SUFISM AND TAOISM: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts
by Toshihiko Izutsu 1983
First published 1983 by Iwanami Shoten, Publishers, Tokyo
This edition is published by The University of California Press, 1984,
Rev. ed. of: A comparative study of the key philosophical concepts in Sufism and Taoism. 1966-67.
=====
First published 1983 by Iwanami Shoten, Publishers, Tokyo
This edition is published by The University of California Press, 1984,
Rev. ed. of: A comparative study of the key philosophical concepts in Sufism and Taoism. 1966-67.
=====
Contents
Preface by T. Izutsu
Introduction
Part I - Ibn 'Arabi
1 Dream and Reality
II The Absolute in its Absoluteness
III The Self-knowledge of Man
IV Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion
V Metaphysical Perplexity
VI The Shadow of the Absolute
VII The Divine Nam es
VIII Allah and the Lord
IX Ontological Mercy
X The Water of Life
XI The Self-manifestation of the Absolute
XII Permanent Archetypes
XIII Creation
XIV Man as Microcosm
XV The Perfect Man as an Individual
XVI Apostle, Prophet, and Saint
XVII The Magical Power of the Perfect Man
Part II - Lao-Tzii & Chuang-Tzu
I Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu
II From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics
III Dream and Reality
IV Beyond This and That
V The Birth of a New Ego
VI Against Essentialism
VII The Way
VIII The Gateway of Myriad Wonders
IX Determinism and Freedom
X Absolute Reversai of Values
XI The Perfect Man
XII Homo Politicus
Part III - A Comparative Reftection
I Methodological Preliminaries
II The Inner Transformation of Man
III The Multistratified Structure of Reality
IV Essence and Existence
V The Self-evolvement of Existence
===
Ch 3] The Self-knowledge of Man
It has been made clear by the preceding that the Absolute per se is
unknowable and that it remains a dark mystery even in the mystical
experience of 'unveiling' (kashf) and 'immediate tasting' (dhawq).
---
Kashf "unveiling" is a Sufi concept dealing with knowledge of the heart rather than of the intellect. Kashf describes the state of experiencing a personal divine revelation after ascending through spiritual struggles, and uncovering the heart (a spiritual faculty) in order to allow divine truths to pour into it.
---
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 central question will be: How and where does the absolutely unknowable appear as 'God'?
Answering this question Ibn 'Arabï 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 'Arabï,
- that we should abandon the futile effort to know the Absolute per se in its absolute non-manifestation,
- that we must go back into the depth of ourselves,
- and perceive the Absolute as it manifests itself in particular forms.
In Ibn' Arabï' s world-view,
everything, not only ourselves but all 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 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.
[40]
However, not all self-knowledge of man leads to the utmost limit
of knowledge of the Absolute.
Ibn 'Arabî 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).
The first type is the way of reasoning by which one infers God 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 imperfections2 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' (iftiqiir), i.e., the basic need
in which one stands of things other than oneself, and attributes to
the Absolute its opposite, that is, 'richness' (ghinà) 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 'Arabî says, is characteristic of philosophers and
theologians, and represents but an extremely low lev el of the know-
ledge of God, though, to be sure, it is a kind of 'knowing one's Lord
by knowing oneself'.
The second type, too, is knowledge of 'Him' through 'thee'. But
in this case the emphasis is not on 'thee' but definitely on 'Him'. lt
consists in one' s knowing the Absolute - albeit in a particularized
form - by knowing the 'self' as a form of the direct self-
manifestation of the Absolute.
lt 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 'Arabî's own description.
Three basic stages are distinguished here.
-----
1] Stage 1 단계
------
1] 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. ln this sense it is we who, with our own inner
dependence upon the Absolute as God, turn it into a 'God'. So 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. 3
41]
What is meant by this passage is as follows.
- The nature of the Absolute per se 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 generally 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 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 potentia; 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 primai abjects 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 Hamid4 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-Qâshânî 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' (ulühiyah) 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.
-----
2] Stage 2 단계
-----
2] 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
42]
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
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 ut 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.
- 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.
- 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 Entity9 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 invisibly) 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 forms according to the realities of the archetypes and their various states, for, after all, ail these things are nothing else than the Absolute itself (in its diverse forms.)
----------
[43]
In this interesting passage al-Qâshâni uses the phrase 'the first appearance' (al-zuhür 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 (tajalliyyim):
(1) self-manifestation in the invisible (tajallï ghayb) and
(2) self-manifestation in the visible (tajallï shahiidah). 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 Absolute. And the content of this consciousness is constituted by the 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 emanation' (al-fayd al-aqdas),
the term 'emanation' (fayd) being for Ibn' Arabi always synonymous with 'self-manifestation' (tajallï). 14
This is a (direct) self-manifestation of the Essence (tajalli dhàtiy) of which invisibility is the reality. And through this self-manifestation 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 Absolu te 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 Absolu te 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).
44]
----
The second type of self-manifestation, the tajallï shahiidah, is 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'.
lt 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' Arabi 'the holy emanation' (al-fay4 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'.
-----
3] Stage 3 단계
---
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 'Arabi 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-Qâshâni divides the 'unveiling' into two stages. 16
The first 'unveiling' occurs in the state of 'self-annihilation' (fana') in the Absolute.
Fana means "to die before one dies"
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.
[45]
Al-Qâshâni goes on to say that of those whose eyes have been opened by the second-'unveiling', some attain the state of 'perfection' (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-Qâshâni's interpretation,
the first 'unveiling' consists exclusively in an experience of Beauty (아름다움)(jamal),
while the second is mainly an experience of Majesty (위엄,존엄?)(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 naturally 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 interpretation 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.
---
Rabb is often used to refer to God in Arabic (Allah) as the "Lord" or "master".[1]
---
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 Absolute in its pure Essence.
46]
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 ontological 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 it will 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 rigorous 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. FU$., p. 73/81.
4. al-Ghazâlï.
5. Fu$., p. 74/81.
6. p. 74.
7. FU$., p. 74/81-82.
8. p. 74.
9. This does not mean the absolute One at the level of primordial Unity which has
already been explained above. The 'One' referred to here is the One containing in a unified form all the Names before they become actually differentiated. lt is, in brief, the unity of Divine Consciousness in which exist all the archetypes of the things of the world in the form of the objects of Divine Knowledge.
[47]
10. Since the archetypes are no other than the very content of the Divine Con-
sciousness as prefigurations of the things of the world, they cannot exist outside the Divine Consciousness.
11. FU$., pp. 145-146/120-121.
12. That is to say, the term 'emanation' should not be taken in the usual neo-
Platonic sense.
13. As a 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. FU$., p. 146/120.
15. FU$., p. 74/82.
16. pp. 74-75.
17. FU$., p. 74/82.
18. The '(supreme) knowledge about us' refers back to what has been mentioned
above; namely, the extraordinary scene of ail the existent things penetrating each
other white each keeping its unique individuality.
19. This me ans that the phenomenal Many, being as it is Divine Ma jesty, is no less
an aspect of the Absolute than the metaphysical One appearing as Divine Beauty.
The knowledge of the phenomal Many through baqii' is no Jess a knowledge of the
Absolu te than the knowledge of the metaphysical One through fanii'.
20. Fu$., p. 267/215.
21. Cf. Affifi, FU$., Corn., p. 325.
