Form of
the One, and thence further to ‘Nothing’ , and finally they disappear
into the darkness of the Mystery of Mysteries. Lao-tzu expresses
this idea by the key term: JFu 6S or Return.
The ten thousand things all arise together. But as I watch them, they
‘return’ again (to their Origin).
All things 69 grow up exuberantly, but (when the time comes) every
one of them ‘returns’ to its ‘root’.
The Return to the Root is what is called Stillness. It means returning
to the (Heavenly) Command (or the original ontological allotment of
each). 70
The Return to the Heavenly Command is what is called the Unchang-
ing. 71
And to know the Unchanging is what is called Illumination. 72
The plants grow in spring and summer in full exuberance and
luxuriance. This is due to the fact that the vital energy that lies in
potentia in their roots becomes activated, goes upward through the
stems, and at the stage of perfection becomes completely actualized
in the form of leaves, flowers, and fruits. But with the advent of the
cold season, the same vital energy goes down toward the roots and
ends by hiding itself in its origin. 73
Lao-tzu calls this final state Stillness 74 or Tranquillity. We have
noticed above that ‘ stillness’ is one of his favorite concepts. And it is
easy to see that this concept in its structure conforms to the general
pattern of thinking which is typical of Lao-tzu. For the ‘stillness’ as
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 413
understood in terms of the present context is not the stillness of
death or complete lifelessness. The vital energy hidden in the dark-
ness of the root is actually motionless, but the root is by no means
dead. It is, rather, a stillness pregnant with infinite vitality. Exter-
nally no movement is perceptible, yet internally the incessant
movement of eternal Life is carried on in preparation for the coming
spring.
Thus the creative activity of the Way forms a cyclic process. And
being a cyclic process, it has no end. It is an eternal activity having
neither an initial point nor a final point.
We have also to keep in mind in understanding this idea another
typical pattern of Lao-tzu’s thinking, which we have encountered
several times. I am referring to the fact that Lao-tzu often describes
a metaphysical truth in a temporal form. That is to say, his descrip-
tion of a metaphysical truth in terms of time (and space) does not
necessarily indicate that it is, in his view, a temporal process.
The emanation of the ten thousand things out of the womb of the
Way and their Return to their original source is described in the Tao
Te Ching in a temporal form. And what is thus described is in fact a
temporal process.
Returning is how the Way moves.
Being weak is how the Way works.
The ten thousand things under Heaven are born out of Being. And
Being is born out of Non-Being. 75
But in giving a description of the process in such a form, Lao-tzu is
trying to describe at the same time an eternal, supra-temporal fact
that lies over and above the temporal process. And looked at from
this second point of view, the Return of the phenomenal things back
to their origin is not something that happens in time and space.
Lao-tzu is making a metaphysical statement, referring simply to the
‘immanence’ of the Way. All the phenomenal things, from this point
of view, are but so many forms in which the Way manifests itself
concretely -phainesthai. The things are literally phainomena. And
since it is the Way itself that ‘uncovers itself’ or ‘reveals itself’ in
these things, it is ‘immanent’ in each of them as its metaphysical
ground. And each of the things contains in itself its own source of
existence. This is the metaphysical meaning of the Return. As we
have seen above, the Way in this particular form is called by Lao-tzu
te or Virtue.
Notes
1. ao H (See rn, j»*j rn, ftfe. mUMtoZM, fcflrTgtilj).
414 Sufism and Taoism
2. Tao Te Ching, LXII.
3. ibid., I, quoted and explained toward the end of the preceding chapter.
4. For the significance of this classification, see Chapter I.
5. Here again Chuang-tzu describes the situation in chronological order, in the form
of historical development. But what he really intends to describe thereby is clearly a
metaphysical fact having nothing to do with the ‘history’ of things. The situation
referred to by the expression: ‘before the creation of the world’, accordingly, does
not belong to the past; it directly concerns the present, as it did concern the past and
as it will continue to concern the future forever.
6. In interpreting this opening sentence of the passage I follow Lin Yiin Ming
(of the Ch’ing Dynasty, , ad loc..
who punctuates it:
— • The ordinary reading represented by Kuo Hsiang articulates the sentence
in a different way: r ,ftt£jetc. which may be translated as: ‘Before the
creation of the world there was Non-Being. There was (then) no Being, no Name’.
7. te, Mi. This is, as we shall see, one of the key terms of Lao-tzu. The word te literally
means ‘acquisition’ or ‘what is acquired’, that is, the One as ‘acquired’ by each of the
existent things. This part of the semantic structure of the word is admirably clarified
by the explanation which Chuang-tzu has just given in this passage.
8. ming, ifr , ‘command’ or ‘order’ ; to be compared with the Islamic concept of amr
‘(Divine) Command’. The corresponding concept in Chinese is often expressed by
the compound t’ien ming, meaning ‘ Heavenly Command’ . The underlying idea is that
everything in the world of Being is what it actually is in accordance with the
Command of the One. All things participate in the One and ‘acquire it’, but each of
them ‘acquires it in its own peculiar way. And this is the reason why nothing is exactly
the same in the whole world, although all uniformly owe their existence to the One.
All this would naturally lead to the problem of ‘predestination’, which will be
elucidated in a later context.
9. i.e., the Cosmic element which is ‘shadowy’, dark, negative, and passive.
10. i.e., the ‘sunny’, light, positive element.
11. Tao Te Ching, XLII.
12. Tao Te Ching, I.
13. ibid., LII.
14. a , which is the same as a ( fj®g : rfiStglg. mX ■ K. MBfcj)-
15. which, according to the Shuo Wen, means to ‘take a rest’ (Tift, ,S.tkj).
16. Tao te Ching, XXXIX.
17. op. cit., LXXIII.
18. ibid., LXIV.
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 415
19. B&.
20. feU. The concept will be explained in more detail presently.
21. op. cit., LXIV.
22. ibid., XXIII.
23. See above, note 7.
24. 3ES8 (3rd. century A.D.); ad LI: See also his
words: rfgSflHfc. fcfcURBSBj, ad XXXVIII.
( 25. See Part One, Chapter IX.
\ 26. j T ). For the interpretation of the last word, ■S(she), see
■ Kuo Mo Jo’s remark in the Peking edition of the Kuan-tzu (ITf-ftK), 1965, vol. I,
t pp. 642-644. He says: natfeff, **Jl*«j(‘The
( Way acts, but its figure is invisible. It gives in charity, but its Virtue is invisible’)
I I?*
i
27. i.e., being fostered by Virtue, they grow up and become ‘things’ each having a
f. definite form.
28.
29. (f#3£) or (r$£j), meaning to ‘crystallize’ into a definite
form.
30. !§, (§=;£ (according to rgfjgj).
31. op. cit., LI.
32. ‘Valley’ (£) is a favorite symbol of Lao-tzu, which he uses in describing the
nature of the Way and the nature of the ‘sacred man’.
33. The standard Wang Pi edition reads: Following Liu Shih P’ei
S>J®£ who argues: RS&flF*.
I read:
34. op. cit., XLI.
35. The idea here described is comparable with what Ibn ‘ Arab! observes about Man
being situated in a certain sense on the lowest level on the scale of Being. Inanimate
things have no ‘ego’ . That makes them obedient to God’s commandments uncondi-
tionally; that is to say, they are exposed naked to God’s activity upon them, there
being no hindrance between them. The second position is given to the plants, and the
third to the animals. Man, because of his Reasoi), occupies in this respect the lowest
place in the whole hierarchy of Being.
36. op. cit., XXXVIII.
37. ibid., XXL
38. ibid., VII.
416 Sufism and Taoism
39. The symbol, meaning of the ‘Valley’ and ‘Female’ will be elucidated presently.
40. op. cit., VI.
41. op. cit., XXXVII.
42. ibid., X. The same sentences are found as part of LI which I have already quoted.
43. ibid., II.
44. Straw dogs specially prepared as offerings at religious ceremonies. Before the
ceremonies, they were treated with utmost reverence. But once the occasion was
over, they were thrown away as waste material and trampled upon by the passers-by.
The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 417
62. H.
63. op. cit., LXI.
64. Note again the use of the word ch’ang whose meaning in this context has
been explained earlier; see Chapter VII, Note 9. The ch’ang te, in accordance with
what we have established above is synonymous with ‘high’ Virtue. See in particular
Tao Te Ching, XLI, in which the ‘high’ Virtue is associated with the image of a
‘valley’: ‘The high Virtue looks like a valley’.
65. op. cit., XXVIII.
66. ibid., XL.
45. op. cit., V.
46. J. The second word of this sentence according to the commonly
accepted reading is fa (r j etc.) . That this is wrong has been established by the
editors of the Peking edition (See above, Note, 26), vol. II, pp. 635-636.
47. ibid.
48. itity. As Yii Yueh rightly observes, the character stands for £ which, accord-
ing to the Shuo Wen, means the emptiness of a vessel, (i^ rUT^jVIII: rift# jffigii,
£dtHL igTS: nt&ffiifflij &BHA, USEfflfL M+tlSTt fc
fW^fFSj)-
49. must be emended to X- meaning ‘for an extremely long time’, i.e., ‘forever’ -
on the basis of the reading of a T ang inscription (jgfJifUft: fXTfij); see again Yii
Yueh, ibid.
50. op. cit., IV.
51. ibid. , XLV, r^cag^J. Concerning the character ity, see above, Note 49.
52. ibid., V.
53. ibid., XI.
54. op. cit., VI.
55. ibid., XLI.
56. ibid., XXII.
57. ibid., I, quoted above.
58. ibid., LII, quoted above.
59. ibid., VI.
60. X.
61. op. cit., I. See above, p. 113.
67. ibid., XLII.
68 . m.
69. Here the ten thousand things that grow up with an amazing vitality are compared
to plants that vie with one another in manifesting their vital energy in spring and
summer.
70. ming, fa (=^_fa). For a provisional explanation of t’ien ming (Heavenly Com-
mand), see above, Note 8.
71. ch’ang, $ .
72. ming BJ. The epistemological structure of the experience of Illumination has
been fully elucidated in Chapters VI and V in accordance with what is said concern-
ing it in the Book of Chuang-tzu. The passage here quoted is from the Tao Te Ching,
73. This part of my explanation is an almost literal translation of the comment upon
the passage by Wu Ch’eng Kig (of the Yuan Dynasty, rg« ,
ffnTSTffi ■ &0 Mj.
74. ching, iff .
75. op. cit., XL.
Determinism and Freedom
419
IX Determinism and Freedom
In the previous chapter we came across the concept of the Heavenly
Command ( t’ien ming). The concept is philosophically of basic
importance because it leads directly to the idea of determinism
which, in Western thought, is known as the problem of ‘predestina-
tion’, and in the intellectual tradition of Islam as that of qada and
qadar}
The most interesting part of the whole problem is admittedly its
profound theological implication within the context of monotheistic
religions like Christianity and Islam. The problem as a theological
one might, at first sight, seem to be quite foreign to the world-view
of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. That such is not the case, however, will
become clear if we but remember that Taoism too has its own
theological aspect.
In the foregoing chapters the Way or the Absolute has been
approached almost exclusively from the metaphysical point of view.
We have been, in other words, trying to analyze the metaphysical
aspect of the Way. And with reason. For that, after all, is the most
fundamental theme upon which is based the whole system of Taoist
philosophy.
But the Way as conceived by the Taoist philosophers is not simply
and exclusively the metaphysical Ground of all beings. It is also God
-the Creator (lit. the Maker-of-things , tsao wu che ), Heaven (t’ien),
or the Heavenly Emperor ( t’ien ti ), as He is traditionally called in
Chinese. The ‘personal’ image of the Absolute in ancient China had
a long history prior to the rise of the philosophical branch of Taoism
which we are considering in this book. It was quite a vigorous living
tradition, and exercised a tremendous influence on the historical
molding of Chinese^ culture and Chinese mentality. And we would
make a fatal mistake if we imagined that the Way as conceived - or
‘encountered’, we should rather say - by the Taoist sages were a
purely metaphysical Absolute. For them too the Way was a
metaphysical Absolute as well as a personal God. The image of the
Maker-of-things must not be taken as a metaphorical or figurative
expression for the metaphysical Principle. The Chuang-tzu has a
chapter entitled ‘The Great Lordly Master ’. 2 The title refers to this
‘personal’ aspect of the Way.
If we are to analyze this ‘personal’ concept of the Absolute in
terms of the metaphysical structure of the Way, we should perhaps
say that it correspbnds to the stage of ‘Being’ at which the creative
activity of the Way becomes fully manifested. For, strictly speaking,
the Way at the stage of the Mystery, or even at the stage of Nothing,
is absolutely beyond common human cognition. Just as in the
world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi the word ‘Lord’ (rabb) refers to the
ontological stage at which the Absolute manifests itself through
some definite Name - like Producer, for instance - and not to the
absolute Essence which transcends all determinations and relations,
so is the Taoist concept of ‘Maker-of-things’ properly to be taken as
referring to the self-manifesting, or creative, aspect of the Way, and
not to its self-concealing aspect. All this, however, is but a theoreti-
cal implication of the metaphysical doctrine of Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu. They themselves do not elaborate this point in this
particular form. Besides, the concept of the Absolute as the highest
Lord of Heaven belongs to a particular domain of religious experi-
ence which is of quite a different nature from that of the ecstatic
intuition of the Absolute as the One, then as ‘Nothing’, then as the
Mystery of Mysteries, although it is also true that the two types of
religious experience seem to have greatly influenced each other in
the historical process of the formation of Taoist philosophy, so
much so that the Taoist concept of the Absolute as it actually stands
can justifiably be said to contain two different aspects: metaphysical
and personal.
However this may be, the description given by Chuang-tzu of the
activity of the Great Lordly Master in the administration of the
affairs of the creaturely world is exactly the same as what he and
Lao-tzu say about the working of Nature or the Absolute. The
following is one of a number of passages which could be cited as
evidence in support of this statement.
Oh my Master, my (sole) Master - He cuts the ten thousand things
into minute pieces . 3 And yet He has no consciousness of doing
‘justice’. His bounty extends to the ten thousand generations. And
yet He has no consciousness of doing any particular act of ‘benevol-
ence’ . 4 He is older than the oldest time (of history). And yet he has no
consciousness of being aged. He covers Heaven (which covers every-
thing) and sustains Earth (which sustains everything). He carves and
models all kinds of forms. And yet he has no consciousness of being
skilful . 5
The point I am making will become clear if one compares this
passage with the words of Lao-tzu about the activity of the Way in
the form of Virtue, which were quoted in the previous chapter.
420 Sufism and Taoism
The Way gives birth (to the ten thousand things), yet claims no
possession. It does great things, yet does not boast of it. It makes
things grow, yet exercises no authority upon them. This is what I
would call the Mysterious Virtue . 6
With this general theological background in mind we may rightly
approach the problem of necessity or ‘predestination’ in Taoism. In
discussing this idea, we shall be mainly dependent upon Chuang-
tzu, because he seems to have been particularly interested in the
problem of Necessity and human Freedom within the particular
context of Taoist philosophy.
We have pointed out earlier in this book the central importance
observed of the concept of Chaos in the philosophical system of
Chuang-tzu. We have observed there that, according to Chuang-
tzu, Being which surrounds us from all sides and in which we live as
part of it, reveals itself as a Chaos when we intuit its reality in the
experience of ‘sitting-in-oblivion’. In the ecstatic vision peculiar to
this experience, all things appear ‘chaotified’ . Nothing remains solid
and stable. We witness the amazing scene of all things being freely
and unobstructedly transmuted into one another.
This image of Being must not mislead us into thinking only that
Reality is literally chaotic and nothing but chaotic. Chaos is a
metaphysical reality. But it represents only one aspect of Reality. In
the very midst of this seeming disorder and confusion, there is
observable a supreme order governing all things and events in the
phenomenal world. In spite of their apparent utter confusion, all
things that exist and all events that occur in the world exist and occur
in accordance with the natural articulations of Reality. In this
respect, the world we live in is a world determined by a rigorous
Necessity. And how could it be otherwise? For the ten thousand
things are nothing but forms in which the Absolute appears as it
goes on determining itself; they are so many forms of the self-
revelation of God.
This concept of the ontological Necessity is expressed by
Chuang-tzu by various terms, such as t’ien (Heaven), t’ien li (the
natural course of things determined by Heaven), ming (Command),
and pu te i (‘that which cannot be evaded’).
Chuang-tzu regards ‘living in accordance with the t’ien li ’ as the
ideal way of living in this world for the ‘true man’. The expression
means ‘to accept whatever is given by nature and not to struggle
against it’ . It suggests that there is for everybody and everything a
natural course to take, which has been determined from the very
beginning by Heaven. The world of Being, in this view, is naturally
articulated, and nothing can happen against or outside of the fixed
course. All things, whether inanimate or living, seem to exist or live
Determinism and Freedom 421
: ;C-
in docile obedience to their own destinies. They seem to be happy
and contented with existing in absolute conformity with the inevit-
•• able Law of Nature. They are, in this respect, naturally ‘living in
accordance with the t’ien li ' .
Only Man, of all existents, can and does revolt against the t’ien li.
And that because of his self-consciousness. It is extremely difficult
for him to remain resigned to his destiny. He tends to struggle hard
to evade it or to change it. And he thereby brings discordance into
the universal harmony of Being. But of course all his violent
struggles are vain and useless, for everything is determined eter-
J nally . Herein lies the very source of the tragedy of human existence.
( Is there, then, absolutely no freedom for man? Should he
acquiesce without murmuring in his naturally given situation how-
ever miserable it may be? Does Chuang-tzu uphold the principle of
I negative passivity or nihilism? Not in the least. But how could he,
§ then, reconcile the concept of Necessity with that of human free-
dom? This is the question which will occupy us in the following
§ pages.
§
The first step one has to take in attempting to solve this question
consists in one’s gaining a lucid and deep consciousness that what-
ever occurs in this world occurs through the activity of Heaven -
Heaven here being understood in a ‘personal’ sense. Chuang-tzu
gives a number of examples in the form of anecdotes. Here is one of
them.
A certain man saw a man who had one foot amputated as a
punishment for some crime.
Greatly surprised at seeing the deformity of the man, he cried out:
‘What a man! How has he come to have his foot cut off? Is it due to
Heaven? Or is it due to man?’
The man replied: ‘It is Heaven, not man! At the very moment when
Heaven gave me life, it destined me to become one-footed. (Nor-
mally) the human form is provided with a pair , 7 (i.e., normally man is
born with two feet) . From this I know that my being one-footed is due
to Heaven. It cannot be ascribed to man !’ 8
Not only this and similar individual cases of misery and misfortune -
and also happiness and good fortune - but the very beginning and
end of human existence, Life and Death, are due to the Heavenly
Command. In Chapter III we discussed the basic attitude of
Chuang-tzu on the question of Life and Death, but from an entirely
different angle. There we discussed it in terms of the concept of
Transmutation. The same problem comes up in the present context
in connection with the problem of destiny or Heaven.
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Sufism and Taoism
When Lao-tzu died, (one of his close friends) Ch’in Shih went to the
ceremony of mourning for his death. (Quite perfunctorily) he wailed
over the dead three times, and came out of the room.
Thereupon the disciples (of Lao-tzu) (reproved him for his conduct)
saying, ‘Were you not a freind of our Master?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ he replied.
‘Well, then, is it permissible that you should mourn over his death in
such a (perfunctory) way?’
‘Yes. (This is about what he deserves.) Formerly I used to think that
he was a (‘true’) man. But now I have realized that he was not. (The
reason for this change of my opinion upon him is as follows.) Just now
I went in to mourn him; I saw there old people weeping for him as if
they were weeping for their own child, and young folk weeping for
him as if they were weeping for their own mother. Judging by the fact
that he could arouse the sympathy of his people in such a form, he
must have (during his lifetime) cunningly induced them somehow to
utter words (of sorrow and sadness) for his death, without explicitly
asking them to do so, and to weep for him, without explicitly asking
them to do so . 9
This , 10 however, is nothing but ‘escaping Heaven’ (i.e., escaping the
natural course of things as determined by Heaven), and going against
the reality of human nature. These people have completely forgotten
(from where) they received what they received (i.e., the fact that they
have received their life and existence from Heaven, by the Heavenly
Command). In days of old, people who behaved thus were consi-
dered liable for punishment for (the crime of) ‘escaping Heaven’.
Your Master came (i.e., was born into this world) quite naturally,
because it was his (destined) time (to come). Now he has (departed)
quite naturally, because it was his turn (to go).
If we remain content with the ‘time’ and accept the ‘turn’, neither
sorrow nor joy can ever creep in. Such an attitude used to be called
among the Ancients ‘loosing the tie of the (Heavenly) Emperor ’. 11
The last paragraph of this passage is found almost verbatim in
another passage which was quoted earlier in Chapter III , 12 where
the particular expression: ‘loosing the tie’ appears with the same
meaning; namely, that of complete freedom. And this idea would
seem to indicate in which direction one should turn in order to solve
the problem of the conflict between Necessity and human freedom
on the basis of a lucid consciousness that everything is due to the
Will of Heaven.
The next step one should take consists, according to what
Chuang-tzu observes about ‘loosing the tie of the Heavenly
Emperor’, in one’s becoming indifferent to, or transcending, the
effects caused by the turns of fortune. In the latter half of the
anecdote about the one-footed man, the man himself describes the
kind of freedom he enjoys by wholly submitting himself to whatever
has been destined for him by Heaven. Other people - so the man
Determinism and Freedom
423
observes - might imagine that, being one-footed, he must find his
life unbearable. But, he says, such is not actually the case. And he
explains his situation by the image of a swamp pheasant.
Look at the pheasant living in the swamp. (In order to feed itself) the
bird has to bear the trouble of walking ten paces for one peck, and
walking a hundred paces for one drink. (The onlookers might think
that the pheasant must find such a life miserable.) However it will
never desire to be kept and fed in a cage. For (in a cage the bird would
be able to eat and drink to satiety and) it would be full of vitality, and
yet it would not find itself happy . 13
To be deprived of one foot is to be deprived of one’s so-called
‘freedom’. The one-footed man has to endure inconvenience in
daily life like the swamp pheasant which has to walk so many paces
just for the sake of one peck and one drink. A man of normal bodily
structure is ‘free’ to walk with his two feet. But the ‘freedom’ here
spoken of is a physical, external freedom. What really matters is
whether or not the man has a spiritual, inner freedom. If the man
with two feet does not happen to have inner freedom, his situation
will be similar to that of a pheasant in a cage; he can eat and drink
without having to put up with any physical inconvenience, but, in
spite of that, he cannot enjoy being in the world. The real misery of
such a man lies in the fact that he struggles helplessly to change what
can never be changed, that he has to fret away his life.
Chuang-tzu’ s thought, however, does not stop at this stage. The
inner ‘freedom’ which is based on a passive acceptance of whatever
is given, or the tranquillity of the mind based on mere resignation in
the presence of Necessity, does not for him represent the final stage
of human freedom. In order to reach the last and ultimate stage of
inner freedom, man must go a step further and obliterate the very
distinction - or opposition - between his own existence and Neces-
sity. But how can this be achieved?
Chuang-tzu often speaks of ‘what cannot be evaded’ or ‘that
which cannot be made otherwise’. Everything is necessarily fixed
and determined by a kind of Cosmic Will which is called the Com-
mand or Heaven. As long as there is even the minutest discrepancy
in the consciousness of a man between this Cosmic Will and his own
personal will, Necessity is felt to be something forced upon him,
something which he has to accept even against his will. If, under
such conditions, through resignation he gains ‘freedom’ to some
extent, it cannot be a complete freedom. Complete freedom is
obtained only when man identifies himself with Necessity itself, that
is, the natural course of things and events, and goes on transforming
himself as the natural course of things turns this way or that.
424
Sufism and Taoism
Go with things wherever they go, and let your mind wander about (in
the realm of absolute freedom). Leave yourself wholly to ‘that which
cannot be made otherwise’ , and nourish and foster the (unperturbed)
balance of the mind. 14 That, surely, is the highest mode of human
existence. 15
To take such an attitude toward the inexorable Necessity of Being
is, needless to say, possible only for the ‘true man’. But even the
ordinary man, Chuang-tzu says, should not abandon all hope of
coming closer to this highest ideal. And for this purpose, all that
ordinary people are asked to do is positively accept their destiny
instead of committing themselves passively and sullenly to fatalistic
resignation. Chuang-tzu offers them an easily understandable
reason why they should take the attitude of positive and willing
acceptance. Quite naturally Necessity is represented at this level by
the concrete fact of Life and Death.
Life and Death are a matter of the (Heavenly) Command. (They
succeed one another) just as Night and Day regularly go on alternat-
ing with each other. This strict regularity is due to Heaven. There are
things in this world (like Life and Death, Night and Day, and count-
less others) which stand beyond the reach of human intervention.
This is due to the natural structure of things.
Man usually respects his own father as if the latter were Heaven
itself, 16 and loves him (i.e., his father) with sincere devotion. If such is
the case, how much more should he (respect and love) the (Father)
who is far greater than his own!
Man usually regards the ruler whom he serves as superior to himself.
He is willing to die for him. If such is the case, how much more should
he (regard as superior to himself) the true (Ruler)! 17
The expression ‘what cannot be evaded’ {pu te i) is liable to suggest
the idea of man’s being under unnatural constraint. Such an impres-
sion is produced only because our attention is focused - usually - on
individual particular things and events. If, instead, we direct our
attention to the whole of ‘that which cannot be evaded’, which is no
other than the Way itself as it manifests its creative activity in the
forms of the world of Being, we are sure to receive quite a different
impression of the matter. And if, further, we identify ourselves with
the working of the Way itself and become completely united and
unified with it , 18 what has been an inexorable Necessity and ‘non-
freedom’ will immediately turn into an absolute freedom. This is
Freedom, because, such a spiritual state once achieved, man suffers
nothing from outside. Everything is experienced as something com-
ing from inside, as his own. The kaleidoscopic changes that charac-
terize the phenomenal world are his own changes. As Kuo Hsiang
says: ‘Having forgotten (the distinction between) Good and Evil,
and having left aside Life and Death, he is now completely one with
Determinism and Freedom
425
the universal Transmutation. Without encountering any obstruc-
tion, he goes wherever he goes ’. 19
And since everything is his own - or we should say, since every-
thing is himself as he goes on transforming himself with the cosmic
Transmutation - he accepts willingly and lovingly whatever hap-
pens to him or whatever he observes. As Lao-tzu says:
The ‘sacred man’ has no rigidly fixed mind of his own. 20 He makes the
minds of all people his mind.
‘Those who are good, (he says), 1 treat as good. But even those who
are not good also I treat as good. (Such an attitude I take) because the
original nature of man is goodness.
Those who are faithful I treat as faithful. But even those who are not
faithful I treat as faithful. (Such an attitude I take) because the
original nature of man is faithfulness.
Thus the ‘sacred man’, while he lives in the world, keeps his mind
wide open. He ‘chaotifies’ his own mind toward all. Ordinary men
strain their eyes and ears (in order to distinguish between things).
The ‘sacred man’, on the contrary, keeps his eyes and ears (free) like
an infant. 21
Here the attitude of the ‘sacred man’ toward things is sharply
contrasted with that of ordinary people. The former is characterized
by not-having-a-rigidly-fixed-mind, that is, by an endless flexibility
of the mind. This flexibility is the result of his having completely
unified himself with the Transmutation of the ten thousand things.
The ‘sacred man’ is also said to have ‘chaotified’ his mind. This
simply means that his mind is beyond and above all relative distinc-
tions - between ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘truthful’ and
‘untruthful’, etc. Being one with the Way as it manifests itself, how
could he make such distinctions? Is everything not a particular form
of Virtue which is itself the activity of the Way? And is it not also the
case that every particular form of Virtue is his own form?
Chuang-tzu sees in such a situation the manifestation of the
absolute freedom of man.
The great clod (i.e., the earth - Heaven and Earth, or Nature) has
placed me in a definite form (i.e., has furnished me with a definite
bodily form). It has placed upon me the burden of life. It will make
my life easier by making me old. And (finally) it will make me restful
by letting me die. (All these four stages are nothing but four different
forms of my own existence, which, again, are four of the infinitely
variegated forms of Nature.) If I am glad to have my Life, I must be
glad also to obtain my Death.
What Chuang-tzu is concerned with in this particular context is not
the problem of transcending Life and Death. The question at issue is
that of Necessity, of which Life and Death are but two concrete
426
Sufism and Taoism
conspicuous examples. The gist of his argument is that the Necessity
of Being will no longer be ‘necessity’ when man becomes com-
pletely one with Necessity itself. Wherever he may go, and into
whatever form he may be changed, he will always be with the
Necessity which has ceased to be ‘necessity’. If, on the contrary, the
union is not complete, and if there is even one part of the whole left
alien to himself, that particular part may at any moment damage his
freedom.
(A fisherman) hides his boat in the ravine, and hides his fishing-net 22
in the swamp, thinking that the boat and net are thereby ensured
(against thieves). In the middle of the night, however, a powerful
man (i.e., a thief) may (come and) carry them off on his back, without
the stupid (fisherman) noticing it.
Hiding, in this way, a small thing in a large place will certainly serve
your purpose to some extent. But (that will guarantee no absolute
security, for) there will still be ample possibility (for the small thing)
to escape and disappear.
If, on the contrary, you hide the whole world in the whole world
itself , 23 nothing will find any place through which it might escape.
This is the greatest truth common to all things.
It is quite by chance that you have acquired the form of a man. Even
such a thing is enough to make you glad. But (remember that) a thing
like the human form is nothing but one of the infinitely variegated
(phenomenal) forms of the universal Transmutation. (If only one
phenomenal form is sufficient to make you so glad) incalculable
indeed will be your joy (if you could experience with the Way all the
transformations it manifests). Therefore the ‘sacred man’ wanders to
his hearts content in the realm of ‘that from which there is no escape
and in which all things have their existence’. And (being in such a
spiritual state) he finds everything good - early death is good, old age
is good, the beginning is good, the end is good. (The ‘sacred man’ is,
after all, a human being). And yet he serves as a model for the people
in this respect. All the more so, then, should (the Way itself be taken
as the model for all men - the Way) upon which depend the ten
thousand things and which is the very ground of the universal
Transmutation . 24
In Chapter III we read a story of a ‘sacred man’ whose body was
made hideously deformed by some serious illness and who made the
following remark upon his own situation . 25
Whatever we obtain (i.e., Life) is due to the coming of the time.
Whatever we lose (i.e., Death) is also due to the arrival of the turn.
We must be content with the ‘time’ and accept the ‘turn’. Then
neither sorrow nor joy will creep in. Such an attitude used to be called
among the Ancients ‘loosing the tie (of Heaven)’. If man cannot
loose himself from the tie, it is because ‘things’ bind him fast.
And to this he adds:
427
I
i Determinism and Freedom
From of old, nothing has ever won against Heaven. How could I
resent (what has happened to me)?
Instead of ‘loosing the tie of Heaven’, people ordinarily remain
bound up by all things. This is to say, instead of ‘hiding the whole
world in the world’, they are simply trying to ‘hide smaller things in
larger things’ . In the minds of such people, there can be no room for
real freedom. They are, at every moment of their existence, made
conscious of the absolute Necessity of the Will of Heaven or - which
is the same thing - the Law of Nature, oppressing them, constrain-
ing them against their will, and making them feel that they are in a
narrow cage. This understanding of the Will of Heaven is by no
means mistaken. For, ontologically, the course of things is abso-
lutely and ‘necessarily’ fixed by the very activity of the Way, and no
one can ever escape from it. And ‘nothing has ever won against
Heaven’. On the other hand, however, there is spiritually a certain
point at which this ontological Necessity becomes metamorphosed
into an absolute Freedom. When this crucial turning point is actu-
ally experienced by a man, he is a ‘sacred man’ or Perfect Man as
understood in Taoist philosophy. In the following chapters we shall
be concerned with the structure of the concept of the Perfect Man in
Taoism.
Notes
1. In the first Part of the present book Ibn ‘Arabl’s interpretation of the qada’ and
qadar has been given in detail.
2. (TftlS I r**g5. him±. XS,
U l). shih means a teacher or leader who is obediently followed
by his followers. Here the Absolute or God who ‘instructs’ all existent things as to
how they should exist is compared to an aged venerable Master instructing his
students in the Truth. The idea is comparable with the Western concept of ‘Lord’ as
applied to God.
3. IL The word here is usually interpreted as meaning ‘to crush’. Ch’eng Hsiian
Ying (fifciH rgTjffiJp. 282), for example explicates the sentence as
follows: (This may be visualized by the fact that) when autumn comes, frost falls and
crushes the ten thousand things (and destroys them). Frost does not cut them down
and crush them with any special intention to do so. How could it have the feeling of
administering ‘justice’? (r£#tH. SfrflBrf'iJffnSHSL)- Ch’eng
Hsiian Ying’s idea is that the ‘justice’ of the Way corresponds to the relentless
destructive activity of the cold season, while the aspect of ‘benevolence’ corresponds
to the ‘fostering’ activity of spring. Concerning this latter aspect he says: ‘The mild
warmth of spring fosters the ten thousand things. But how is it imaginable that spring
should have the emotion of love and affection and thereby do the work of ‘benevol-
ence’? It would seem, however, better to understand the word ‘cutting to pieces’ as
referring to the fact that the creative activity brings into actual existence an infinite
number of individual things.
428
Sufism and Taoism
4. Note again the sarcastic tone in which the Confucian virtue is spoken of.
5. VI, 281.
6. Tao te Ching. LI.
7. Kuo Hsiang says: ‘Having a pair here means man’s walking (usually) with
two feet. Nobody would ever doubt that the human form being provided with two
feet is due to the Heavenly Command (or destiny)’. (rpg^^tfrFa^f^.
To this Ch’eng Hsiian Ying adds: Since being biped is due to the
Heavenly Command, it is evident that being one-footed also is not due to man.
(rttfriMhfrife,,
8. Chuang-tzu, III, p. 124.
9. Since he himself was not a ‘ true man’ , he could not teach his people how to behave
properly.
10. ‘This’ refers to the behavior of the people who were weeping so bitterly for him.
11. op. cit.. Ill, pp. 127v-128.
12. ibid., VI, p. 260.
13. ibid.. Ill, p. 126.
14. cAiibs + (££»: r+, S-CPRfti+J ).
15. op. cit., IV, p. 160.
16. Reading instead of rj^gSCj.
17. op. cit., VI, p. 241.
18. To express the idea Chuang-tzu uses the phrase: r ftKilJ meaning ‘to be trans-
muted into the Way’ (Cf. VI, p. 242).
19. rig#®, fflt*., VI, P . 243.
20. In this combination, the word ch’ang (■$•) - whose original meaning is, as
we saw earlier, ‘eternal’, ‘unalterable’ - means ‘stiff’ and ‘inflexible’.
21. Tao Te Ching, XLIX.
22. The text has r sBEtLi^^ j which is meaningless. Following the suggestion by Yii
Yiieh m ( riST^ilJ: I'm# "!«»» ,
Ujg&SSitljJ ) I read Ml instead of flj.
23. This refers to the spiritual stage of complete unification with the Way which
comprises everything. ‘Hiding the whole world in the whole world’ is contrasted to
hiding, as we usually do, smaller things in larger things. In the latter case, there are
always possibilities for the smaller things to go somewhere else, while in the former,
there is absolutely no such possibility. Thus ‘hiding the whole world in the whole
world’ is paradoxically tantamount to ‘hiding nothing’ or ‘leaving everything as it
naturally is’.
Determinism and Freedom
429
24. Chuang-tzu, VI, pp. 243-244.
25. ibid., VI, p. 260.
X Absolute Reversal of Values
Throughout the Tao Te Ching the term sheng jen ("sacred man’) 1 is
consistently used in such a way that it might justifiably be consi-
dered the closest equivalent for the Islamic insan kamil ("perfect
man’).
This word seems to go back to remote antiquity. In any case,
judging by the way it is used by Confucius in the Analects, the word
must have been widely prevalent in his age.
The Master said: A ‘sacred man’ is not for me to meet. 1 would be
quite satisfied if I could ever meet a man of princely virtue. 2
The Master said: How dare I claim for myself being a ‘sacred man’ or
even a man of (perfect) ‘benevolence’? 1
It is not philologically easy to determine the precise meaning
attached by Confucius to this word. But from the general contexts in
which it is actually used as well as from the dominant features of his
teaching, we can, I think, judge fairly safely that he meant by the
term sheng jen a man with a sort of superhuman ethical perfection.
Confucius did not dare even to hope to meet in his life a man of this
kind, not to speak of claiming that he himself was one.
This, however, is not the problem at which we must labor in the
present context. The point I would like to make here is the fact that
the word sheng jen itself represented a concept which was appar-
ently quite understandable to the intellectuals of the age of Con-
fucius, and that Lao-tzu wrought a drastic change in the connotation
of this word. This semantic change was effected by Lao-tzu through
his metaphysical standpoint, which was of a shamanic origin.
We have already seen in the first chapters of this book how
Lao-tzu - and Chuang-tzu - came out of a shamanic milieu. The
Perfect Man for Lao-tzu was originally a ‘perfect’ shaman. This fact
is concealed from our eyes by the fact that his world-view is not
nakedly shamanic, but is presented with an extremely sophisticated
metaphysical elaboration. But the shamanic origin of the Taoist
concept of the ‘sacred man’ will be disclosed if we correlate the
Absolute Reversal of Values
431
following passage, for example, from the Tao Te Ching with what
Chuang-tzu remarks concerning the ecstatic experience of ‘sitting in
oblivion’.
Block all your openings (i.e., eyes, ears, mouth, etc.), and shut all
your doors (i.e., the activity of Reason), and all your life you (i.e.,
your spiritual energy) will not be exhausted.
If, on the contrary, you keep your openings wide open, and go on
increasing their activities, you will never be saved till the end.
To be able to perceive the minutest thing 4 is properly to be called
Illumination ( ming ).
To hold on to what is soft and flexible 5 is properly to be called
strength.
If, using your external light, you go back to your internal illumina-
tion, you will never bring misfortune upon yourself. Such an (ulti-
mate) state is what is to be called ‘stepping into 6 the eternally real’. 7
The ‘eternal real’ (< ch’ang ), as we have often noticed, refers to the
Way as the eternally changeless Reality. Thus the concept of the
‘sacred man’ as we understand it from this passage, namely, the
concept of the man who ‘has returned to Illumination’ and has
thereby ‘stepped into’, that is, unified himself with, the Way, is
exactly the same as that of the man who is completely one with ‘that
which cannot be made otherwise’ , which we have discussed in the
previous chapter in connection with the problem of Necessity and
Freedom.
The ‘sacred man’, for both Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, is a man
whose mind is ‘wandering about in the realm of absolute Freedom’ ,
away from the bustle of the common people. It is quite natural,
then, that such a man, when judged by the yardstick of common
sense, should appear as outrageously ‘abnormal’. If worldly-
minded people represent the ‘normal’, the ‘sacred man’ is surely to
be considered a strange, bizarre creature.
An ‘abnormal’ 8 man - what kind of man is he, if I may ask?
The answer: An ‘abnormal’ man is one who is totally different from
other men, while being in perfect conformity with Heaven. Hence the
saying: a petty man from the viewpoint of Heaven is, from the
viewpoint of ordinary men, a man of princely virtue; 9 while a man of
princely virtue from the viewpoint of Heaven is, from the viewpoint
of ordinary men, a petty man.
Thus the Perfect Man, by the very fact that he is in perfect confor-
mity with Heaven, is in every respect in discordance with ordinary
men. His behavior pattern is so totally different from the commonly
accepted one that it excludes him from ‘normal’ human society. The
latter necessarily regards him as ‘abnormal’. He is ‘abnormal’
because the Way itself with which he is in perfect conformity is,
432
Sufism and Taoism
from the standpoint of the common people, something strange and
abnormal’, so ‘abnormal’ indeed that they treat it as funny and
ridiculous. As Lao-tsu says:
When a man of low grade hears about the Way, he bursts into
laughter.
If it is not laughed at, it would not be worthy to be the Way . 10
If the Way is of such a nature that it looks not only strange and
obscure but even funny and ridiculous, it is but natural that the
Perfect Man who is a living image of the Way should also look
ridiculous or sometimes vexatious and unbearably irritating.
Chuang-tsu often describes in his Book the ‘strange’ behavior of the
abnormal’.
Once a disciple of Confucius - this is of course a fictitious story -
saw two ‘abnormal’ men merrily and playfully singing in unison in
the presence of the corpse of their friend, another ‘abnormal’ man
instead of duly performing the funeral service. Vexed and indig-
nant, he hastened back and reported to his Master what he had just
seen. ‘What sort of men are they?’ he asked Confucius.
‘What sort of men are they? They do not observe the rules of proper
behavior. They do not care at all about external forms. In the pres-
ence of the corpse they sing a song, without even changing their
countenances. Their conduct (is so abnormal that) I am completely at
a loss to characterize them. What kind of men are they?’
Quite ironically, Chuang-tzu makes Confucius perspicacious
enough to understand the real situation in terms of Taoist philos-
ophy and explain the nature of their conduct to his perplexed
disciple. Here is what Confucius says about it.
They are those who freely wander beyond the boundaries (i.e the
ordinary norms of proper behavior), while men like myself are those
who wander freely only within the boundaries. ‘Beyond the bound-
aries and ‘within the boundaries’ are poles asunder from one
another. ...
They are those who, being completely unified with the Creator
Himself, take delight in the realm (i.e., spiritual state) of the original
Unity of the vital energy before it is divided into Heaven and Earth,
o t eir minds Life is just the growth of an excrescence, a wart, and
eath is the breaking of a boil, the bursting of a tumor. . . . They
simply borrow different elements, and put them together in the
common form of body (i.e., in their view a human being is a compo-
site made of different elements which by chance are placed together
mto a bodily unit). Hence they are conscious neither of their liver nor
of their gall, and they leave aside their ears and eyes. Abandoning
hemselves to infinitely recurrent waves of Ending and Beginning
they go on revolving in a circle, of which they know neither the
beginning-point nor the ending-point.
Absolute Reversal of Values 433
Thus, without being conscious (of their personal existence), they
roam beyond the realm of dust and dirt, and enjoy wandering to their
heart’s content in the work of Non-Doing.
How should such men bother themselves with meticulously observ-
ing the rules of conduct peculiar to the vulgar world, so that they
might attract (i.e., satisfy) the ears and eyes of the common
people ? 11
Thus the behavior pattern of these men necessarily brings about a
complete overturn of the commonly accepted order of values. Of
course it is not their intention to turn upside down the ordinary
system of values. But as these men live and behave in this world,
their conduct naturally reflects a very peculiar standard of values,
which could never square with that accepted by common sense and
Reason.
Chuang-tzu expresses this idea in a number of ways. As one of the
most interesting expressions he uses for this purpose we may men-
tion the paradoxical-sounding phrase: ‘deforming, or crippling the
virtues’ . 12 After relating how a man of hideous deformity - Shu the
Crippled - because of his deformity , completes his term of life safely
and pleasantly, Chuang-tzu makes the following observation:
If even a man with such a crippled body was able to support himself
and complete the span of life that had been assigned to him by
Heaven, how much more should this be the case with those who have
‘crippled the virtues ’! 13
To ‘cripple’ or ‘deform’ the virtues is a forceful expression meaning:
to damage and overturn the common hierarchy of values. And since
the system of values on which is based the mode of living or
principle of existence peculiar to these ‘cripples’ is thus radically
opposed to that of the common people, their real greatness cannot
be recognized by the latter. Even the most sophisticated man of
I Reason - Reason being, after all, an elaboration of common sense -
# fails to understand the significance of the ‘abnormal’ way of living,
I although he may at least vaguely sense that he is in the presence of
something great.
Hui Shih (Hui-tzu), a famous dialectician of Chuang-tzu’s time,
of whom mention was made earlier, 14 criticizes Chuang-tzu - in one
of the anecdotes about this ‘sophist’ recorded in the Book of
Chuang-tzu - and remarks that Chuang-tzu’s thought is certainly
‘big’ , but it is too big to be of any use in the world of reality. It is ‘big
but crippled’. Against this Chuang-tzu points out that the eyes of
those who are tied down to a stereotyped and fossilized system of
traditional values cannot see the greatness of the really great.
Besides, he says, things that are ‘useful’ in the real sense of the term
are those things that transcend the common notion of ‘usefulness’.
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Sufism and Taoism
The ‘usefulness’ of the ‘useless’, the greatness of the ‘abnormal’, in
short, an absolute reversal of the order of values - this is what
characterizes the world-view of the Perfect Man.
Let us, first, see how Hui-tzu describes the ‘uselessness’ of things
that are ‘abnormally big’.
The king of Wei once gave me the seeds of a huge gourd. I sowed
them, and finally they bore fruit. Each gourd was big enough to
contain as much as five piculs. I used one of them to contain water and
other liquids; but I found that it was so heavy that I could not lift it by
myself. So I cut it into two pieces and tried to use them as ladles. But
they were too flat and shallow to hold any liquid.
Not that it was not big enough. Big it surely was, to the degree of
monstrosity! But it was utterly useless. So I ended up by smashing
them all to pieces . 15
It is interesting to notice that Hui-tzu does recognize the gourds as
big, very big indeed. But their excessive bigness renders them
unsuitable for any practical use. Through this symbol he wants to
indicate that the spiritual size of the Perfect Man may be very large,
but that when his spiritual size exceeds a certain limit, it turns him
practically into a stupid fellow. This, however, only provokes a
sharp retort from Chuang-tzu, who points out that Hui-tzu has
found the gourd to be of no use ‘simply because he does not know
how to use big things properly’. And he adds:
Now that you had a gourd big enough to contain as much as five
piculs, why did it not occur to you that you might use it as a large
barrel? You could have enjoyed floating over rivers and lakes,
instead of worrying about its being too big and shallow to contain any
liquid! Evidently, my dear friend, you still have a mind overgrown
with weeds ! 16
Exactly the same kind of situation is found in another anecdote
which immediately follows the preceding one.
Hui-tzu once said to Chuang-tzu: ‘I have (in my garden) a big tree,
which is popularly called shu (useless, stinking tree). Its main stem is
gnarled as with tumors, and nobody can apply a measuring line to it.
Its branches are so curled and bent that no one can use upon them
compass and square. Even if I should make it stand by the thorough-
fare (in order to sell it), no carpenter would even cast a glance at it.
Now your words, too, are extremely big, but of no use. That is why
people desert them and nobody wants to listen to you’.
Chuang-tzu said: ‘You must have observed a weasel, how it hides
itself crouching down, and watches for carelessly sauntering things
(i.e., chickens, rats, etc.) to pass by. Sometimes, again, it nimbly leaps
about east and west, jumping up and jumping down without any
hesitation. But finally it falls into a trap or dies in a net.
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Absolute Reversal of Values
Now look at that black ox. It is as big as an enormous cloud hanging in
the sky. It is big, indeed! And it does not know how to catch a rat. (It
is useless in this sense, but it does not die in a trap or a net.)
You say you have a big tree, and you are worried because it is useless.
Well, then, why do you not plant it in the Village of There-Is-
Absolutely-Nothing , 17 or in the Wilderness of the Limitlessly-
Wide , 18 idly spend your days by its side without doing anything, and
lie down under it for an untroubled sleep?
The tree, then , will never suffer a premature death by being cut down
by an axe. Nor will there be anything there to harm it. If it happens to
be of ho use, why should it cause you to fret and worry ?’ 19
The passage just quoted, in which Chuang-tzu clarifies his attitude
against the kind of rationalism and utilitarianism represented by
Hui-tzu is of great importance for our purposes, containing as it
does in a symbolic form some of the basic ideas of Chuang-tzu.
These ideas are so closely interrelated with each other that it is
difficult to deal with them separately. Besides, some of them have
already been discussed in detail in connection with other problems,
and others are directly or indirectly related with those that have
been touched upon in the foregoing. Here for convenience I will
classify them under four heads, and discuss them briefly one by one
from the particular viewpoint of the present chapter. These four
are: (1) The image of a strange, fantastic region which is designated
by such expressions as the Village of There-Is-Absolutely-Nothing
and the Wilderness of the Limitlessly-Wide; (2) the idea of idling
away one’s time; (3) ‘abnormal bigness’; and (4) the idea of free
wandering.
P
(1) The two expressions: the Village of There-Is-Absolutely-
Nothing and the Wilderness of the Limitlessly-Wide, are very
characteristic of the philosophical anthropology of Chuang-tzu.
They describe symbolically the spiritual state in which the Perfect
Man finds his absolute tranquillity and freedom. In another passage
Chuang-tzu gives us a hint - symbolically, again - through the
mouth of a fictitious Perfect Man 20 as to what he means by these
terms.
I am going to unify myself with the Creator Himself. But when I
become bored with that, immediately I will mount on the Bird-of-
Pure-Emptiness and travel beyond the limits of the six directions
(i.e., the Universe).
There I shall wander to my heart’s content in the Village of There-
Is-Absolutely-Nothing and live alone in the Wilderness of the
Limitlessly-Wide . 21
In the light of what we already know about the major ideas of
Chuang-tzu, the ‘Village of There-Is-Absolutely-Nothing’ or the
436
Sufism and Taoism
k
‘Wilderness of the Limitlessly-Wide’ evidently refer to the spiritual
state of Nothingness or Void in which the perfect Man finds himself
in the moments of his ecstatic experience. At the highest stage of
‘sitting in oblivion’ the mind of the Perfect Man is in a peculiar kind
of blankness. All traces of phenomenal things have been erased
from his consciousness; even consciousness itself has been erased.
There is here no distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘object’ . For both
mind and things have completely disappeared. He is now an
inhabitant of a strange metaphysical region which is ‘limitlessly
wide’ and where ‘there is absolutely nothing’.
This, however, is but the first half of his being an inhabitant of the
Village of There-Is-Absolutely-Nothing or the Wilderness of the
Limitlessly-Wide. In the second half of this experience, the reality
of the phenomenal world begins to be disclosed to his spiritually
transformed eyes. All the things that have once been wiped out
from his consciousness - including his own consciousness - come
back to him in an entirely new form. Being reborn at a new level of
existence, he is now in a position to command an extensive and
unobstructed view of the whole world of Being as it pulsates with
eternal life, in which infinitely variegated things come and go,
appear and disappear at every moment. We know already that this
aspect of the Perfect Man, namely, his being an inhabitant of the
region of Nothingness and Limitlessness, is discussed by Chuang-
tzu in a more philosophical way as the problem of the Transmuta-
tion of all things.
Being perfectly familiar with that which has no falsehood (i.e. , the
true Reality, the Way), he does not shift about driven by the shifting
things . 22 He regards the universal Transmutation of things as (the
direct manifestation of) the Heavenly Command, and holds fast to
(i.e., keeps his inner gaze inalterably focused upon) their Great
Source . 23
(2) The Idea of idling away one’s time is closely related to the idea of
living in the region of Nothingness and Limitlessness. For the Per-
fect Man cannot be an inhabitant of such a country unless he is idling
away his time, doing nothing and enjoying from time to time an
untroubled sleep. ‘To be idle’ is a symbolic way of expressing the
basic idea of Non-Doing. The principle of Non-Doing which, as we
saw earlier, represents, for Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, the highest
mode of human existence in this world, demands of the Perfect Man
‘being natural’ and leaving everything in its natural state and to its
natural course. He does not meddle with the fate of anything. This is
the ‘indifference’ of the Perfect Man to the ten thousand things, of
which mention was made earlier.
But ‘indifference’ in this case does not imply ignorance or lack of
Absolute Reversal of Values
437
cognition. On the contrary, all things, as they come and go, are
faithfully reflected in the ‘void’ of the mind of the Perfect Man. His
mind in this respect is comparable to a spotless mirror. A well-
polished mirror reflects every object, as long as the latter stands in
front of it. But if the object goes away, the mirror does not show any
effort to detain it; nor does it particularly welcome a new object
when it makes its appearance. Thus the mind of the Perfect Man
obtains the most lucid images of all things, but is not perturbed
thereby.
(The Perfect Man ) 24 does not become the sole possessor of fame, (but
lets each thing possess its own fame). He does not become the
treasury of plans (but lets each thing make a plan for itself). He does
not undertake the responsibility for all things, (but lets each thing
undertake the responsibility for itself). He does not become the sole
possessor of wisdom, (but lets each thing exercise its own wisdom).
He embodies completely what is inexhaustible (i.e., the ‘limitless’
activity of the Way), and wanders to his heart’s content in the
Land-of-No-Trace (i.e., the region of Nothingness).
He employs to the utmost what he has received from Heaven, and yet
he is not conscious of having acquired something. He is ‘empty’ - that
is what he is.
The ‘ultimate man’ makes his mind work as a (spotless) mirror. It
detains nothing. It welcomes nothing. It simply responds to, and
reflects, (whatever comes to it). But it stores nothing. This is why he
can exercise mastery over all things, and is not hurt by anything . 25
I have heard that if a mirror is well-polished, dust cannot settle upon
its surface; (that is to say) if dust settles upon a mirror, (we can be
sure that) the mirror is not well-polished . 26
The image of the perfectly polished mirror as a symbol for the state
of the mind of the Perfect Man is found also in the Tao Te Ching.
Purifying your Mysterious Mirror, can you make it spotless ? 27
Thus the Perfect Man does not do anything - that is, with the
intention of doing something. The moment a man does something,
his very consciousness of doing it renders his action ‘unnatural’.
Instead, the Perfect Man leaves all things, himself and all other
things, to their own natures. This is the meaning of the term Non-
Doing (wu wei). And since he does not do anything, he leaves
nothing undone. By virtue of his Non-Doing, he ultimately does
everything. For in that state, his being is identical with Nature. And
Nature accomplishes everything without forcing anything.
(3) The ‘abnormal bigness’ of the Perfect Man has produced a
number of remarkable symbols in the Book of Chuang-tzu. We
have already seen some of them; the huge gourd which is too big to
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Sufism and Taoism
be of any use, the big useless shu-tree in the garden of Hui-tzu, the
black ox, lying in the meadow, doing nothing, being unable to catch
even a rat. These, however, are relatively homely symbols; they are
things of a moderate size compared with others which we find in the
same Book. As an example of such fantastic symbols, we may
mention the famous story of a huge mythical Bird, which we
encounter on the very first page of the Chuang-tzu.
In the dark mysterious ocean of the north (i.e., the northern limit of
the world) there lives a Fish whose name is K’un. Its size is so huge
that nobody knows how many thousand miles it is.
(When at last the time of Transmutation comes) the Fish is trans-
muted into a Bird known as P’eng. The back of the Peng is so large
that nobody knows how many thousand miles it is.
Now the Bird suddenly pulls itself together and flies off. Lo, its wings
are like huge clouds hanging in the sky. And as the ocean begins to be
turbulent (with raging storms of wind) the Bird intends to journey
towards the dark mysterious ocean of the south. The southern ocean
is the lake of Heaven.
In fact, in the Book entitled Ch’i Hsieh 2S which records strange events
and things, we find the following description (of this Bird). ‘ When the
Peng sets off for the dark mysterious ocean of the south, it begins by
beating with its wings the surface of the water for three thousand
miles. Then up it goes on a whirlwind to the height of ninety thousand
miles. Then it continues to fly for six months before it rests ’. 29
This is immediately followed by a masterly description of the impre-
ssion which the Bird is supposed to receive when it looks down upon
our earth from the height of ninety thousand miles. The Bird is
already wandering in a region which is far above the ‘worldly’ world
where all kinds of material interests and inordinate desires are
bubbling and foaming in an endless turmoil. It is not that the Bird
does not see the ‘dirty’ world of vulgarity. The ‘dirty’ world is still
there, under the Bird. The only difference is that the world looked
down from this vertiginous height strikes the Bird’s eyes as some-
thing beautiful, infinitely beautiful - another symbolic expression
for the way the mind of the Perfect Man mirrors everything on its
spotless surface.
(Look at the world we live in. You will see there) ground vapor
stirring; dust and dirt flying about; the living things blowing (fetid)
breaths upon each other!
The sky above, on the contrary, is an immense expanse of deep blue.
Is this azure the real color of the sky? Or does it look (so beautifully
blue) because it is at such a distance from us? (However this may be),
the Bird now, looking down from its height, will surely be perceiving
nothing but a similar thing, (i.e., our ‘dirty’ world must appear to the
eyes of the Bird as a beautiful blue expanse ). 30
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Absolute Reversal of Values
Chuang-tzu brings this description of the Bird’s journey to an end
by going back again to the idea of the ‘bigness’ of the Bird and the
corresponding ‘bigness’ of its situation. By the force of his pen, the
Bird is now alive in our imagination as an apt symbol for the Perfect
Man who, transcending the pettiness and triviality of human exist-
ence is freely wandering in the ‘void’ of Infinity and Nothingness.
(Why does the Bird soar up to such a height?) If the accumulation of
water is not thick enough, it will not have the strength to bear a big
ship. If you pour a cup of water into a hollow on the ground, tiny
atoms of dust will easily float on it as if they were ships. If, however,
you place a cup there, it will stick fast to the ground, because the
water is too shallow while the ‘ship’ is too large.
(Likewise) if the accumulation of wind is not thick enough, it will not
have the strength to support huge wings. But at the height of ninety
thousand miles, the (thick accumulation of) wind is under the Bird.
Only under such conditions can it mount on the back of the wind, and
carry the blue sky on its back, without there being anything to
obstruct its flight. And now it is in a position to journey toward the
south . 31
Here the Perfect Man is pictured as a colossal Bird, soaring along far
above the world of common sense. The Bird is ‘big’, and the whole
situation in which it moves is correspondingly ‘big’. But this exces-
sive ‘bigness’ of the Perfect Man makes him utterly incomprehens-
ible, or even ridiculous, in the eyes of the common people who have
no other standard of judgment than common sense. We have
already seen above how Lao-tzu, in reference to the ‘abnormality’
of the Way, makes the paradoxical remark that the Way, if it is not
laughed at by ‘men of low grade’, would not be worthy to be
considered the Way. In fact, the Bird P’eng is ‘abnormally big’.
Chuang-tzu symbolizes the ‘men of low grade’ who laugh at the
‘bigness’ of the Perfect Man by a cicada and a little dove.
A cicada and a little dove laugh scornfully at the Bird and say, ‘ When
we pluck up all our energies to fly, we can reach an elm or sapanwood
tree. But (even in such flights) we sometimes do not succeed, and are
thrown down on the ground. (Of small scale it may be, but our flight w
also a flight.) Why is it at all necessary that (the Bird) should rise
ninety thousand miles in order to journey towards the south?’
A man who goes on a picnic to a near-by field, will go out carrying
food sufficient only for three meals; and he will come back (in the
evening) with his stomach still full. But he who makes a journey to a
distance of one hundred miles, will grind his grain in preparation the
night before. And he who travels a thousand miles, will begin to
gather provisions three months in advance.
What do these two creatures (i.e., the cicada and the dove) know
about (the real situation of the Bird)? Those who possess but petty
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wisdom are not able to understand the mind of those who possess
Great Wisdom . 32
This description of the imaginery flight of the Bird P’eng across the
world is a very famous one. It is significant that the passage is placed
at the very outset of the whole Book of Chuang-tzu. The uninitiated
reader who approaches the Book for the first time will simply be
shocked by the uncouth symbols that constitute the story, and will
be driven into bewilderment not knowing how to interpret the
whole thing. But by this very bewilderment, he will be directly led
into the strange mythopoeic atmosphere which is typical of what we
might call the shamanic mode of thinking. Unlike the ordinary kind
of shamanic visions, however, there reigns over this image of the
Bird’s journey an unusual air of serenity, purity, and tranquillity.
And this is a reflection of the inner state of the Perfect Man who is
no longer a mere ‘shaman’, but rather a great ‘philosopher’ in the
original Greek sense of the word.
Be this as it may, the forceful, dynamic style of Chuang-tzu and
his creative imagination has succeeded in producing an amazing
symbol for the spiritual ‘greatness’ of the Perfect Man.
(4) As regards the idea of free wandering, there remains little to say.
For the foregoing description of the flight of the Bird is itself an
excellent description of the ‘free wandering’ as well as of the ‘big-
ness’ of the Perfect Man.
The ‘free wandering’ is a symbolic expression for the absolute
freedom which the Perfect Man enjoys at every moment of his
existence. What is meant by ‘absolute freedom’ must be, by now,
too clear to need any further explanation. The Perfect Man is
absolutely free, because he is not dependent upon anything. And he
is not dependent upon anything because he is completely unified
with the Way, there being no discrepancy between what he does and
what Heaven-and-Earth does. In the following passage, Chuang-
tzu, from the viewpoint of ‘dependence’ and ‘independence’,
divides men into four major categories. The first is the man of ‘petty
wisdom’; the second is the man of middle wisdom, represented by
Sung Jung-tzu; 33 the third is the man of ‘great wisdom’ who is still
somewhat defective in his spiritual perfection, represented by the
famous Taoist sage Lieh-tzu; and the fourth and the last is the man
of ultimate perfection, who is the real Perfect Man.
Here is a man whose wisdom is good enough to make him suitable for
occupying with success an official post, whose conduct is good
enough to produce harmony in one district, whose virtue is good
enough to please one sovereign, and whose ability is good enough to
make him conspicuous in the politics of one state. Such a man looks
Absolute Reversal of Values 44 1
upon himself with self-conceit just like (the above-mentioned small
creatures ). 34
Sung Jung-tzu would surely laugh at such a man. Sung is the kind of
man who, even if the whole world should praise him, would not be
stimulated thereby to increase his usual (moral) exertion, and even if
the whole world should blame him, would not be affected thereby
and become disheartened.
This is due to the fact that he draws a clear line of demarcation
between the internal and the external . 35 He is, thus, clearly conscious
of the boundaries of real glory and real disgrace. This makes him
rather indifferent to petty interests in this world. However, he
is not yet firmly established (i.e., completely self-sufficient and
independent).
Next comes Lieh-tzu . 36 He rides on the wind and goes wandering
about with amazing skilfulness. He usually comes back to earth after
fifteen days (of continuous flight). He is not at all interested in
obtaining happiness. Besides, (his ability to fly) saves him the trouble
of walking. And yet, he has still to be dependent upon something
(i.e., the wind).
As for the man (of absolute freedom and independence) who mounts
on the natural course of Heaven and Earth, controls at will the six
elemental forms of Nature, and freely wanders through the realm of
the Limitlessness - on what should he be dependent?
Therefore it is said: The Ultimate Man has no ego, (and having no
ego, he adapts himself to everything and every event with limitless
flexibility). The Divine Man has no merit (because he does nothing
intentionally). The Sacred Man has no fame (because he transcends
all worldly values ). 37
The last of the four classes of men here described is the Perfect Man.
And the ‘free wandering’ is nothing other than a symbolic expres-
sion for the absolute spiritual independence which characterizes his
mode of existence in this world. It refers to his absolute Freedom,
his not being retained in one place, and his not being tied to any
particular thing. The expression is also interesting in that it is
evocative of the original form of the Taoist Perfect Man as a shaman
who, in his ecstatic state, used to make a mythopoeic journey
around the limitless universe freely, without being obstructed by the
shackles of his material body. The first chapter of the Book of
Chuang-tzu is entitled ‘Free Wandering’. It is not, I think, a mere
coincidence that one of the masterpieces of shamanic poetry, Yuan
Yu (‘Traveling Afar’), which is found in the Elegies ofCh’u, pres-
ents striking similarities to the mythopoeic part of the world-view of
Taoism. Both the Taoist Perfect Man and the great Shaman of Ch’u
‘mount on the clouds, ride a flying dragon, and wander far beyond
the four seas’ , 38
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Sufism and Taoism
Notes
1. ISA.
2. Analects, VII, 25.
3. ibid., VII, 33.
4. The ‘minutest thing’ here means the Way as it manifests itself within the mind of
man. The shaman-mystic, by closing up all the apertures of the senses and the
intelligence, turns back into the depth of himself, where he perceives the Wav
working as a very ‘small thing’.
5. For the idea that the ‘sacred man’ constantly maintains the flexibility of the mind
°u 3 r ’,? fant ’ see above > Chapter IX, p. 144. The point will be further elaborated in
the following chapter.
6. For an explanation of the meaning of this expression, see above Chapter V
Note 29.
7. Tao Te Ching, LII.
8. Chi jen SSA.
9. The ordinary text reads: A£'J'Atil I which, as Wang Hsien Ch’ien
remarks, does nothing but repeat exactly the same thing as the first half of the
sentence in a reversed order: rxi'J'A , A£^T j. Following his suggestion I read the
second half: r^a?-, Ai'J'Aj (TftSI : Chuang-tzu, VI, p. 273.
10. Tao Te Ching, XLI.
11. Chuang-tzu, VI, pp. 267-268.
12. Chih li te,
13. op. cit., IV, p. 180.
14. See Chapter I, Note 15.
15. op. cit., I, p. 36.
16. ibid., p. 37.
17. temz®.
18.
19. op. cit., I, pp. 39-40.
20. : It is interesting that the name of that Perfect Man is ‘Nameless- Man’.
21. op. cit., VII, p. 293. See also VII, p. 296:
22. This does not simply mean that the Perfect Man remains rigidly fixed and devoid
of flexibility. On the contrary, he goes on shifting himself in accordance with the
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Absolute Reversal of Values
universal Transmutation of all things. Since he is in this way completely unified with
ever-changing Nature, all the ‘shifts’ he makes ultimately amount to his being
changeless.
23. op. cit., V, p. 189.
24. In this passage, the Perfect Man is designated by the term chi jen SA, ‘ultimate
man’, one of the several terms which Chuang-tzu uses to express the concept of the
Perfect Man.
25. op. cit., VII, p. 307.
26. ibid., V, p. 197.
27. Tao Te Ching, X.
28 . , ‘Equalizing Harmony’ or the ‘(Cosmic) Harmony in which all things are
equalized’, a title very typical of Chuang-tzu’s ontology (see Chapter III, Chapter
IV). Some scholars are of the opinion that this is not the title of the book, but the
name of its author. In any case, it is apparently an invention of Chuang-tzu’s
imagination. He simply wants to imitate jokingly and sarcastically the habit of the
thinkers of his age who substantiate their assertions by making references to ancient
authorities.
29. Chuang-tzu, I, pp. 2-4.
30. ibid., I, p. 4.
31. ibid., I, p. 7.
32. ibid., I, pp. 9-11.
33. Sung Jung-tzu A3§T(=Sung Chien 5 g£Jf), a man who was famous for his
teaching of pacifism and non-resistance. His thought is expounded in the last chapter
(XXXIII) of the Chuang-tzu. His name is mentioned also by Mencius, Hsiin-tzu, and
Han Fei-tzu.
34. Like the cicada and the little dove who scornfully laugh at the ‘big’ project of the
big Bird.
35. He knows that what is really important is the inner judgment of himself, and
therefore, does not care about how other people judge him from outside.
36. Traditionally, Lieh-tzu is considered to have been a Perfect Man who, together
with Chuang-tzu, represented the school of Taoist philosophy that had been inaug-
urated by Lao-tzu. He is made to stand chronologically between Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu.
37. op. cit., I, pp. 16-17.
38. ibid., I, p. 28.
445
XI The Perfect Man
Most of the characteristic features of the Perfect Man have already
been mentioned explicitly or implicitly in the foregoing chapters.
Some of them have been fully discussed, while others have been
touched upon in a cursory manner. Besides, we have repeatedly
pointed out that the Perfect Man as understood by Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu is nothing else than the personification of the Way
itself. The Perfect Man is ‘perfect’ because he is an exact personal
imago of the Way. In this sense, by describing the nature and the
activity of the latter we can be said to have been describing the
former. Thus in a certain respect, all the preceding chapters may be
regarded as a description of the characterizing properties of the
Perfect Man. We are already quite familiar with the Taoist concept
of the Perfect Man. And the present chapter will necessarily take
the form of a mere systematic recapitulation of what has been
discussed in the course of this book concerning the Perfect Man.
Let us begin by repeating the most basic observation about the
concept of the Perfect Man, namely, that he is a man who is
completely unified and united with the Way. When a man in the
course of his spiritual discipline reaches the ultimate stage of
Illumination, a stage at which there remains no trace of his ‘ego’,
and therefore no discrepancy between ‘himself and the Way - that
marks the birth of a Perfect Man. Lao-tzu calls this stage ‘embracing
the One ’. 1
The ‘sacred man’ embraces the One, and thereby becomes the
exemplar for all things under Heaven . 2
Controlling his vacillating soul, (the Perfect Man) embraces the One
in his arms and is never separated therefrom . 3
The opening clause 4 of this second quotation is interesting because
of its shamanic reminiscence. In ancient China, what corresponds to
the English ‘soul’ (Greek psyche) was held to consist of two separate
substances, one of them being hun , 5 and the other p’o . 6 Or we could
say that man was believed to possess two souls. The former was the
The Perfect Man
superior or spiritual soul, the principle of mental and spiritual
functions. The latter was the inferior or physical (or animal) soul,
charged with bodily and material functions. When a man died, the
hun was believed to ascend to Heaven, while the p’o was to go down
into Earth . 7 As for the phrase ying p’o, here translated as ‘the
vacillating (physical) soul’, it is significant that exactly the same
combination is found in the famous shamanic poem ‘Traveling
Afar’ (Yuan Yu) of the Elegies ofCh’u:
Controlling my vacillating soul, I ascend to a misty height,
And riding on the floating clouds, I go up and ever higher . 8
But of course the Perfect Man knows how to put under control his
fretful and unstable soul by ‘sitting-in-oblivion’, so that he might
ascend to the height of Unity and embrace the One, never to quit it.
The Perfect Man is no longer harassed by the fretfulness of his
soul. On the contrary, he always maintains his soul unperturbed.
What do I mean by the ‘true man’? (I am thinking of) the ‘true men’
of ancient times. They did not revolt against scarcity (i.e., adverse
fortune). They did not become haughty in favorable conditions. They
did not make positive plans with the intention of accomplishing
things.
Such a person does not repent though he might commit an error; he
does not fall into self-complacency though he might meet with
success.
Such a man does not become frightened even if he ascend to the
highest place. He does not get wet even if he enters the water. He is
not burnt even if he enters the fire.
All this is the result of the (true) Wisdom having attained to the
ultimate point of perfection in (being unified with) the Way . 9
The Taoist principle of ‘unperturbedness’ is best illustrated by the
attitude taken by the Perfect Man toward his own Life and Death.
The problem has been fully discussed in earlier contexts. Here we
shall be content with giving one more passage in translation, which
would seem to provide a good summary of the whole argument
concerning this idea.
The ‘true men’ of ancient times knew nothing of loving Life and
disliking Death. They came out (into this world) without any particu-
lar delight. They went in (i.e., died) without any resistance. Calmly
they came, calmly they went. They did not forget how they had begun
to exist (i.e., that the beginning of their Life was due to the natural
working of the Way). Nor did they worry about the end of their
existence.
They simply received (Life) and they were happy (to live that Life).
But (when Death came) they simply gave (their Life) back and forgot
it.
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Sufism and Taoism
The Perfect Man
This is what I would call: not revolting against the working of the Way
by the use of Reason, and not interfering with what Heaven does by
straining (petty) human (efforts).
Such is the ‘true man ’. 10
Such an inner state cannot but produce its effect on the physical
conditions of the Perfect Man. His calm unperturbed mind is
reflected by the very peculiar way in which his bodily functions are
performed. The Perfect Man is different from the common people
not only in his spiritual state, but also in his physical constitution.
The ‘true men’ of ancient times did not dream when they slept. They
felt no anxiety when they were awake. They did not particularly
enjoy food when they ate.
Their breathing was calm and deep. They used to breathe with their
heels." The common people, on the contrary, breathe with their
throats (i.e., their respiration is shallow). You know those who are
cornered in argument - how desperately they try to vomit out the
words sticking in their throats. (Compared with the breathing of the
Perfect Man, the breathing of ordinary people is just like that.) (This
is due to the fact that, unlike the Perfect Man who has no desire, the
common people) are deep in their desires, and shallow in their
natural spiritual equipment . 12
The common people are here characterized as being ‘deep in their
desires and ‘shallow in their natural equipment’. In this respect
they represent exactly the opposite of what Lao-tzu emphasizes as
the ideal of the Taoist mode of human existence: ‘no-wisdom and
no-desire ( wu-chih wu-yu) n . ‘Wisdom’ here means the exercise of
Reason.
We know already that purifying the Mind of physical and material
desires by ‘closing up all openings and doors’ is the first necessary
step toward the actualization of the idea of the Perfect Man.
The five colors make man’s eyes blind. The five musical notes make
man’s ears deaf. The five flavors make man’s taste dull. (Games like)
racing and hunting make man’s mind run mad. Goods that are hard to
obtain impede man’s right conduct.
Therefore the ‘sacred man’ concentrates on the belly (i.e., endeavors
to develop his inner core of existence) and does not care for the eye
(i.e., does not follow the dictates of his senses). Thus he abandons the
latter and chooses the former . 14
We have already seen above how, in the view of Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu, Reason obstructs the free activity of Nature. Reason in
its lowest form is the ‘sound’ or ‘normal’ common sense. The mode
of living of the common people goes against the natural course of
things because they are at the mercy of Reason and common sense.
Boundless desire and the argumentative Reason constitute the
core of the ‘ego’ . And the ‘ego’ , once formed goes on growing ever
stronger until it dominates the whole existence of a man; all his
actions are dictated by it, and all his feelings, emotions, and thinking
are subjugated to its supreme command. This is why it is extremely
difficult for an ordinary man to ‘nullify his own self ’. 15
Reason makes man ‘stiff’ and ‘inflexible’. Desire induces him
forcibly to fight against the naturally given conditions and to
‘intend’ to obtain the objects of desire. This is the exact opposite of
the Taoist ideal of conforming to the natural course of things,
without reasoning and without desiring anything, and thus becom-
ing completely unified with Nature. Lao-tzu finds in the ‘infant’ an
apt symbol for his ideal.
He who possesses within himself the plenitude of Virtue may be
compared to an infant.
Poisonous insects dare not sting it. Ferocious animals dare not
pounce upon it. Birds of prey dare not strike it.
Its bones are frail and its sinews tender, yet its grip is firm. It does not
know yet of the union of male and female, yet the whole body is full of
energy . 16 This is because its vitality is at its height.
It howls and cries all day long, yet does not become hoarse. This is
because the natural harmony in it is at its height.
To know the natural harmony is to be (one with) the eternal Reality
( ch’ang ). And to know the eternal Reality is to be illumined ( ming ). 17
Thus the infant is ‘naturally’ at the stage of Illumination, because it
is ‘naturally’ one with the Way. And the ‘weakness’ or ‘softness’ of
the infant is a living image of the creative activity of the Way, which
is eternally supple, soft and lissom. It is a symbol of real Life.
Man, at his birth, is tender and weak, but, when dead, he is hard and
stiff.
The ten thousand things, grass and trees, are tender and fragile while
alive, but once dead, they are dry and stiff.
Thus the hard and stiff are companions of Death, while the tender
and weak are companions of Life.
Thus an army which is too powerful is liable to lose the battle, and a
tree that is too rigid is breakable.
The powerful and mighty end by being cast down, whereas the soft
and weak end by occupying higher places . 18
The following passage is remarkable in that it gathers together the
majority of Lao-tzu’s favorite symbols for ‘flexibility’, ‘softness’,
‘being low’, ‘being simple’, in short, the virtue of Negativity.
He who knows the ‘male’, yet keeps to the role of the ‘female’, will
become the ‘ravine’ of the whole world.
And once he has become the ‘ravine’ of the whole world, then the
eternal Virtue will never desert him. And he will again return to the
state of ‘infancy’.
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Sufism and Taoism
He who knows the ‘white’, yet keeps to the role of the ‘black’ will
become the model for all under Heaven.
And once he has become the model for all under Heaven, then the
eternal Virtue will never fail him. And he will again return to the
Limitless.
He who knows the ‘glorious’ , yet keeps to the role of the ‘ignoble’ will
become the ‘valley’ of all under Heaven.
And once he has become the ‘valley’ of all under Heaven, then the
eternal Virtue will be complete. And he will again return to the state
of ‘uncarved wood’.
‘Uncarved wood’ (in its ‘simplicity’ contains potentially all kinds of
vessels); when it is cut out, it becomes various vessels. Likewise, the
sacred man’, by using it (i.e., the virtue of ‘uncarved wood’),
becomes the Lord over all officials. The greatest carving is
non-carving.
The highest key term in the particular semantic field of Negativity is
the wu wei, Non-Doing, which we have met several times in the
foregoing. As we have noticed, the most basic meaning of Non-
Doing is the negation of all ‘intention’, all artificial (or ‘unnatural’)
effort on the part of man. And the Perfect Man is able to maintain
this principle constantly and consistently because he has no ‘ego’,
because he has ‘nullified himself’. But the ‘nullification’ of the ‘ego’
as the subject of all desires and all intentional actions implies at the
same time the establishment of a new Ego - the Cosmic Ego - which
is completely at one with the Way in its creative activity.
Heaven is long lasting and Earth is long enduring. The reason why
Heaven and Earth are long lasting and long enduring is that they do
not strive to go on living. Therefore they are able to be everlasting.
In accordance with this, the ‘sacred man’ puts himself in the rear, and
(precisely because he puts himself in the rear) he comes (naturally) to
the fore. He remains outside, and because of that he is always there.
Is it not because he possesses no ‘self’ (i.e., the small ego) that he can
thus establish his Self ? 20
Thus the Perfect Man is in every respect a Perfect image of Heaven
and Earth, i.e., the Way as it manifests itself as the world of Being.
The Perfect Man exists by the very same principle by which Heaven
and Earth exist. And that principle common both to the Perfect
Man and the activity of the Way is the principle of Non-Doing or
‘being-so of-itself’. The conscious effort on the part of man to live
or to procure his purpose violates this supreme principle and ends
by bringing about a result which is just the contrary of what he
intended to achieve.
He who stands on tiptoe cannot stand firm.
He who strides cannot walk far.
He who displays himself does not shine.
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449
He who considers himself right cannot be illustrious.
He who praises himself cannot achieve real success.
He who places too great confidence in himself cannot endure.
From the point of view of the Way, such attitudes are to be called
‘superfluous food and useless tumors’. They are detested by all.
Therefore, he who possesses (i.e., is unified with) the Way never
takes such an attitude . 21
Therefore, the ‘sacred man’ keeps to the principle of Non-Doing, and
practises the teaching of No-Words . 22
If one pursues knowledge, knowledge goes on increasing day by day.
If one pursues the Way, (what one obtains) goes on decreasing day by
day.
Decreasing, and ever more decreasing, one finally reaches the state
of Non- Doing. And when one practises Non-Doing, nothing is left
undone. Therefore even an empire is sure to be gained by practising
(the principle of) There-Is-Nothing-To-Do. If one adheres to (the
principle of) There-Is-Something-To-Do, one can never gain an
empire . 23
Without going out of the door, one can know everything under
Heaven.
Without peeping out of the window, one can see the working of
Heaven.
The further one goes out, the less one knows.
Therefore the ‘sacred man’ knows (everything) without going out.
He has a clear view of everything without looking. He accomplishes
everything without ‘doing ’. 24
What I have translated here as the ‘working of Heaven’ is in the
original t’ien tao meaning literally the ‘way of Heaven’ . It means the
natural activity of Heaven. And ‘Heaven’ here means the Way as it
manifests itself in the form of Nature, or the ‘being-so of-itself’ of
everything. Heaven, in this sense, is constantly active; it works
without a moment’s intermission; it ‘does’ innumerable things. Its
‘ doing’ , however, is essentially different from the intentional ‘doing’
of man. Heaven ‘does’ everything without the slightest intention on
its part to ‘do’ something. Its ‘doing’ consists in the ten thousand
things being or becoming what they are ‘of themselves’. Heaven, in
other words, exemplifies in the most perfect form the principle of
Non-Doing.
Commenting upon Chuang-tzu’s statement;
He who knows what Heaven does (i.e., the ‘way of Heaven’) ... is at
the highest limit (of human Wisdom). For he who knows what
Heaven does lives in accordance with (the same principle as)
Heaven , 25
Kuo Hsiang makes the following interesting and important remark;
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Sufism and Taoism
‘Heaven - in this passage means Nature (‘being-so of-itself’). He who
‘does doing’ (i.e., does something with the intention or consciousness
of doing it) cannot ‘do’ anything (in the real sense of the word).
(Real) ‘doing’ is that the thing ‘does itself’ (i.e., it is done ‘of itself’,
according to its own nature). Likewise, he who ‘does knowing’ (i.e.,
tries to know something intentionally and consciously) cannot ‘ know’
anything (in the real sense of the word). (Real) ‘knowing’ consists in
(the thing) coming to ‘be known of itself’ . The thing ‘becomes known
of itself’, I say. So (real ‘knowing’ is, in truth), ‘non-knowing’. It is
‘non-knowing’, I say. So the ultimate source of ‘knowing’ is ‘non-
knowing’ .
In the same way, ‘doing’ consists in the thing ‘being done of itself’. So
(real ‘doing’ , in truth,) is ‘non-doing’ . It is ‘non-doing’ , I say. So the
ultimate source of ‘doing’, is ‘non-doing’.
Thus, ‘non-doing’ must be considered the principle of ‘doing’. Like-
wise, ‘knowing’ originates in ‘non-knowing’, so that ‘non-knowing
must be considered the basis of ‘knowing’.
Therefore, the ‘true man’ leaves aside ‘knowing’, and thereby
‘knows’ . He ‘does not do’, and thereby ‘does’. Everything comes into
being ‘of itself’, (and that is the meaning of the ‘doing’ of the ‘true
man’). He simply sits, oblivious of everything, and thereby obtains
everything.
Thus (with regard to the ‘true man’) the word ‘knowing’ loses its
applicability, and the term ‘doing’ disappears completely . 26
This is, indeed, an excellent explanation of the key term ‘Non-
Doing’ as understood by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, so much so that it
makes all further efforts to clarify the concept superfluous.
There is, however, one more thing which must be mentioned here
not in order to clarify the concept of Non-Doing, but rather in order
to clarify a peculiarity of Lao-tzu’s way of thinking. I have
repeatedly pointed out as something typical of Lao-tzu the ‘sym-
bolic’ way in which he develops his thinking. In the majority of
cases, particularly in dealing with problems which he considers of
crucial importance, he develops and elaborates his thought by
means of imagery. ‘ Water’ is one of his favorite symbols. He uses it
in reference to the supreme power of Non-Doing. The empirical
observation of the activity of water provides at once conclusive
evidence for his theory of Non-Doing and a picturesque presenta-
tion of the way in which Non- Doing produces its effect.
The softest of all things in the world (i.e., water) dominates over the
hardest of all things in the world (like stones and rocks). Having no
definite form of its own, it penetrates even into that which has no
crevices.
By this I realize the value of Non-Doing.
However, the teaching through No- Words (i.e., the word-less teach-
ing given by the Perfect Man, himself remaining silent but his per-
The Perfect Man
451
sonal influence affecting ‘naturally’ all about him) and the effect of
Non-Doing - few in the whole world can understand them . 27
In this passage no explicit mention is made of water. But that
Lao-tzu means water by ‘the softest of all things’ is made clear by
the following passage.
There is under Heaven nothing softer and weaker than water. And
yet in attacking things hard and strong, nothing can surpass it.
For there is nothing that can destroy it . 28
The weak overcomes the strong, and the soft overcomes the hard.
This everybody in the world knows, yet no one is able to put this
(knowledge) into practice . 29
The ‘positive passivity’ or the ‘powerful weakness’ of water is for
Lao-tzu one of the most appropriate images of the Way and, there-
fore, of the Perfect Man.
The highest goodness is like water. Water benefits the ten thousand
things, yet it never contends with anything. It stays in (low) places
loathed by all men. But precisely because of this, it is closest to the
Way (and the ‘sacred man ’). 30
‘Never-contending-with-anybody’ which is suggested by the nature
of water is another highest principle that governs the conduct of the
Perfect Man.
An excellent warrior does not use violence. An excellent fighter does
not lose himself in anger. He who excels in defeating does not treat
his enemy as an enemy. He who excels in employing men humbles
himself before them.
This I would call the Virtue of ‘non-contending’. This may also be
called making the best use of the ability of others.
And such a man may rightly be regarded as being in perfect con-
formity with the Supreme Principle of Heaven . 31
The ‘sacred man’ . . . never contends with anybody. This is why
nobody under Heaven contends with him . 32
Thus the Perfect Man does not contend with anybody or anything.
Like a good fighter he does not allow himself to be roused and
excited. In this respect, he may be said to lack ordinary human
emotions and feeling. In fact, he is not a ‘man’ , if one understands by
this word an ordinary human being. He is, in reality, an infinitely
large cosmic being. Concerning this problem Chuang-tzu has left an
interesting record of a discussion between himself and the Dialecti-
cian Hui-tzu to whom reference was made earlier. We do not know
for sure whether the dialogue is fictitious or real. But, whether
fictitious or real, it is a valuable document for us in that it elucidates
one important aspect of the connotation of the Perfect Man.
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453
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Sufism and Taoism
The discussion starts when Chuang-tzu makes the following
statement:
The ‘sacred man’ has the physical form of a man, but no emotion of a
man. Since he has the form of a man, he lives among other human
beings as one of them. But since ‘he has no emotion of a man, ‘right’
and ‘wrong’ (or likes and dislikes) cannot have access to him.
Ah how insignificant and small he is, in so far as he belongs to
common humanity! But infinitely great is he, in so far as he stands
unique (in the world) in perfecting Heaven in himself ! 33
Against this statement, Hui-tzu raises a serious question. And the
question provokes a theoretic discussion over the theme between
Chuang-tzu and Hui-tzu.
Hui-tzu:
Chuang-tzu:
Hui-tzu:
Chuang-tzu:
Hui-tzu:
Chuang-tzu:
Hui-tzu:
Chuang-tzu:
Is it at all possible that a man should be without
emotions?
Yes, it is.
But if a man lacks emotions, how could he be called a
‘man’?
The Way has given him human features. And Heaven
has given him a bodily form. How, then, should we
not call him a ‘man’?
But since you call him a ‘man’ , it is inconceivable that
he should be without emotions.
What you mean by ‘emotions’ is different from what I
mean by the same word. When I say ‘he is without
emotions', I mean that the man does not let his inner
self be hurt (i.e., perturbed) by likes and dislikes, and
that he conforms to the ‘being-so of-itself’ of every-
thing, never trying to increase his vital energy.
If he does not try to increase his vital energy (i.e., by
eating nutritious food, clothing himself, etc .), 34 how
could he preserve his body alive?
The Way has given him human features. And Heaven
has given him a bodily form. (And as a result, he has
come into existence as a ‘man’.) This being the case,
all he has to do is not to let his inner self be hurt by
likes and dislikes. (This is what I mean by ‘not trying
to increase life’.)
You ‘externalize’ your spirit (i.e., you constantly send
out your spirit toward the external objects in the
world) and wear out your mental energy, sometimes
leaning against a tree, moaning, and sometimes lean-
ing on your desk with your eyes closed.
Heaven itself has selected for you a bodily form. But
you (instead of conforming to the Will of Heaven,
waste your time in) making a fuss about ‘(a stone)
being hard and white ’. 35
Thus it is clear that ‘the Perfect Man having no emotions’ means
nothing other than his being absolutely unperturbed whatever may
happen to him and whatever may occur before his eyes. And there is
a deep metaphysical reason for this. He can maintain this funda-
mental attitude under all conditions because he is ‘one’ with all
things which are themselves ultimately ‘one’. Since, as we saw
earlier, all things are metaphysically ‘one’, the attitude of the Per-
fect Man toward them cannot also but be ‘one’.
The concept of the Perfect Man ‘having no emotions’ is, in this way,
ultimately reducible to the more fundamental idea which is by now
fully familiar to us; namely, that the Perfect Man has no ‘ego’ of his
own. Having no ‘ego’ of his own, he makes no distinction between
things. He is, in other terms, constantly ‘one’ . And his being person-
ally ‘one’ - which is precisely what is meant by the expression:
‘having no emotions’ - is based on the objective fact that Reality is
‘one’. This, however, does not necessarily mean that the Perfect
Man does not know in any sense the distinction between the
infinitely variegated things of the phenomenal world. Rather, his
‘making no distinction between the things’ means only that, being
fully conscious of all these things as different things, he is possessed
of a spiritual eye with which he intuits behind the kaleidoscope of
the changing forms the metaphysical ‘One’, of which they are but
various manifestations. And when he looks at these seemingly
different things from such a particular point of view, they disclose
themselves to his eyes as so many repetitions of one and the same
thing ‘piled up one upon the other’, all being equally ‘good’.
(The true man’) is ‘one’, whether he (seemingly) likes something or
dislikes something. He is also ‘one’, whether he regards all things as
being ‘one’ or as not being ‘one’.
When he takes the position of (everything being) ‘ one’ he is acting as
a companion of Heaven; (i.e., he is taking the position of Heavenly
Equalization ). 36 When he takes the position of (all things) not being
‘one’, he is acting as a companion of Man; (i.e., he is looking at the
phenomenal world of Multiplicity as it appears to the human eye).
Thus in him Heaven and Man do not defeat each other (i.e., he unites
in himself harmoniously and without contradiction both the ‘abso-
lute’ viewpoint of Heaven and the ‘relative’ viewpoint of Man).
Such indeed is the nature of the ‘true man ’. 37
‘Being without emotions’ should not be taken to mean that the
Perfect Man does not actually experience anger, delight, sadness,
gladness. He does experience all these and other human emotions.
The only difference between him and ordinary people in this matter
consists in the fact that in the case of the former, there always
remains something unperturbed and unperturbable at the innermost
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Sufism and Taoism
core of his heart, even while he is experiencing strong emo-
tions, something which is not affected by them, which is not touched
by them. The emotions come and go in his inner world as naturally
as the four seasons of the year come and go in the outer world.
His mind is content with being in whatever situation it happens to
be . 38 His outward appearance is still and calm. His forehead is broad
and looks carefree.
Sometimes he is coldly relentless like autumn; sometimes he is
warmly amiable like spring. Joy and anger come and go as naturally
as the four seasons do in Nature. Keeping perfect harmony with all
things (which endlessly go on being ‘transmuted’ one into another)
he does not know any limit . 39
Such being his basic spiritual state, the Perfect Man perceives in the
whole world nothing to disturb his cosmic balance of mind, although
he does notice accurately all things that happen to him and to
others. He does participate in the activities of the world together
with all other men, yet at the same time, at the very core of his heart,
he remains detached from the clamor and bustle of the world.
Calmness and tranquillity are the most salient features that charac-
terize both the inside and outside of the Perfect Man.
Attaining to the utmost limit of (inner) ‘emptiness’, I firmly maintain
myself in Stillness . 40
(The ‘sacred man’), by being limpid and serene, becomes the norm of
all under Heaven . 41
Chuang-tzu, as usual, is less laconic in describing the virtues of
‘calmness’ and ‘tranquillity’:
Of all level things, the most perfect is the surface of water at rest.
Because of this (perfect levelness), it can be used as a standard in
levelling. And (the perfect levelness of still water) is due to the fact
that (water at rest) maintains in its inside (profound calmness) and
shows no agitation outside.
Likewise, Virtue is a (spiritual) state which is attained when a man has
perfected the calmness (of the mind). (In such a case) Virtue does not
come out in a visible form, (i.e., since the inside of such a man is
perfectly calm, no agitation comes out to the surface). But things, on
their part, (are spontaneously attracted by his invisible Virtue and)
cannot separate themselves therefrom . 42
Notes
1. pao i,
2. Tao Te Ching, XXII.
The Perfect Man
3. ibid., X.
4. r*£&gj.
455
5. j&.
6 . m.
7. Li Chi, Chiao Te Sheng Concerning the
p’o we find in the Tso Ch’uan ( , BS^-b^) the following statement: ‘When a man
is born, (we see) in his first bodily function what is called the p’o'.
8. rtfc'lifptlifngli'g-, If <¥SlrJni:fiEj. This interpretation of the word ying (<§) is cor-
roborated by another verse in the same poem, in which the shaman-poet describes
the instability and fretfulness of his soul - this time the word hurt is used instead of p’o
- which keeps him awake all through the night:
9. Chuang-tzu, IV, p. 226.
10. ibid., IV, 229.
11. The expression: ‘they breathed with their heels’ indicates the incomparable
depth and tranquillity of their respiration. The vital energy contained in the inhaled
air is made to circulate all through the body, in such a way that one is left with the
impression that the breathing naturally welled up from the heels.
12. op. cit., VI, p. 228.
13. Tao Te Ching, III.
14. Tao Te Ching, XII.
15. ibid., XIII.
16. T Yii Yiieh ($tH! VIII) thinks that the word ^ is a mistake for
# meaning ‘hidden place’, i.e., the genitals. The sentence would then mean: ‘yet its
male member is full of force’ . In some other editions we find and used instead of
17. op. cit., LV.
18. ibid., LXXVI.
19. ibid., XXVIII.
20. ibid., VII.
21. ibid., XXIV.
22. ibid., II.
23. ibid., XL VIII.
24. ibid., XL VII.
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Sufism and Taoism
25. Chuang-tzu, VI, p. 224.
26. .a*!*,
4'^ntfe, TUtii. Tf^tii,
& JU^8£±, SntH^T£a. &WT$ol^, £ftgA&£oflfiSn,:r^rfn&.
tt* «*. ffiiS«±IliJ. P- 224.
27. Tao Te Ching, XLIII.
28. r<g, 2 j The character 41 here stands for M meaning ‘conquering the barbarians’.
The idea evidently is that even the sharpest sword cannot cut water and ‘kill’ it.
29. op. cit., LXXVIII.
30. ibid., VIII.
31. ibid., LXVIII.
32. ibid., XXII.
33. Chuang-tzu, V, p. 217.
34. Here again, Hui-tzu misunderstands what Chuang-tzu means by ‘not trying to
increase life’.
35. op. cit., V, pp. 220-222. ‘A stone being hard and white’ is a reference to the
famous sophistic thesis that a hard and white stone' is really two things, not one,
because ‘hard’ and ‘white’ are two entirely different attributes; see above. Chapter
IV. Note 18.
36. See above, Chapter VI, Note 17.
37. ibid., VI, pp. 234-235. »
38. r The last word A is explained by Kuo Hsiang as ‘being contented with
whatever place it happens to be in’ (Mjfngc, £§±j). See Shuo Wen: r£ ,
There are many scholars who think that it is a mistake for ;£ (See, for
example, Hsiian Ying r± , , te/gj), meaning ‘forgetful’ or
‘oblivious’ (of the essential distinctions between the ten thousand things).
39. op. cit., VI, pp. 230-231.
40. Tao Te Ching, XVI.
41. ibid., XLV.
42. Chuang-tzu, V, pp. 214-215.
XII Homo Politicus
Throughout the preceding chapters we have been describing the
Taoist Perfect Man as a man of absolute transcendence. He wholly
transcends the world of ordinary men and ordinary things in the
sense that he is ‘oblivious’ of all distinctions between them, that
nothing perturbs his mind, and that, consequently, he sits alone in
the midst of the profound ‘tranquillity’ of being one with the One.
He is ‘without - or above - human emotions’ , accepting the good as
‘good’ and also the non-good as ‘good’. He holds fast to the princi-
ple of Non-Doing, and does not meddle with the natural course of
things. Instead, he leaves the ten thousand things alone as they
come into being, grow, and then disappear in accordance with the
‘times’ and ‘turns’ of each of them. He is ‘indifferent’ just as Heaven
and Earth are ‘indifferent’ to the ten thousand things, treating them
all as if they were ‘straw dogs’.
The Perfect Man in this respect is a man of absolute Negativity.
And all these and still other ‘negative’ properties belong to him
because he is completely unified with the ‘way’ (i.e., natural, spon-
taneous working) of Heaven, and ultimately with the Way itself. In
comporting himself in this manner, the Perfect Man embodies the
Way.
But it is very important to remember that pure negativity or
passivity does not exhaust the activity of the Way. In fact, the
passivity of the Way is not ‘passivity’ as ordinarily understood. It is a
‘passivity’ backed with ‘positivity’. Or perhaps we should say that
the Way is - or looks - ‘ passive’ precisely because it is too positive to
be just ‘positive’ in the generally accepted sense. Non-Doing, for
example, is certainly a passive and negative principle, but it is in
reality a positive force in that it ‘leaves nothing undone’ . This fact is
an exact counterpart of the Way being described as ‘Nothing’ not
because it is purely negatively and passively ‘ nothing’ , but because it
is over-plenitude of Being.
The Perfect Man, as a perfect embodiment and personification of
the Way, must necessarily reflect this ‘positive’ - or ‘supra-positive’
- aspect of it, too. Just as the Way itself is positively - and more than
458
Sufism and Taoism
positively - engaged in the administration of the created world and
governs, through the very principle of Non-Doing, the whole pro-
cess of Nature to the minutest details of individual events, so is the
Perfect Man positively interested in governing the world, again
through the principle of Non-Doing.
Besides, it is, more generally speaking, very characteristic of
philosophical thinking in ancient China that it is vitally concerned
with the problem of governing the people. Homo Politicus has, in
fact, always been a central theme of all the major schools of Chinese
thought. Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu are no exception to this general
rule. It is extremely interesting to notice in this respect that a man
like Lao-tzu who develops, on the one hand, a sophisticated
metaphysics of the Way and describes the ideal man as an absolutely
unworldly-minded man living high above the noise and fuss of
everyday life, shows himself so keenly interested in the art of ruling
an empire. For Lao-tzu, the Perfect Man cannot be really ‘perfect’,
unless he stands at the head of an empire as the supreme Ruler of its
people. The Perfect Man is at once a philosopher and a politician.
This, of course, does not mean that the Perfect Man must posi-
tively strive to gain political power or to conquer the world. He does
not even try to make himself conspicuous.
He does not display himself. Therefore he is conspicuous.
He does not justify himself. Therefore he is illustrious.
He does not praise himself. Therefore his merit is recognized . 1
He does not try to make himself conspicuous. But due to that
‘negative’ attitude toward himself - and more basically, because he
is ‘perfect’ - he ‘naturally’ becomes conspicuous. He does not do
anything on his part to attract attention, but the people sponta-
neously gather around him. He keeps himself in the rear, but the
people spontaneously, and even without being conscious of it, push
him to the fore. The Tao Te Ching is filled with expressions referring
to this peculiarity of the Perfect Man. The most famous and most
typical of them all is probably ‘softening the glare and falling into
line with the dust (of the common people)’.
(The ‘sacred man’) blunts his sharpness, unfastens his knots, softens
his glare, and falls into line with the dust. Such I would call the state of
Mysterious Indistinction.
Such a man cannot be approached too intimately. Nor can one
remain too remote from him. One cannot bestow benefit upon him,
nor can one harm him. One cannot ennoble him, nor can one humili-
ate him.
Thus he becomes the noblest of all beings under Heaven . 2
The Mysterious Indiscrimination’ ( hsiian t’ung ) 3 is a very
significant expression. The Perfect Man, as a human being, lives
Homo Politicus
459
among ordinary people as a member of society. He exists there in
the midst of everyday life, quietly and calmly, behind and beneath
other men. He ‘levels’ himself with the common people, without
‘discriminating’ himself from other men. Outwardly he seems to be
exactly the same as ordinary people. But this is, in reality, a very
peculiar ‘sameness’, for in his spiritual structure, he is soaring like
the Bird P’eng in the azure of absolute freedom and independence.
And it is through the spontaneous activity of such a man that the
Virtue of the Way materializes in the form of a perfect political rule.
According to the pattern of thought peculiar to Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu, the Perfect Man, because of his spiritual ‘perfection’,
spontaneously occupies the highest place in the spiritual world; and
because he occupies the highest place in the spiritual world he must
necessarily occupy the highest place in the world of reality. He must
be the ‘lord over the officials’. 4
Thus here again we come across the paradoxical way of thinking
which characterizes the Taoist sages. For according to them, the
Perfect Man is a man who ‘freely roams beyond the realm of dust
and dirt, and enjoys wandering to his heart’s content in the Village
of There-Is-Absolutely-Nothing’. But exactly because he exists
permanently beyond the world of dust and dirt, he can actually keep
himself in the very midst of the dust and dirt of the real, material
world. By remaining absolutely ‘indifferent’ to petty interests in the
world, he is interested in the great problems of the actual world.
Surely, he is not a man ‘whose ability is good enough to make him
conspicuous in the politics of one state.’ 5 But he is good enough to
be the absolute ruler of an empire, or even of ‘all under Heaven’.
What, then, are the politics of the Perfect Man? From the point of
view of common sense, Chuang-tzu says, the most ideal form of the
management of political affairs consists in that ‘the ruler should
devise all the rules and regulations for his own self, and thereby
govern his people, for, in such a case, who would dare to disobey
him and not to be “transformed” by his virtue?’. 6
Chuang-tzu declares that such a thing is nothing other than a
‘deceptive virtue’ . 7 ‘To govern the world by means of such a princi-
ple is like trying to wade through the ocean, to dig a large river with
one’s own hands, or to let a mosquito carry on its back a mountain!’ 8
The Perfect Man does not govern the world by means of man-
made laws, which are but external matters designed to control only
the external aspects of human life. He governs the world by ‘govern-
ing himself’, that is, by perfecting his inner Virtue.
When the ‘sacred man’ is in the position of the ruler, how could he
conceivably be interested in governing the external life of the people?
460
Sufism and Taoism
What he is interested in is that he should rectify his ‘inside’, (i.e.,
bring his inner Virtue to perfection) and then govern (his people). He
is exclusively interested in firmly establishing his own affair.
(Thus he leaves all other things in charge of their own natures.) Just
think of a bird flying high in the sky, escaping thereby the danger of
being shot down by a stringed arrow; or of a little mouse living in a
deep hole under the sacred hill, avoiding thereby being dug out or
smoked out. (Every living being has its own natural wisdom by which
it knows instinctively how to live safely.) Do human beings possess
less knowledge than these two little creatures ? 9
What Chuang-tzu means by ‘rectifying one’s inside’ is explained by
himself in more concrete terms as follows:
Let your mind wander freely in (the field of) Simplicity (where there
is not even a trace of desires), unify your vital energy with the
limitless Tranquillity, and follow the natural course (lit. ‘being-so
of-itself’) of all things without letting your ‘ego’ interfere with it.
Then the whole world will be governed (spontaneously ). 10
Briefly stated, this means that when the Perfect Man in the real
sense of the word is actualized, the world becomes governed ‘of
itself’. Not that the Perfect Man positively governs the world by
instituting severe laws and enforcing them. The right ordering of the
world is spontaneously actualized as the Perfect Man, on his part,
‘rectifies his inner state’. It is clear that this is nothing but putting
into practice the fundamental principle of Non-Doing. And that is,
for Lao-tzu, and Chuang-tzu, the highest and most ideal form of
politics.
Lao-tzu describes the situation in the following terms:
A state may well be governed by ‘rectitude ’. 11 A war may well be won
by tactics. The empire, however, can be obtained only by Non-
Action . 12
How do I know that it is so? By the following observation.
The more restrictions and prohibitions there are in the world, the
poorer the people.
The more civilized instruments the people possess, the more con-
fused the land.
The more skills and crafts the people have, the more bizarre (useless)
objects will be produced.
The more laws and regulations are promulgated, the more thieves
and robbers there will be.
Therefore the ‘sacred man’ says: I remain in Non-Doing, and the
people are (morally) transformed of themselves. I enjoy quietude,
and the people become righteous of themselves. I do not meddle with
anything, and the people become prosperous of themselves. I remain
free from desires, and the people of themselves become like the
‘uncarved block of wood ’ 13
Homo Politicus
461
As I have repeatedly emphasized, this supreme ability of the Perfect
Man as a statesman is due to the fact that in practising Non-Doing,
he is a perfect copy of the Way itself.
The Way in its absolute reality is inactive (i.e., ‘non-doing’), yet it
leaves nothing undone.
If lords and kings abide by this principle, the ten thousand things will
grow up and develop of their own accord.
But if in the process of growth, desire (to act positively, against
Nature) should arise (on the part of some of the ten thousand things),
I would calm it down by the weight of the ‘nameless’ (simplicity of)
‘uncarved wood ’. 14 The ‘nameless’ (simplicity of) ‘uncarved wood’
will take things back to the (original) state of desirelessness.
And if (the people) become ‘desireless’ and, consequently, ‘tranquil’,
the whole world will of itself become peaceful . 15
The Way in its absolute reality is ‘nameless’. (It is in this respect like
‘uncarved wood ’). 16 The ‘uncarved wood’ may look insignificant, but
nothing under Heaven is able to subjugate it.
If lords and kings abide by the principle (of ‘uncarved wood’), the ten
thousand things will of themselves come to pay homage to them.
Heaven and Earth will join their forces to send down sweet dew, and
the people will of themselves become peacefully governed, even if no
decrees and ordinances are published . 17
Thus the Perfect Man in the capacity of a statesman exercises his
rule in accordance with the principle of Non-Doing. ‘He does
nothing other than doing-nothing.’ 18 But by ‘doing-nothing’ he is in
truth doing a great thing. For ‘doing-nothing’ means in his case to do
nothing against the natural course of all things. Therefore his
‘doing-nothing’ is tantamount to ‘assisting’ the natural and spon-
taneous development of all things.
The ‘sacred man’ desires to be desireless. He learns not to learn . 19
He thereby turns back constantly to (the Ultimate Source) which is
passed by unnoticed by the common people.
He assists the spontaneous being of the ten thousand things. He
refrains from interfering with it by his own action . 20
Many other passages could be adduced from the Tao Te Ching, in
which the idea of Non- Doing is extolled as the supreme principle of
Taoist politics. But for our particular purposes what has been given
is quite sufficient.
There is, however, one more point to make in connection with
Non-Doing as a political idea. In the foregoing we have been
concerned mainly with the attitude of the Perfect Man in governing
the empire in accordance with the principle of Non-Doing. We have
not yet dealt with the problem of the inner state or attitude of those
who are governed, the common people as the subjects over whom
the Perfect Man rules.
462
Sufism and Taoism
Already in some of the above-quoted passages it has been sug-
gested that the ideal rule of the Perfect Man encounters hindrance if
his subjects happen to have ‘desire’ and ‘knowledge’. The Perfect
Man himself may be absolutely above all human ‘desires’ - because
he is ‘without emotions’ - and above petty ‘knowledge’ to be
acquired by the exercise of the rational faculty of the mind - because
he has completely ‘chaotified’ his mind. But however Perfect he
may be in this respect, he is not in a position to realize the ideal of
ruling by the principle of Non-Doing unless the people, on their
part, be also perfectly prepared for accepting his rule. And they are
perfectly prepared for accepting his rule only when they are purified
of ‘desire’ and ‘knowledge’. Thus the act of purifying the people of
these obstacles constitutes part of the politics of Non-Doing.
If (the ruler) does not hold the (so-called) wise men in high esteem,
the people will be kept away from contending with one another.
If he does not value goods that are hard to obtain, the people will be
kept away from committing thefts.
If he does not display things that are liable to excite desires, the minds
of the people will be kept undisturbed.
Therefore, the ‘sacred man' in governing the people empties their
minds , 21 while making their bellies full; weakens their wills 22 while
rendering their bones strong.
In this way, he keeps his people always in the state of no-knowledge
and no-desire, so that the so-called ‘knowers’ might find no occasion
to interfere (and influence the people).
If he thus practises Non-Doing, the world cannot but be governed
well . 23
From of old those who excel in the practice of the Way do not try to
make the people wise and clever. Rather they try to keep the people
in the (simple) state of knowledgelessness. If the people are difficult
to rule it is because they have too much ‘knowledge’.
He who rules a state by (giving the people) ‘knowledge’ damages the
country. He who rules a state by depriving (the people) of ‘know-
ledge’ brings prosperity to the country.
To know (the difference between) these two (forms of government)
belongs to the standard measure (of the ruler). And to know the
standard measure in every matter is what I would call the Mysterious
Virtue. How profound and far-reaching the Mysterious Virtue is! (Its
profundity is shown by the fact that) it works contrariwise to the
nature of things, yet ultimately turns back to the Great Conformity ; 24
(i.e., at first sight the working of the Mysterious Virtue looks as if it
were against the natural order of things, but in reality it is in confor-
mity with the very working of the Great Way ). 25
The Great Conformity which is to be achieved by the practice of
Non-Doing represents the highest degree of perfection among the
various possible forms of governing the state. It is the art of gov-
Homo Politicus
463
ernment peculiar to the Perfect Man. And judged by this standard,
all the remaining political forms are found to be imperfect in varying
degrees.
The highest of all types of the ruler is such that the people under him
are only aware of his presence.
The next is the ruler to whom they feel attached and whom they praise.
The next is the ruler whom they fear.
The next is the ruler whom they despise. If (the ruler) is not trusted
enough, it is because he is not truthful enough.
If (on the contrary) the ruler is cautious and weighs the words he
utters, then his task will be accomplished, his work done, and the
people will all say: ‘All this we have done naturally, by ourselves .’ 26
The people feel this way because the Perfect Man rules over them
by the principle of Non-Doing. They are vaguely conscious of his
presence over them, but they do not notice that things run so
smoothly because of his being their ruler.
It is very interesting to observe that the second of the types of the
ruler enumerated in this passage, namely, the case in which the
people feel attached to the ruler and greatly praise him, evidently
refers to the Confucian ideal of governing the people with ‘benevol-
ence’. We would do well to recall in this connection the words of
Lao-tzu which we have quoted earlier . 27 ‘Only when the great Way
declines, do “benevolence” and “righteousness” arise.’ The impli-
cation is that the highest ideal of politics from the point of view of
Confucius and his school is, from the point of view of Lao-tzu, not
only the second-best, but something indicative of the decline of
the great Way.
Only when the great Way declines, do ‘benevolence’ and ‘righteous-
ness’ arise.
Only when cleverness and sagacity emerge in the world, do wiles and
intrigues arise.
Only when the six basic kinship relations are out of harmony do filial
sons make their appearance.
Only when the state is in confusion and disorder, do loyal subjects
make their appearance . 28
If the ruler abolishes ‘cleverness’ and abandons ‘intelligence’, the
benefit received by the people will increase a hundredfold.
If he abolishes ‘benevolence’ and abandons ‘righteousness’, the
people will (spontaneously) return to ‘filial piety’ and ‘paternal love ’. 29
If he abolishes artifice and abandons (the pursuit of) profit, there will
be no more thieves and robbers.
If with these three (principles) alone one should think adornments
are too scanty, let there be, then, something additional. Show out-
wardly the plainness of undyed silk and embrace inwardly the sim-
plicity of uncarved wood. Reduce selfishness and lessen desires . 30
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Sufism and Taoism
In one of the passages quoted above, we saw how in Lao-tzu’s view
the highest type of government is represented by the ruler who
governs the country so ‘naturally’ that the ‘people’ are conscious
only of there being a ruler over them’, without attributing to him
any particular virtue or merit. Chuang-tzu unreservedly agrees with
Lao-tzu on this point. It goes without saying that, according to both
Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, in such a form of ideal government not
only do the people not notice the merit of the ruler, but the ruler
himself is not conscious of his own merit.
Lao-tzu:
The ‘sacred man’ is such that he does great things, yet does not
boast of his own achievement; he accomplishes his task, yet does not
stick to his own merit. Is this not because he does not wish to display
his superiority over others ? 31
And Chuang-tzu:
When an ‘illumined king’ reigns over the world, his merit covers all
under Heaven. But he is not conscious of the merit as something
proceeding from himself.
His transforming power affects the ten thousand things. But the
people do not feel dependent upon him.
There is ‘something’ occurring (in the world, because of his presence
as the ruler), but no one could definitely name it. (The existence of
that ‘something’ is clearly shown only by the fact that) it actually
renders all things spontaneously happy and contented.
He himself stands in (the spiritual state of) the Unfathomable, and
wanders to his heart’s content in the There-Is-Nothing , 32
I shall bring this chapter to a close by quoting from the Tao Te Ching
a passage in which Lao-tzu pictures in an idyllic tone an imaginary
state which is governed by a ‘sacred man’ - a state based on the
principle of Non-Doing, in which the highest ideal of Taoist politics
is actualized in a concrete form. It is by no means a grand-scale ideal
state like the Republic of Plato. It is almost a village. Yet, who
knows? The people of this small country may possibly be even
happier and more contented than the inhabitants of the Platonic
state.
A small country, with small population. There are (in this country)
various tools of war, but the people are not tempted to use them. The
people (are so happy and contented that) they regard death as no
slight matter (i.e., they are reluctant to die because life is so enjoy-
able). Nor do they want to move to distant places. Though there are
ships and carts, there is no place to go with them. Though there are
armor and weapons, there arises no occasion to display them.
The people are taught to go back to (the Simplicity of immemorial
antiquity) using knotted cords (instead of the complicated system of
writing).
Homo Politicus
465
They find relish in their food, and beauty in their clothes. Happy and
contented with their own homes, they find delight in their old cus-
toms.
The neighbouring country is just there, within sight. The people of
this country can hear even the cocks crowing and dogs barking in that
country. And yet, the inhabitants of the two countries grow old and
die without ever visiting one another . 33
Notes
1. Tao Te Ching , XXII.
2. ibid., LVI; see also IV.
3. . It may be translated also as ‘Mysterious Levelling’.
4. op. cit., XXVIII.
5. Chuang-tzu, I, p. 16.
6. ibid., VII, p. 290.
7- St©, ch'i te.
8. ibid., VII, p. 291.
9. ibid., VII, p. 291.
10. ibid., VII, p. 294.
11. This is an ironical reference to the Confucian idea of the ideal politics. A man
once asked Confucius about the art of ruling the state. Confucius replied: ‘Ruling’
( cheng ®) means ‘rectitude’ ( cheng IE). If you (govern the people) by ‘rectifying’
yourself in the first place, no one would venture to act against ‘rectitude’ - Analects,
XII, 17.
12. tetfc, wu shih, synonymous with wu wei. Shih is defined by Hsun-tzu as ‘doing
something in expectation of getting a profit’ (EfiJffiiHlf^Jfc), ,jE«Ji XXII.
13. Tao Te Ching, LVII.
14. i.e., I, the ruler, would calm down the desire of the people, not by supressing it by
laws and edicts, but by disclosing myself to them as a living embodiment of the Way in
its aspect of absolute ‘ simplicity’ , that is, the state of being completely purified of all
desires and passions.
15. op. cit., XXXVII.
3 6. Because it is not yet carved into various vessels, each of which is distinguished
from others by a special ‘name’.
17. op. cit., XXXII.
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Sufism and Taoism
is. mmn, (ibid., lxiv).
19. Ordinary men try hard to study and iearn in order to increase their knowledge.
The Perfect Man, on the contrary, iearns to be without learning, so that at the
ultimate stage of the decrease of knowledge he might be unified with the ‘simplicity’
of the ‘uncarved wood’.
20. op. cit., LXIV.
21. It is the ‘mind’ that insatiably seeks for ‘knowledge’.
22. The ‘will’ drives man toward gratifying his limitless desires.
23. op. cit., III.
24. *1111.
25. ibid., LXV.
26. ibid., XVII.
27. See Chap. I, Note 6.
28. op. cit., XVIII.
29. This may be thought to contradict what we have read in the preceding passage.
In reality, however, there is no contradiction. For there, the point at issue was ‘filial
piety’ and ‘paternal love’ being verbally emphasized. Here Lao-tzu is simply talking
about the natural state of ‘filial piety’ and ‘paternal love’ which is actualized in the
minds of the people, without there being anybody who ‘emphasizes’ the importance
of these virtues.
30. op. cit., XIX.
31 Tao Te Ching, LXXVII.
32. Chuang-tzu, VII, p. 296.
33. Tao Te Ching, LXXX.
Part III
CONCLUSION
- A Comparative Reflection
I Methodological Preliminaries
As stated in the Introduction to Part One of this work, I started this
study prompted by the conviction that what Professor Henry Cor-
bin calls ‘un dialogue dans la metahistoire’ is something urgently
needed in the present world situation. For at no time in the history
of humanity has the need for mutual understanding among the
nations of the world been more keenly felt than in our days. ‘Mutual
understanding’ may be realizable - or at least conceivable - at a
number of different levels of life. The philosophical level is one of
the most important of them. And it is characteristic of the
philosophical level that, unlike other levels of human interest which
are more or less closely connected with the current situations and
actual conditions of the world, it provides or prepares a suitable
locus in which the ‘mutual understanding’ here in question could be
actualized in the form of a meta-historical dialogue. And meta-
historical dialogues, conducted methodically, will, I believe, event-
ually be crystallised into a philosophia perennis in the fullest sense
of the term. For the philosophical drive of the human Mind is,
regardless of ages, places and nations, ultimately and fundamentally
one.
I readily admit that the present work is far from even coming
close to this ideal. But at least such was the motive from which I
undertook this study. In the first Part, an attempt was made to lay
bare the fundamental philosophical structure of the world-view of
Ibn ‘Arab!, one of the greatest mystic-philosophers. The analytic
work was done quite independently of any comparative considera-
tions. I simply tried to isolate and analyze as rigorously as possible
the major concepts that constitute the basis of Ibn ‘Arabl’s
philosophical world-view in such a way that it might form a com-
pletely independent study.
The second Part dealing with Lao-tzu and Chaung-tzu is of a
slightly different nature. Of course it is in itself an equally indepen-
dent study of Taoist philosophy, which could very well be read as
such. But it is slightly different from the first Part in one point,
namely, that in isolating key-concepts and presenting them in a
470
Sufism and Taoism
systematic way, I already began preparations for the work of co-
ordination and comparison. By this I am not simply referring to the
fact that in the course of this work mention was made from time to
time of this or that part of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought. I am referring to
something more fundamental and of a more methodological nature.
I have just spoken of the ‘preparatory work for co-ordination and
comparison’. Concretely, this refers to the fact that I consciously
arranged and presented the whole matter in such a way that the very
analysis of the key-concepts of Taoism might bring to light the
common philosophical ground upon which the meta-historical
dialogue could become possible. Let this not be taken to mean that I
modified the given material with a view to facilitating comparison,
let alone distorted the given facts, or forced something upon Lao-
tzu and Chuang-tzu for such a purpose. The fact is rather that an
objective analysis of Taoist key-terms naturally led me to the dis-
covery of a central idea which might work as the most basic connect-
ing link between the two systems of thought. The only arbitrary
thing I did - if ‘arbitrary’ it was - consisted in my having given a
philosophical ‘name’ to the central idea. The name is ‘existence’.
And the name once established, I could characterize the guiding
spirit of the philosophical world-view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu as
‘existentialist’ as opposed to the ‘essentialist’ tendency of the Con-
fucian school.
I think I have made it abundantly clear in the course of the second
Part that by understanding the philosophy of Lao-tzu and Chuang-
tzu in terms of ‘existence’, I have not arbitrarily forced upon them
anything alien to their thought. The only point is that the Taoist
sages themselves do not propose any definite ‘name’ for this particu-
lar idea, whereas Ibn ‘Arab! has the word wujud which is, histori-
cally as well as structurally, the exact Arabic expression for the same
idea. Certainly, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu do use the wordyu mean-
ing ‘being’ or ‘existence’ in contradistinction from wu ‘non-beigg’ or
‘non-existence’ . But, as we have seen,yw in their system plays a very
special role which is different from that of ‘existence’ here in ques-
tion. The yu refers to a particular aspect or stage of the creative
activity of the Absolute, the stage at which the absolutely ‘nameless’
Absolute definitely turns into the ‘named’ and begins to be
diversified into myriads of things.
Far better thanyw in this respect is the word tao, the Way, which is
primarily an exact Taoist counterpart of the Islamic haqq, the Truth
or Reality. But tao, to begin with, is a word having an extremely
complex connotative structure. It covers an extensive semantic
field, ranging from the Mystery of Mysteries to the ‘being-so-of-
itself ’ of all existents. Its meaning is, so to speak, tinged with
variegated nuances and charged with many associations. Certainly
Methodological Preliminaries
471
bJ
it does cover to a great extent the meaning of ‘ existence’ . But if used
as an equivalent of ‘existence’ it would inevitably add many ele-
ments to the basic meaning of ‘existence’. The use of the term
‘taoism’, for example, instead of ‘existentialism’ in those contexts
where we want to bring out the radical contrast between the funda-
mental position of Taoism and ‘essentialism’ - which by the way, is
an English equivalent chosen for the Confucian conception of
‘names’ ( ming ) - would make the whole situation more obscure and
confusing. In order to refer to the particular aspect of the tao in
which it is conceived as the actus purus, it is absolutely necessary
that we should have a far less ‘colorful’ word than tao. And ‘exist-
ence’ is just the word for its purpose.
These considerations would seem to lead us to a very important
methodological problem regarding the possibility of meta-historical
dialogues. The problem concerns the need of a common linguistic
system. This is only natural because the very concept of ‘dialogue’
presupposes the existence of a common language between two
interlocutors.
When our intention happens to be to establish a philosophical
dialogue between two thinkers belonging to one and the same
cultural and historical background, Plato and Aristotle, for
instance, or Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Kant and Hegel,
etc., the problem of the necessity of a common language does not of
course arise. The problem begins to make itself felt when we pick up
within a cultural tradition two thinkers separated one from the
other by a number of factors, like Aristotle and Kant, for example.
Each of them philosophized in a language which is different from
that of the other. There is, in this sense, no common language
between them. But in a broad sense, we can still say that there is a
common philosophical language between the two, because of the
strong tie of a common philosophical tradition that bind them
together inseparably. It is, in fact, hardly imaginable that any key-
term of primary importance in Greek should not find its equivalent
in German.
The linguistic distance naturally becomes more conspicuous
when we want to establish a dialogue between two thinkers belong-
ing to two different cultural traditions, Avicenna and Thomas
Aquinas, for example. But even here we are still justified in recog-
nizing the existence of a common philosophical language in view of
the fact that in the last analysis they represent but two varieties of
scholastic philosophy, both of which ultimately go back to one and
the same Greek source. The concept of ‘existence’, for instance - in
the linguistic form of wujud in Arabic and in that of existentia in
Latin - appears with the same basic connotation in both the Eastern
472 Sufism and Taoism
and Western scholastic traditions. Thus the problem of a common
language does not arise in a very acute form.
The problem does arise with real acuity where there is no histori-
cal connection in any sense whatsoever between the two thinkers.
And this is precisely the case with Ibn ‘Arab! and Lao-tzu or
Chuang-tzu. In such a case, if there happens to be a central concept
active in both systems, but having its linguistic counterpart only in
one of the systems, we have to pinpoint the concept in the system in
which it is in a state of non-linguistic fluidity or amorphousness, and
then stabilize it with a definite ‘name’ . The ‘name’ may be borrowed
from the other system, if the term actually in use in it happens to be a
really appropriate one. Or some other word may be chosen for the
purpose. In our particular case, Ibn ‘ Arabi offers the word wujud,
which, in its translated form, ‘existence’ serves exactly our purpose,
because it does express the concept to be expressed in as simple a
manner as possible, that is, without ‘coloring’ it with special conno-
tations. The word remains connotatively colorless mainly due to the
fact that Ibn ‘Arabi uses by preference a variety of other terms, like
tajalli, fayd, rahmah, nafas, etc., in order to describe the same
concept with special connotations.
That we are not doing any injustice to the reality of the world-
view of the Taoist sages by applying the word ‘existence’ to the
central idea of their thought will be clear if one takes the trouble of
re-examining Chuang-tzu’ s description of the Cosmic Wind
together with the analytic interpretation of it which has been given
in Chapter VI.
However this may be, with the establishment of ‘existence’ as the
central concept of both systems, we are now in possession of a
common philosophical ground on which to establish a meta-
historical dialogue between Ibn ‘Arab! on the one hand and Lao-tzu
and Chuang-tzu on the other. With this in mind, let us review the
main points of the two philosophical systems which we have already
analyzed in detail in the preceding pages.
I would like to point out at the outset that the philosophical
structure of both systems as a whole is dominated by the concept of
the Unity of Existence. This concept is expressed in Arabic by
wahdah al-wujud, literally the ‘one-ness of existence’. For expres-
sing the same basic concept, Chuang-tzu, uses words like t’ien ni
‘Heavenly Levelling’ and t’ien chiin ‘Heavenly Equalization’.
The very words ‘levelling’ and equalization’ clearly suggest that
the ‘ unity’ in question is not a simple ‘ unity’ , but a ‘ unity’ formed by
many different things. The idea, in brief, is this. There are actually
different things, but they are ‘equalized’ with each other, or ‘level-
led down’ to the state of ‘unity’, losing all their ontological distinc-
Methodological Preliminaries 473
tions in the midst of the original metaphysical Chaos. More briefly
stated, the ‘unity’ in question is a ‘unity’ of ‘multiplicity’. The same
is true of the ‘ wahdah ’ of Ibn ‘Arabi.
In both these systems, the whole world of Being is represented as
a kind of ontological tension between Unity and Multiplicity. Unity
in the world-view of Ibn ‘Arab! is represented by haqq, ‘Truth’ or
‘Reality’ while in that of Taoism it is represented by the tao, ‘ Way’.
And Multiplicity is for Ibn ‘Arabi the mumkinat ‘possible beings’,
and for Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu the wan wu , ‘ ten thousand things’ .
tajalli
haqq > mumkinat
sheng 1
tao *wan wu
And the relation between the two terms of the ontological tension
is that of Unity. It is a Unity because all the things that constitute
Multiplicity are, after all, so many different phenomenal forms
assumed by the Absolute (the Truth and the Way respectively). The
phenomenal process by which the original One diversifies itself into
Many is considered by Ibn ‘Arabi as the tajalli , ‘self-manifestation’
of the One, and by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu as sheng ‘producing’.
And Chuang-tzu, in particular, further elaborates this idea into that
of the universal Transmutation, wu hua, lit. ‘things- transforming’.
Such is the broad conceptual framework which is shared by the
world-views of Ibn ‘Arab! and the Taoist sages. The framework is in
its entirety constructed on the most basic concept of ‘existence’.
In what follows we shall examine in terms of this framework and in
terms of this basic concept the major points of emphasis which
characterize the two philosophical systems.
Note
1. 4, sheng-. ‘produces’ or ‘brings into existence’.
II The Inner Transformation of Man
The philosophical world-view of the ‘Unity of Multiplicity’,
whether in the form of the ‘Unity of Existence’ or in the form of
‘Heavenly Equalization’, is an unusual - to say the least - world-
view. It is an extraordinary world-view because it is a product of an
extraordinary vision of Existence as experienced by an extraordi-
nary man. The most characteristic point about this type of philos-
ophy is that philosophizing act starts from an immediate intuitive
grasp of Existence at its metaphysical depth, at the level of its being
the ‘absolute’ Absolute.
Existence - which has always and everywhere been the central
theme for innumerable philosophers - can be approached and
grasped at a number of different levels. The Aristotelian attitude
represents in this respect the exact opposite of the position taken by
the philosophers of Taoism and Sufism. For an Aristotle, Existence
means primarily the existence of individual ‘things’ on the concrete
level of phenomenal ‘ reality’ . And his philosophizing starts from the
ordinary experience of Existence shared by all men on the level of
common sense. For an Ibn ‘Arab! or Chuang-tzu, however, these
‘things’ as experienced by an ordinary mind on the physical level are
nothing but a dream, or of a dreamlike nature. From their point of
view, the ‘things’ grasped on that level - although ultimately they
are but so many phenomenal forms of the Absolute, and are, as
such, no other than Existence - do not reveal the real metaphysical
depth of Existence. And an ontology based on such an experience
touches only shallowly the surface of the ‘things’; it is not in a
position to account for the structure of the ‘things’ in terms of the
very ground of their Existence. A philosopher of this type is a man
standing on the level of the ‘worldly mode of being’ ( nash‘ah
dunyawiyah ), in the terminology of Ibn Arabi. Such a man lacks the
‘spiritual eyesight’ (‘ ayn al-ba$irah ) - or ‘illuminating light’ (ming)
as Chuang-tzu calls it - which is absolutely necessary for a deeper
penetration into the mystery of Existence. In order to obtain such
an eyesight, man must experience a spiritual rebirth and be trans-
ferred from the ‘worldly mode of being’ to the ‘otherworldly mode
of being’ ( nash'ah ukhrawiyah).
475
The Inner Transformation of Man
Since the former is the way the majority of men naturally are,
men of the ‘otherwordly mode of being’ must necessarily appear as
‘abnormal’ men. The world-view of Taoism and Sufism represents
in this sense a vision of Existence peculiar to ‘abnormal’ men.
It is significant that the process by which this spiritual transforma-
tion occurs in man is described by Ibn ‘Arabi and Chuang-tzu, in
such a way that it discloses in both cases exactly the same basic
structure. Ibn ‘Arabi describes it in terms of ‘self-annihilation’
(fana), and Chuang-tzu in terms of ‘sitting in oblivion’ (tso wang).
The very words used: ‘annihilation’ and ‘forgetting’, clearly point to
one and the same conception. And the same underlying conception
is the ‘purification of the Mind’, or as Chuang-tzu calls it, the
spiritual ‘fasting’.
As to what actually occurs in the process of ‘purification’, details
have been given in the first and second Parts of this book. And it
would be pointless to repeat the description here. The ‘purification’
in both Taoism and Sufism consists, in brief, the man’s purifying
himself of all desires as well as of the activity of Reason. It consists,
in other words, in a complete nullification of the ‘ego’ as the empiri-
cal subject of all activities of Reason and desires. The nullification of
the empirical ego results in the actualization of a new Ego, the
Cosmic Ego, which, in the case of Taoism, is considered to be
completely at one with the Absolute in its creative activity, and, in
the case of Ibn ‘Arabi, is said to be unified with the Absolute to the
utmost limit of possibility.
Perhaps the most interesting point concerning this topic from the
viewpoint of comparison is the problem of the ‘stages’ of the ‘puri-
fication.’ A comparative consideration is here the more interesting
because both Ibn ‘Arabi and Chuang-tzu distinguish in the process
three basic stages. The two systems differ from each other in details,
but agree with each other in the main.
Let us begin by recapitulating the thesis put forward by Chuang-
tzu. The first stage, according to him, consists in ‘putting the world
outside the Mind’, that is to say, forgetting the existence of the
objective world. The world as something ‘objective’ being by nature
relatively far from the Mind from the very beginning, it is relatively
easy for man to erase it from his consciousness through
contemplation.
The second stage consists in ‘putting the things outside the Mind’ ,
that is, erasing from consciousness the familiar things that surround
man in his daily life. At this stage, the external world completely
disappears from his consciousness.
The third stage is said to consist in man’s forgetting Life, that is,
his own life or his personal existence. The ‘ego’ is thereby com-
I
476
Sufism and Taoism
The Inner Transformation of Man
All
pletely destroyed, and the world, both external and internal, disap-
pears from the consciousness. And as the ‘ego’ is nullified, the inner
eye of the man is opened and the light of ‘illumination’ suddenly
breaks through the darkness of spiritual night. This marks the birth
of a new Ego in man. He now finds himself in the Eternal Now,
beyond all limitation of time and space. He is also ‘beyond Life and
Death’, that is, he is ‘one’ with all things, and all things are unified
into ‘one’ in his ‘ no-consciousness’ . In this spiritual state, an unusual
Tranquillity or Calmness reigns over everything. And in this cosmic
Tranquillity, away from the turmoil and agitation of the sensible
world, man enjoys being unified and identified with the very process
of the universal Transmutation of the ten thousand things.
Ibn ‘Arab! who, as I have just said, also divides the process into
three stages, provides a markedly Islamic version of spiritual ‘puri-
fication . The first stage is the ‘annihilation of the attributes’ . At this
stage man has all his ‘human’ attributes nullified, and in their place
he assumes as his own the Divine Attributes.
The second stage consists in that man has his own personal
‘essence’ nullified and realizes in himself his being one with the
Divine Essence. This is the completion of the phenomenon of
‘self-annihilation’ in the proper sense of the word. This stage cor-
responds to the first half of the third stage of Chuang-tzu, in which
the man is said to abandon his old ‘ego’.
The third stage, according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, is the stage at which man
regains his ‘self’ which he has ‘annihilated’ at the previous stage.
Only he does not regain his ‘self’ under the same conditions as
before, but rather in the very midst of the Divine Essence. This is
evidently but another way of saying that having abandoned his old
‘ego’ he has obtained a new Ego. Having lost his life, he has found a
new Life in being unified with the Divine Reality. In the technical
terminology of the Sufism, this is known as ‘self-subsistence’ (baqa’).
This third stage corresponds to the latter half of the third stage
according to Chuang-tzu’ s division of the process. Now man witnes-
ses all phenomenal things mingling with each other and merging
into the boundless ocean of Divine Life. His consciousness - or, to
be more exact, supra-consciousness - is in the utmost propinquity to
the Divine Consciousness in an ontological stage previous to its
actual splitting into an infinity of determinations and particular
forms. Naturally he falls into profound Silence, and an extraordi-
nary Tranquillity reigns over his concentrated Mind.
There is another important point to be mentioned in connection
with the problem of the ‘purification’ of the Mind. It concerns the
centripetal direction of the ‘purification’. The process of ‘self-
annihilation’ or ‘self-purification’, if it is to succeed, must definitely
be turned and directed toward the innermost core of human exist-
ence. This direction clearly goes against the ordinary movements of
the Mind. The activity of the mind is usually characterized by its
centrifugal tendency. The Mind has a very marked natural tendency
to ‘go out’ toward the external world, attracted by, and in pursuit of,
external objects. For the sake of ‘purification’, this natural tendency
must be curbed and turned to the opposite direction. The ‘puri-
fication’ is realizable only by man’s ‘turning into himself. This is
expressed by Ibn ‘Arabi through the famous Tradition: ‘He who
knows himself knows his Lord.’ To this corresponds on the side of
Taoism the dictum of Lao-tzu: ‘He who knows others (i.e., external
objects) is a “clever” man, but he who knows himself is an
“illumined” man.’ In reference to the same situation, Lao-tzu also
speaks of ‘closing up all the openings and doors’ . ‘Closing up all the
openings and doors’ means obstructing all the possible outlets for
the centrifugal activity of the mind. What is aimed at thereby is
man’s going down deep into his own mind until he comes into direct
touch with the existential core of himself.
The reason why this point must be mentioned as being of special
importance is that such a thesis would appear at first sight to
contradict the more fundamental thesis of the Unity of Existence.
For in the world-view of both Ibn ‘Arab! and the Taoist sages, not
only ourselves but all things in the world, without a single exception,
are phenomenal forms of the Absolute. And as such, there can be
no basic difference between them. All existents equally manifest,
each in its particular way and particular form, the Absolute. Why,
then, are the external things to be considered detrimental to the
subjective actualization of the Unity of Existence?
The answer is not far to seek. Although external things are so
many forms of the Absolute, and although we know this intellec-
tually, we cannot penetrate into them and experience from the
inside the palpitating Life of the Absolute as it is actively working
within them. All we are able to do is look at them from the outside.
Only in the case of our own selves, can each of us go into his ‘inside’
and m-tuit the Absolute as something constantly at work within
himself. Only in this way can we subjectively participate in the
Mystery of Existence.
Besides, the centrifugal tendency of the mind is directly con-
nected with the discriminating activity of Reason. And Reason
cannot subsist without taking an ‘essentialist’ position. For where
there are no conceptual boundaries neatly established Reason is
utterly powerless. In the view of Reason, ‘reality’ consists of various
‘things’ and ‘qualities’, each having what is called ‘essence’ by which
it is distinguished from the rest. These ‘things’ and ‘qualities’ are in
truth nothing but so many forms in which the Absolute manifests
I
478 Sufism and Taoism
itseif. But in so far as they are self-subsistent entities, they conceal
the Absolute behind their solid ‘essential’ veils. They intervene
between our sight and the Absolute, and make our direct view of
Reality impossible. The majority of men are those whose eyesight is
obstructed in this way by the thick curtain of ‘things’. They have
their counterpart in Taoism in those people who, unable to
‘chaotify’ the ‘things’, cannot interpret reality except in terms of
‘ this’ -or-‘ that’, ‘ good’ -or-‘ bad’, ‘ right’ -or-‘ wrong’, etc.
When the ‘purification’ of the Mind is completed, and when man has
turned into a metaphysical Void, forgetting both the inside and the
outside of himself, he is allowed to experience what the Taoist sages
call ‘illumination’ ( ming ) and what Ibn ‘Arabi calls ‘unveiling’
(kashf) or ‘immediate tasting’ ( dhawq ). It is characteristic of both
‘illumination’ and ‘unveiling’ (or ‘tasting’) that this ultimate stage
once fully actualized, the ‘things’ that have been eliminated in the
process of ‘purification’ from the consciousness all come back once
again, totally transformed, to his Mind which is now a well-polished
spotless mirror - the Mysterious Mirror, 1 as Lao-tzu calls it. Thus it
comes about that the highest stage of metaphysical intuition is not
that of those who witness only the Absolute, wholly oblivious of
its phenomenal aspect. The highest ‘unveiling’, according to
Ibn ‘Arabi, is of those who witness both the creatures and the
Absolute as two aspects of one Reality, or rather, who witness the
whole as one Reality diversifying itself constantly and incessantly
according to various aspects and relations, being ‘one’ in Essence,
and ‘all’ with regard to the Names.
Likewise, the Perfect Man of Taoism does perceive infinitely
variegated things on the phenomenal level of Existence, and the
spotless surface of his Mysterious Mirror reflects all of them as they
appear and disappear. But this kaleidoscope of ever shifting forms
does not perturb the cosmic Tranquillity of the Mind, because
behind these variegated veils of the phenomenal world, he intuits
the metaphysical ‘One’. He himself is one with the constant flux of
Transmutation, and being one therewith, he is one with the ‘One’.
The philosophical world-view of an Ibn ‘Arabi, a Lao-tzu and a
Chuang-tzu is a product of such an ‘abnormal’ spiritual state. It is an
ontology, because it is a philosophized vision of Existence. But it is
an extraordinary ontology, because the underlying vision of Exist-
ence is far from being an ordinary one.
Note
1. Hsiian lan, X.
Ill The Multistratified Structure of
Reality
In terms of historical origin there is obviously no connection at all
between Sufism and Taoism. Historically speaking, the former goes
back to a particular form of Semitic monotheism, while the latter - if
the hypothesis which I have put forward at the outset of this study is
correct - is a philosophical elaboration of the Far Eastern type of
shamanism.
It is highly significant that, in spite of this wide historico-cultural
distance that separates the two, they share, on the philosophical
level, the same ground. They agree with each other, to begin with, in
that both base their philosophical thinking on a very peculiar con-
ception of Existence which is fundamentally identical, though dif-
fering from one another in details and on secondary matters.
\i They further agree with one another in that philosophizing in
I both cases has its ultimate origin not in reasoning about Existence
j| but in experiencing Existence. Furthermore, ‘experiencing’ Exist-
f ence in this particular case consists in experiencing it not on the
ordinary level of sense perception, but on the level (or levels) of
|> supra-sensible intuition.
It Existence or Reality as ‘experienced’ on supra-sensible levels
1 reveals itself as of a multistratified structure. The Reality which one
H observes in this kind of metaphysical intuition is not of a uni-
H stratum structure. And the vision of Reality thus obtained is totally
I different from the ordinary view of ‘reality’ which is shared by the
;§ common people.
j | It is extremely interesting that both Ibn ‘Arabi and Chuang-tzu
begin by giving a rude shock to common sense by flatly refusing to
admit any reality to so-called ‘reality’, saying that the latter is
nothing but a dream. Quoting the famous Tradition: ‘All men are
» asleep; only when they die, do they wake up’, Ibn ‘Arabi says: ‘The
world is an illusion; it has no real existence. . . . Know that you
yourself are an imagination. And everything that you perceive and
H say to yourself, “this is not me”, is also an imagination.’ In an
exactly similar way Chuang-tzu remarks: ‘Suppose you dream that
you are a bird. (In that state) you soar up into the sky. Suppose you
480 Sufism and Taoism
dream that you are a fish; you go down deep into the pool. (While
you are experiencing all this in your dream, what you experience is
your “reality”.) Judging by this, nobody can be sure whether we -
you and I, who are actually engaged in conversation in this way - are
awake of just dreaming.’ Thus we see so-called ‘reality’ being all of
a sudden transformed and reduced to something dreamlike and
unreal.
Far more remarkable, however, is the fact that for both Ibn
‘Arab! and Chuang-tzu the dictum: ‘All is a dream’ has a very
positive metaphysical meaning. It is not in any way an emotive
statement to the effect, for instance, that the world we live in is like a
dream, that everything in this world is tragically ephemeral and
transient. It is, on the contrary, a definite ontological statement
recognizing the existence of a higher ontological level where all
things are deprived of their seemingly solid essential boundaries
and disclose their natural amorphousness. And paradoxically
enough, this ‘dreamlike’ level of Existence is, in the view of both Ibn
‘Arabi and Chuang-tzu, far more ‘real’ than so-called ‘reality’.
This dreamlike level of Existence is in the ontological system of
Ibn ‘Arabi what he calls the ‘world of similitudes and Imagination’,
while in that of Chuang-tzu it is the Chaos.
Thus the basic proposition that all is a dream does not mean that
so-called ‘reality’ is a vain and groundless thing. Instead of meaning
simply that the physical world is a sheer illusion, the proposition
indicates that the world which we experience on the sensible level is
not a self-subsistent reality, but is a Symbol - an ayah (pi. ayat), or
‘indicator’ as Ibn ‘Arabi calls it, using the Quranic term - vaguely
and indistinctively pointing to ‘Something beyond’. The sensible
things, thus interpreted, are phenomenal forms of the Absolute
itself, and as such, they are ‘real’ in a particular way.
However, this again is a matter of immediate intuitive experi-
ence. The metaphysical fact that behind and beyond so-called ‘real-
ity’ , which is apparently a colorful fabric of fantasy and imagination,
there lies hidden the ‘real’ Reality, does not become clear except to
those who have learnt how to ‘interpret’ rightly - as Ibn ‘Arabi says
- the infinitely variegated forms and properties as so many manifes-
tations of Reality. This is what is meant by Ibn ‘Arabi when he says
that one has to ‘die and wake up’. ‘The only “reality” (in the true
sense of the term) is the Absolute revealing itself as it really is in the
sensible forms which are nothing but the loci of its self-
manifestation. This point becomes understandable only when one
wakes up from the present life - which is a sleep of forgetfulness -
after one dies to this world through self-annihilation in God.’
Chuang-tzu, likewise, speaks of the need of experiencing a Great
The Multistrati fled structure of Reality 481
Awakening. ‘Only when one experiences a Great Awakening does
one realize that “reality” is but a Big Dream. But the stupid imagine
that they are actually awake. . . . How deep-rooted and irremedi-
able their stupidity is!’
In the eye of those who have experienced this spiritual Awaken-
ing, all things, each in its own form and on its own level, manifest the
presence of ‘Something beyond’. And that ‘Something beyond’ is
ultimately the haqq of Ibn ‘Arabi and the tao of Lao-tzu and
Chuang-tzu - the Absolute. Both Ibn ‘Arabi and the Taoist sages
distinguish in the process of the self-revealing evolvement of the
Absolute several degrees or stages. Ontologically speaking this
would mean that Existence is of a multistratified structure.
The strata, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, are:
(1) The stage of the Essence (the absolute Mystery, abysmal
Darkness);
(2) The stage of the Divine Attributes and Names (the stage
of Divinity);
(3) The stage of the Divine Actions (the stage of Lordship);
(4) The stage of Images and Similitudes;
(5) The sensible world.
And according to Lao-tzu:
(1) Mystery of Mysteries;
(2) Non-Being (Nothing, or Nameless);
(3) One;
(4) Being (Heaven and Earth);
(5) The ten thousand things.
The two systems agree with each other in that (I) they regard the
first stage as an absolute Mystery, that is, something absolutely
unknown-unknowable, transcending all distinctions and all limita-
tions, even the limitation of ‘not being limited’; and that (2) they
regard the four remaining stages as so many various forms assumed by
this absolute Mystery in the process of its ontological evolvement,
so that all are, in this sense, ‘one’. This latter point, namely, the
problem of Unity, will be further discussed in the following chapter.
I
Essence and Existence
483
IV Essence and Existence
As we have seen above, both Chuang-tzu’ s ‘Heavenly Levelling’
and Ibn ‘Arabi’s ‘Unity of Existence’ are based on the idea that all
things are ultimately reducible to the original Unity of the Absolute
in its absoluteness, that is, the ‘Essence at the level of Unity
(ahadiyahy .
It is to be remarked that the Essence in the Unity of its uncondi-
tional simplicity is, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, nothing other than pure
Existence , there being here not even the slightest discrepancy be-
tween ‘essence’ (i.e., ‘quiddity’) and ‘existence’ . In other words, the
Absolute is actus purus, the act itself of ‘existing’. The Absolute is
not a ‘thing’ in the sense of a ‘substance’.
As Qashani says: ‘The Reality called the “Essence at the level of
Unity” in its true nature is nothing other than Existence pure and
simple in so far as it is Existence. It is conditioned neither by
non-determination nor by determination, for in itself it is too sacred
to be qualified by any property and any name. It has no quality, no
delimitation; there is not even a shadow of Multiplicity in it. It is not
a substance . . . , for a substance must have an ‘essence’ other than
“existence” , a “quiddity” by which it is a substance as differentiated
from all others.’
The conception of the Absolute being conditioned neither by
determination nor by non-determination is more tersely expressed
by Lao-tzu through single words like ‘Nothing’ and ‘Nameless’, and
by Chuang-tzu through the expression No-[No Non-Being]. The
last expression, No- [No Non-Being], indicates analytically the
stages in the logical process by which one arrives at the realization of
the Absolute transcending all determinations. First, the idea that
the Absolute is Being, i.e., ‘existence’ as ordinarily understood, is
negated. The concept of Non-Being is thus posited. Then, this
concept of Non-Being is eliminated, because, being a simple nega-
tion of Being, it is but a relative Non-Being. Thus the concept of
No-Non-Being is obtained. This concept stands on the negation of
both Being and Non-Being, and as such it still keeps in itself a trace
or reflection of the opposition which exists between the contradic-
tories. In order to eliminate even this faint trace of relativity, one
has to negate the No-Non-Being itself. Thus finally the concept of
No-[No Non-Being] is established, as ‘Nothing’ in its absolutely
unconditional transcendence.
And Chuang-tzu clarifies through the admirable symbol of the
Cosmic Wind that this transcendent Nothing is not a purely negative
‘nothing’ in the usual sense of the word; that, on the contrary, it is a
supra-plenitude of Existence as the ultimate ontological ground of
everything, as Something that lies at the very source of all existents
and makes them exist. ‘It would seem’ , Chuang-tzu says, ‘that there
is some real Ruler. It is impossible for us to see Him in a concrete
form. He is acting - there can be no doubt about it; but we cannot
see His form. He does show His activity, but He has no sensible
form.’ This simply means that the No-[No Non-Being] - or theo-
logically, the real Ruler of the world - is actus , creative energy, not a
substance. The Cosmic Wind in itself is invisible and impalpable -
because it is not a substance - but we know its presence through its
ontological activity, through the ten thousand ‘holes’ and ‘hollows’
producing each its peculiar sound as the Wind blows upon them.
The basic idea underlying the use of the symbol of the Wind is
comparable with Ibn ‘Arabi’s favorite image of the ‘flowing’ of
Existence ( sarayan al-wujud). ‘The secret of Life (i.e., Existence)
lies in the act of flowing peculiar to water.’ The ‘water’ of Existence
is eternally flowing through all things. It ‘spreads” throughout
the universe, permeating and pervading everything. It is significant
that both Chuang-tzu and Ibn ‘AbrabI represent Existence as
something moving: ‘blowing’, ‘flowing’, ‘spreading’, ‘permeating’,
etc. This is a definite proof that Existence as they have
come to know it through ‘immediate tasting’ is in reality actus,
nothing else.
Existence which is actus, thus spreading itself out far and wide, goes
on producing the ten thousand things. The latter, as I have
repeatedly pointed out, are various forms in which Existence (or the
Absolute) manifests itself. And in this sense, all are Existence,
nothing but Existence. And there is nothing but Existence. Viewed
from this angle, the whole world of Being is one.
On the other hand, however, it is also an undeniable fact that we
actually see with our own eyes an infinity of infinitely variegated
‘things’ which are different from one another. ‘It is evident’, Ibn
‘Arab! says, ‘that this is different from that . . . And in the Divine
world, however wide it is, nothing repeats itself. This is a truly
fundamental fact.’ From this point of view, there is not a single thing
that is the same as any other thing. Even ‘one and the same thing’ is
in reality not exactly the same in two successive moments.
484 Sufism and Taoism
These individually different things, on a more universal level of
Existence, still retain their mutual differences and distinctions, not
‘individually’ this time, but in terms of ‘essences’. And these
ontological differences and distinctions which the ‘things’ manifest
on this level are far more solid and unalterable because they are
based on, and fixed by, their ‘essences’. The latter provide the
‘things’ with an ‘essential’ fixity which ensures them from disinte-
gration . A ‘ horse’ is a ‘ horse’ by its ‘ essence’ ; it can never be a ‘ dog’ .
A ‘dog’ is ‘essentially’ a ‘dog’, nothing else. It goes without saying
that this is the very basis on which stands the ‘essentialist’ type of
ontology.
How could we account for the apparent contradiction between
the above-mentioned absolute Unity of Existence, Unity of all
things, and the undeniable Multiplicity of the ten thousand things
which are not reducible to each other, let alone to a unique and
single thing? Surely, if one puts these two points of view side by side
with each other, one’s mind cannot help being thrown into bewilder-
ing confusion. To see the One in the Many and the Many in the One,
or rather to see the Many as One and the One as Many - this
naturally causes what Ibn ‘Arab! calls (metaphysical) ‘perplexity’
{hay rah).
Faced with this problem, Chuang-tzu takes a thoroughgoing
anti-essentialist position. The view of things, each being distin-
guished from the rest by a solid ‘boundary’ of ‘essence’, he maintains,
does not give a true picture of these things themselves. The ‘essen-
tial’ distinctions which common sense and Reason recognize be-
tween things are, according to him, devoid of reality. The ‘things’
ordinarily look as if they were distinct from each other in terms of
‘essences’, simply because ordinary men are not ‘awake’. If they
were, they would ‘chaotify’ the things and see them in their original
‘undifferentiation’ .
The things being ‘chaotified’, however, is not the same as their
being sheer nothing. The very concept of ‘chaotification’ would be
meaningless if there were no plurality at all in the world of Being. It
is, as Ibn ‘Arabi maintains, a truly fundamental fact that many
‘different’ things do exist, no matter how ‘unreal’ they may be in
themselves and from the viewpoint of the higher metaphysical level
of Existence. The differences and distinctions that are observable in
the world may reveal themselves as ‘unreal’ when observed with the
‘spiritual eyesight’ of an ecstatic philosopher, but in so far as things
are factually different and distinct from each other, there must be
some ontological ground for that, too. And the ontological ground
cannot be anything other than ‘essences’.
The ‘essences’ are symbolically designated by Chuang-tzu
through the image of the ‘hollows’ in the trees, which emit all kinds
Essence and Existence 485
of sounds as the Wind blows upon them. Chuang-tzu does not assert
that the ‘hollows’ do not exist in any sense whatsoever. They are
surely there. The only point is that they do not produce any sound
by themselves. It is the Wind, not the ‘hollows’ , that really produces
the sounds. ‘(One and the same Wind) blows on the ten thousand
things in different ways, and makes each “hollow” produce its own
peculiar sound, so that each imagines that its own self produces that
particular sound. But who, in reality, is the one who makes (the
“hollows”) produce various sounds?’
All this would seem to be tantamount to saying - although
Chuang-tzu himself does not talk in terms of these concepts - that
the ‘essences’ are not sheer nothing, that they are potentially exist-
ent. The ‘essences’ do exist, but only in potentia, not in actu; they
are not actual or real in the fullest sense of the word. What is really
‘real’ is Existence, nothing else. And the ‘essences’ look as if they
were ‘real’ only by dint of the actualizing activity of Existence.
The position of the ‘hollows’ in the ontology of Chuang-tzu
corresponds to that of the ‘permanent archetypes’ in the ontology of
Ibn ‘Arabi. The main difference between the two lies in the fact that
in the former the relation between Essence and Existence is merely
symbolically suggested, whereas Ibn ‘Arabi consciously takes up
the problem as an ontological theme and elaborates it far more
theoretically.
Details have been given in Chapter XII of the first Part regarding
the conceptual structure of the ‘permanent archetypes’. Suffice it
here to note that the ‘permanent archetypes’ are the ‘essences’ of
the things, and that they are described as ‘neither existent nor
non-existent’ - which would exactly apply to the ‘hollows’ of
Chuang-tzu. It is remarkable, however, that the ‘permanent
archetypes’ are also described by Ibn ‘Arabi as ‘realities {haqa’iq)
eternally subsistent in the world of the Unseen’. That is to say, the
‘permanent archetypes’, although they are ‘non-existent’ in terms
of ‘external existence’, do exist in actu within the Divine Conscious-
ness. The ontology of Ibn ‘Arabi is, in this respect, Platonic; it is
more ‘essentialist’ than that of Chuang-tzu who does not concede
anything more than sheer potentiality to the ‘essences’.
V The Self-Evolvement of Existence
The absolute and ultimate ground of Existence is in both Sufism and
Taoism the Mystery of Mysteries. The latter is, as Ibn ‘Arab! says,
the ankar al-nakirat‘ the most indeterminate of all indeterminates’ ;
that is to say, it is Something that transcends all qualifications and
relations that are humanly conceivable. And since it is transcendent
to such a degree, it remains for ever unknown and unknowable.
Existence per se is thus absolutely inconceivable and inapproach-
able. Ibn ‘Arab! refers to this aspect of Existence by the word
‘ghayb, ‘concealment’ or ‘invisibility’. In the Taoist system, it is
hsuan or Mystery that is the most proper word for referring to this
absolutely transcendent stage of Existence.
The Taoist sages have also a set of negative words like wu,
Non-Being, wu-wu, No-thing or ‘Nothing’, wu-ming, Nameless,
etc. These terms are properly to be considered as functioning still
within the domain of the original transcendence. Conceptually,
however, there is already observable a distinction between these
negative terms and the ‘ Mystery’ , because their very ‘ negative-ness’
indicates their opposition to something ‘positive’, i.e., the following
stage of yu or Being, at which the ‘boundaries’ of the things-to-be
are adumbrated. This is the reason why Chuang-tzu proposes to use
the complex expression, No- [No Non-Being] or No-No-Nothing in
order to refer to the ultimate stage of Existence (i.e., the Mystery of
Mysteries) without leaving the level of negativity. However, this
distinction between the Mystery and these negative terms is ex-
clusively conceptual. Otherwise, ‘Non-Being’, ‘Nothing’, and
‘Nameless’ denote exactly the same thing as the ‘ Mystery’ . They all
denote the Absolute in its absoluteness, or Existence at its ultimate
stage, qua Something unknown-unknowable, transcending all
qualifications, determinations, and relations.
It is important to note that Ibn ‘Arab! calls this ontological level the
‘level of Unity (ahadiyahf . The Absolute at this stage is ‘One’ in the
sense that it refuses to accept any qualification whatsoever. Thus,
being one here means nothing other than absolute transcendence.
The self-evolvement of Existence 487
The Taoist sages, too, speak of the Way as ‘One’. As I have tried
to show earlier, the ‘One’ in the Taoist system is conceptually to be
placed between the stage of Non-Being and that of Being. It is not
exactly the same as the Way qua Mystery, because it is considered as
something which the ten thousand things ‘acquire’, i.e., partake of.
The One, in other words, is the principle of immanence. The Way is
‘immanent’ in everything existent as its existential core, or as its
Virtue, as Lao-tzu calls it. But whether regarded as ‘immanent’ or
‘transcendent’ , the Way is the Way. What is immanent in everything
is exactly the same thing as that which transcends everything. And
this situation corresponds to the conceptual distinction between
tanzih and tashbih and the factual identity of the two in the system of
Ibn ‘Arab!.
Thus the Taoist concept of One, in so far as it refers to the
Absolute itself, is an exact counterpart of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ahad, the
‘ absolute One’ , but in so far as it is ‘ One’ comprising within itself the
possibility of Multiplicity, it is a counterpart of wahid, i.e., the ‘One
at the level of the Names and Attributes’ , or the Unity of the Many.
In short, the Taoist One comprises both the ahad and the wahid of
Sufism.
These considerations make us realize that the first and ultimate
stage of Existence itself can naturally be considered from two
different angles: (1) as the Absolute perse , and (2) as the Absolute
as the very origin and starting-point of the process of self-
evolvement. In the first of these two aspects, the Absolute is Mys-
tery and Darkness. In the second aspect, on the contrary, a faint
foreboding of light is already perceivable in the very midst of utter
darkness. As Ibn ‘ ArabI says: ‘Everything is contained in the bosom
of the Breath, just as the bright light of day in the very darkness of
dawn’ .
It is quite significant in this respect that the word used by the
Taoist sages to denote the Mystery, hsuan , originally means ‘black’
with a mixture of redness. Lao-tzu, as we have noticed, likes us to
use in this sense also the word p’u meaning originally ‘uncarved
wood’ . Existence, at this stage of absolute simplicity, is like
‘uncarved wood’. In so far as it still remains ‘uncarved’, there is
nothing observable but ‘wood’. But in so far as it contains the
possibility of producing all kinds of vessels and utensils, it is more
than sheer ‘wood’. Actually it is still ‘Nothing’, but potentially it is
all things. There is at least a vague and indistinct feeling that
something is about to happen. And that is the ‘positive’ aspect of the
Mystery, the face of the Absolute turned toward the world of
creation. Ibn ‘Arabi conveys the same idea by the expression:
‘hidden Treasure’ , which he has taken from a Tradition. And it is of
488
Sufism and Taoism
the very nature of the ‘hidden Treasure’ that it ‘loves to be known’.
It is, however, at the stage of the Divine Names and Attributes -
in terms of Ibn ‘ Arabi’s world-view -that this ‘love of being known’,
i.e., the inner ontological drive of Existence, becomes actualized.
At the stage of the absolute Unity, the Absolute qua Absolute is
characterized by a perfect ‘independence’ , and does not require by
itself and for itself any creative activity. If ‘creation’ is at all conceiv-
able at this stage, it is simply in the form of a faint foreboding. In the
System of Taoism the concept of Non-Being or Nothing refers
precisely to this delicate situation. ‘Deep and Bottomless’, Lao-tzu
says, ‘it is like the origin and principle of the ten thousand
things. . . . There is nothing, and yet there seems to be something. I
know not whose son it is. It would seem to be antecedent even to the
Heavenly Emperor.’ ‘The Way in its reality is utterly vague, utterly
indistinct. Utterly indistinct, utterly vague, and yet there is in the
midst of it an Image. Utterly vague, utterly indistinct, and yet there
is in the midst of it Something.’
The ‘hidden Treasure loves to be known’. The Treasure lies ‘hid-
den’ , and yet it is, so to speak, pressed from inside by the ‘desire to
be known’. Speaking less symbolically, the infinite things that are
contained in the Absolute in the state of pure potentia forcefully
seek for an outlet. This naturally causes an ontological tension
within the Absolute. And the internal ontological compression,
growing ever stronger finally relieves itself by bursting forth. It is
highly interesting to notice that both Ibn ‘Arab! and Chuang-tzu
resort to the same kind of imagery in trying to describe this situa-
tion. Chuang-tzu talks about ‘eructation’. He says: ‘The Great
Earth eructates; and the eructation is called Wind. As long as the
eructation does not actually occur, nothing is observable. But once
it does occur, all the hollows of the trees raise ringing shouts.’ The
issuing forth of the ten thousand things from the Absolute is here
compared to the Great Earth belching forth the Wind.
No less bold and picturesque is the mythopoeic image of ‘brea-
thing out’ by which Ibn ‘Arab! tries to depict the matter. The
ontological state of extreme tension which precedes the ‘bursting
out’ and which has been caused by an excessive amount of things
accumulated inside is compared to the state in which a man finds
himself when he holds his breath compressed within himself. The
tension reaches the last limit, and the air compressed in the breast
explodes and gushes forth with a violent outburst. In a similar way,
the creative drive of Existence gushes forth out of the depth of
Absolute. This is the phenomenon which Ibn ‘Arab! calls the
‘breath of the Merciful’. In the theological language peculiar to Ibn
‘Arab!, the same phenomenon can also be described as the Divine
489
The self-evolvement of Existence
Names, at the extreme limit of inner compression, suddenly burst-
ing out from the bosom of the Absolute. ‘The Names, previous to
their existence in the outer world (in the form of phenomenal
things) exist hidden in the Essence of the Absolute (i.e., the Mystery
of Mysteries), all of them seeking an outlet toward the world of
external existence. The situation is comparable to the case in which
a man holds his breath within himself. The breath, held within,
seeks an outlet toward the outside, and this causes in the man a
painful sensation of extreme compression. Only when he breathes
out does this compression cease to make itself felt. Just as the man is
tormented by the compression if he does not breathe out, so the
Absolute would feel the pain of (ontological) compression if it did
not bring into existence the world in response to the demand of the
Names.’ This may also be compared with the image of a great
Cosmic Bellows by which Lao-tzu symbolically-describes the inex-
haustible creative activity of the Way. ‘The space between Heaven
and Earth is comparable to a bellows. It is empty (i.e., the Absolute
qua the Mystery of Mysteries is “Nothing”), but its activity is
inexhaustible. The more it works the more it produces.’
Thus Existence, in compliance with its own necessary and natural
internal demand, goes on inexhaustibly determining itself into an
infinity of concrete things. And the ‘breath of the Merciful’ or the
ontological Mercy pervades all of them, constituting the very exis-
tential core of each one of them. And the existential core thus
acquired by each phenomenal thing is what The Taoist sages call te
or Virtue.
It is worth remarking that the rahmah or Mercy as understood by
Ibn ‘Arab! is primarily an ontological fact. It refers to the actus of
Existence, namely, the act of making things exist. It does not
primarily denote the emotive attitude of compassion and benevol-
ence. But Mercy as bestowal of existence of course carries an
emotive and subjective overtone. And this squares well with the
ethical understanding of God in Islam. The creative activity of
Existence is represented in Taoism in a form which is diametrically
opposed to such a conception. For in Taoism the Way is said to be
‘non-humane’ (pu jeri). ‘Heaven and Earth’, Lao-tzu says, ‘lack
“benevolence” (i.e., lack mercy).’ They treat the ten thousand
things as if the latter were straw dogs.’ The difference between the
two systems, however, is only superficial. For whether described in
terms of Mercy (in Sufism) or non-Mercy (in Taoism), the basic fact
described remains exactly the same. This because the ontological
Mercy, in the conception of Ibn ‘Arabi, is absolutely gratuitous.
What is meant by both Mercy and non- Mercy is nothing other than
the all-pervading creative activity of Existence. Ibn ‘Arab! himself
490
Sufism and Taoism
warns us against understanding the word rahmah with its usual
associations. ‘There does not come into its activity any considera-
tion of attaining an aim, or of a thing’ s being or not being suitable for
a purpose. Whether suitable or unsuitable the Divine Mercy covers
everything and anything with existence.’
This explanation of Mercy by Ibn ‘Arabi is so congenial to the
spirit of Taoism that it will pass verbatim for an explanation by a
Lao-tzu of the Taoist concept of non-Mercy which is as equally
impartial and indiscriminating as Ibn ‘ArabFs Mercy in bestowing
the gift of ‘existence’ upon everything and everybody. In the view of
Lao-tzu, the creative activity of the Absolute is extended over the
ten thousand things without a single exception precisely because it
stands on the principle of non-Mercy. If even a trifling amount of
human emotion were involved therein, the Absolute would not be
acting with such an absolute impartiality. In the view of Ibn ‘Arabi,
on the contrary, the Absolute bestows ‘existence’ to all things
without excluding anything precisely because it is the actus of
Mercy. The Divine Mercy being by nature limitlessly wide, it covers
the whole world. As is obvious, the underlying idea is in both cases
one and the same.
The structure itself of this concept of Mercy or non-Mercy is directly
connected with another important idea: that of the Absolute being
‘beyond good and evil’ . The creative activity of the Absolute, which
consists in the bestowal of ‘existence’ qua ‘existence’ upon every-
thing involves no moral judgment. From the point of view of the
Absolute, it does not matter at all whether a given object be good or
bad. Rather, there is absolutely no such distinction among the
objects. The latter assume these and other evaluational properties
only after having been given ‘existence’ by the indiscriminating act
of the Absolute; and that from the particular points of view of the
creatures. Otherwise, all existents are on the ‘straight way’ - as Ibn
‘Arabi says - or all existents are ‘so-of-themselves’ - as the Taoist
sages say. There is no distinction at this stage between good and evil.
This idea is formulated by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu in terms of a
‘relativist’ view of all values. Ordinary men distinguish between
‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’, ‘noble’ and ‘ignoble’, etc.,
and construct their life social as well as personal, on these distinc-
tions as if they were objective categories that have been fixed in an
unalterable way by the very nature of the things. In truth, however,
these and other seemingly solid objective categories, far from being
‘objective’, are but products of ‘subjective’ and ‘relative’ points of
view. A ‘beautiful’ lady from the human point of view, Chuang-tzu
argues, is ‘ugly’ and ‘terrifying’ enough, from the point of view of
other animals, to make them run away as fast as their legs or wings
491
The self-evolvement of Existence
can carry them. The distinctions are a sheer matter of relative
viewpoints, a matter of likes and dislikes. As Ibn ‘Arabi says: ‘The
bad is nothing other than what one dislikes, while the good is
nothing other than what one likes.’
Thus in both Sufism and Taoism the basic proposition holds true
that everything is primarily, that is, qua ‘existence’, neither good
nor evil. However there is a certain respect - again both in Sufism
and Taoism - in which everything is to be considered fundamentally
‘good’. This because everything qua ‘existence’ is a particular self-
manifestation of the Absolute itself. And looked at from such a
viewpoint, all things in the world are ‘one’. As Chuang-tzu says:
‘(However different they may look from each other) they are, in
reality no other than so many things that are “affirmable” piled up
one upon the other.’ They are at one with each other in being
fundamentally ‘affirmable’, i.e., good. The Perfect Man ‘is “one”,
whether he (seemingly) likes something or dislikes something’ . And
Lao-tzu: ‘Those who are good I treat as good. But those who are not
good also I treat as good. For the original nature of man is goodness.
Those who are faithful I treat as faithful. But even those who are not
faithful I treat as faithful. For the original nature of man is faithful-
ness.’ Such an attitude would immediately be approved by Ibn
‘Arabi, who says: ‘What is bad is bad simply because of (the subjec-
tive impression caused by) the taste; but the same thing will be
found to be essentially good, if considered apart from the (subjec-
tive attitude on the part of man) of liking or disliking.’
These considerations make it clear that for both Ibn ‘Arabi and the
Taoist sages there is the closest and most intimate relationship
between the Absolute and the things of the phenomenal world.
Although the latter are apparently far removed from the Absolute,
they are after all so many different forms which the Absolute
assumes in making itself manifest at various stages and in various
places. This intimate ontological relationship between the two
terms of the creative process is in Taoism symbolically expressed by
the image of the Mother-Child relationship. The Way at the stage of
the ‘Being’ or ‘Named’ is considered by Lao-tzu the ‘Mother of the
ten thousand things’. The symbolic implication of this statement is
that all things in the phenomenal world are the very flesh and blood
of the Absolute. And the Taoist ideal consists in man’s ‘knowing the
Children by knowing the Mother, and in his knowing the Children
and yet holding fast to the Mother’ .
On the side of Ibn ‘Arabi, the same ontological relationship
between the Absolute and phenomenal things is compared to the
inseparable relationship between ‘shadow’ and its source, i.e., the
man or object that projects it upon the earth. ‘Do you not see’, Ibn
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Sufism and Taoism
‘Arab! asks, ‘how in your ordinary sensible experience shadow is so
closely tied up with the person who projects it that it is absolutely
impossible for it to liberate itself from this tie? This is impossible
because it is impossible for anything to be separated from itself.’ The
world is the ‘shadow’ of the Absolute, and, as such, it is connected
with the latter with the closest relationship which is never to be cut
off. Every single part of the world is a particular aspect of the
Absolute, and is the Absolute in a delimited form.
Ibn ‘Arab! describes the same relationship by referring to the
Divine Name: ‘Subtle’ (latif). The ‘subtleness’ in this context means
the quality of an immaterial thing which, because of its immaterial-
ity, permeates and pervades the substances of all other things,
diffusing itself in the latter and freely mixing with them. ‘It is the
effect of God’s “subtleness” that He exists in every particular thing,
designated by a particular name, as the very essence of that particu-
lar thing. He is immanent in every particular thing in such a way that
He is, in each case, referred to by the conventional and customary
meaning of the particular name of that thing. Thus we say: “This is
Heaven”, “This is the earth”, “This is a tree”, etc. But the essence
itself that exists in every one of these things is just one.’
We shall do well to recall that in a passage of his commentary
upon the Fusus Qashani also uses the Mother image. ‘The ultimate
ground of everything is called the Mother (umm) because the
mother is the (stem) from which all branches go out.’
It is worth noticing, further, that both Ibn ‘Arabi and the Taoist
sages picture the process of creation as a perpetual and constant
flow. Their world-view in this respect is of a markedly dynamic
nature. Nothing remains static. The world in its entirety is in fervent
movement. ‘As water running in a river, which forever goes on
being renewed continuously’ (Ibn ‘Arabi), the world transforms
itself kaleidoscopically from moment to moment. The Cosmic Bel-
lows of Lao-tzu is an appropriate symbol for this incessant process
of creation. ‘The space between Heaven and Earth is comparable to
a bellows. It is empty, but its activity is inexhaustible. The more it
works, the more it produces.’
The thesis of the universal Transmutation of things which
Chuang-tzu puts forward also refers to this aspect of Reality. All
things in the phenomenal world are constantly changing from one
form to another. Everything is ontologically involved in the cosmic
process of Transmutation. ‘Dying and being alive, being subsistent
and perishing, getting into a predicament and being in the ascend-
ant, being poor and being rich, being clever and being incom-
petent, being disgraced and being honored ... all these are but the
constant changes of things, and the results of the incessant working
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The self-evolvement of Existence
of Fate. All these thing go on replacing one another before our own
eyes, but no one by his Intellect can trace them back to their real
origin.’ These changes ‘remind us of all kinds of sounds emerging
from the empty holes (of a flute), or mushrooms coming out of
warm dampness. Day and night, these changes never cease to
replace one another before our eyes.’
Ibn ‘Arab! pursues this perpetual flux of things down to a single
moment. The result is his theory of ‘new creation’ , that is, the thesis
that the world goes on being created anew at every single moment.
At every moment, countless things and properties are produced,
and at the very next moment they are annihilated to be replaced by
another infinity of things and properties. And this ontological pro-
cess goes on repeating itself indefinitely and endlessly.
It is remarkable that neither in Sufism nor in Taoism is the
ontological Descent - from the Mystery of Mysteries down to the
stage of phenomenal things - made to represent the final comple-
tion of the activity of Existence. The Descent is followed by its
reversal, that is, Ascent. The ten thousand things flourish exuber-
antly at the last stage of the descending course, and then take an
ascending course toward their ultimate source until they disappear
in the original Darkness and find their resting place in the cosmic
pre-phenomenal Stillness. Thus the whole process of creation forms
a huge ontological circle in which there is in reality neither an initial
point nor a final point. The movement from one stage to another,
considered in itself, is surely a temporal phenomenon. But the
whole circle, having neither an initial point nor a final point, is a
trans-temporal or a-temporal phenomenon. It is, in other words, a
metaphysical process. Everything is an occurrence in an Eternal
Now.
