2023/06/11

Full text of "The alchemy of happiness by al Ghazzali"

Full text of "The alchemy of happiness by al Ghazzali"

 
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Full text of "The alchemy of happiness by al Ghazzali"
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2018 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/alchemyofhappineOOalgh 


WISDOM OF THE EAST 


THE ALCHEMY OF 
HAPPINESS 

BY AL GHAZZALI 

TRANSLATED FROM THE HINDUSTANI 
BY CLAUD FIELD 


“Knowledge of a part is better than ignorance 
of the whole” (Abu’l Feda) 



LONDON 

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 

1910 










































PRINTED BY 

HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD, 
LONDON AND AYLESBURY. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Preface . 7 

Introduction ...17 

CHAP. 

I. The Knowledge of Self . . .19 

II. The Knowledge of God .... 31 

III. The Knowledge of this World . . 43 

IV. The Knowledge of the Next World . 51 

Y. Concerning Music and Dancing as Aids 

to the Religious Life ... 64 

YI. Concerning Self-examination and the 

Recollection of Cod . . . .75 

VII. Marriage as a Help or Hindrance to 

the Religious Life .... 87 

VIII. The Love of God . 


. 100 


EDITORIAL NOTE 


rpHE object of the Editors of this series is a 
-L very definite one. They desire above ail 
things that, in their humble way, these books 
shall be the ambassadors of good-will and 
understanding between East and West—the old 
world of Thought and the new of Action. In 
this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they 
are but followers of the highest example in the 
land. They are confident that a deeper know¬ 
ledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy 
of Oriental thought may help to a revival of 
that true spirit of Charity which neither despises 
nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. 
Finally, in thanking press and public for the 
very cordial reception given to the “ Wisdom 
of the East ” Series, they wish to state that 
no pains have been spared to secure the best 
specialists for the treatment of the various 
subjects at hand. 

L. CRANMER-BYNG. 

S. A. KAPADIA. 


Northbrook Society, 

185 Piccadilly, W. 





PREFACE 


Renan, whose easy-going mind was the exact 
antithesis to the intense earnestness of Ghazzali, 
calls him “ the most original mind among Arabian 
philosophers.” 1 Notwithstanding this, his fame 
as a philosopher has been greatly overshadowed 
by Avicenna, his predecessor, and Averroes, his 
successor and opponent. It is a significant fact 
that the Encyclopcedia Britannica devotes five 
columns to each of the others and only a column 
and a half to Ghazzali. Yet it is doubtful 
whether it is as a philosopher that he would have 
wished to be chiefly remembered. Several 
of his works, it is true, are polemics against the 
philosophers, especially his Tehafot-al-falasifa, or 
“ Destruction of the Philosophers,” and, as 
Solomon Munk says in his Mela?iges de philosophise 
Juive et Arabe, Ghazzali dealt “ a fatal blow ” 
to Arabian philosophy in the East, from which it 
never recovered, though it revived for a while in 
Spain and culminated in Averroes. Philosopher 
and sceptic as he was by nature, Ghazzali’s chief 
work was that of a theologian, moralist, and 

1 Renan : Averroes et Averroisme. 





PREFACE 


mystic, though his mysticism was strongly 
balanced by common sense. He had, as he tells 
us in his Confessions, experienced “ conversion ” ; 
God had arrested him “ on the edge of the fire,” 
and thenceforth what Browning says of the 
French poet, Rene Gentilhomme, was true of 
him: 

Human praises scare 
Rather than soothe ears all a-tingle yet 
With tones few hear and live, and none forget. 

In the same work he tells us that one of his 
besetting weaknesses had been the craving for 
applause, and in his Iliya ul-ulum (“ Revival of the 
Religious Sciences”) he devotes a long chapter 
to the dangers involved in a love of notoriety and 
the cure for it. 

After his conversion he retired into religious 
seclusion for eleven years at Damascus (a corner 
of the mosque there still bears his name—“ The 
Ghazzali Corner ”) and Jerusalem, where he gave 
himself up to intense and prolonged meditation. 
But he was too noble a character to concentrate 
himself entirely on his own soul and its eternal 
prospects. The requests of his children—and 
other family affairs of which we have no exact 
information—caused him to return home. Besides 
this, the continued progress of the Ismailians 
(connected with the famous Assassins), the 
spread of irreligious doctrines and the increasing 


PREFACE 




religious indifference of the masses not only filled 
Ghazzali and his Sufi friends with profound 
grief, but determined them to stem the evil with 
the whole force of their philosophy, the ardour of 
vital conviction, and the authority of noble 
example. 

In his autobiography referred to above Ghaz¬ 
zali tells us that, after emerging from a state of 
Pyrrhonic scepticism, he had finally arrived at 
the conclusion that the mystics were on the right 
path and true “ Arifin,” or Knowers of God. 1 
But in saying this he meant those Sufis whose 
mysticism did not carry them into extravagant 
utterances like that of Mansur Hallaj, who was 
crucified at Bagdad (a.d. 922) for exclaiming “ I 
am the Truth, or God.” In his Ihya-ul-ulum 
Ghazzali says : “ The matter went so far that 
certain persons boasted of a union with the 
Deity, and that in His unveiled presence they 
beheld Him, and enjoyed familiar converse with 
Him, saying, ‘ Thus it was spoken unto us and 
thus we speak.’ Bayazid Bistami (ob. a.d. 875) 
is reported to have exclaimed, ‘ Glory be to me ! ’ 
This style of discourse exerts a very pernicious 
influence on the common people. Some husband¬ 
men indeed, letting their farms run to waste, 
set up similar pretensions for themselves ; for 
human nature is pleased with maxims like these, 

1 It may bo noted that there was a contemporary sect 
called “ La-adria ”—agnostics. 


10 


PREFACE 


which permit one to neglect useful labour with 
the idea of acquiring spiritual purity through the 
attainment of certain mysterious degrees and 
qualities. This notion is productive of great 
injury, so that the death of one of these foolish 
babblers would be a greater benefit to the cause 
of true religion than the saving alive of ten of 
them.” 

For himself Ghazzali was a practical mystic. 
His aim was to make men better by leading them 
from a merely notional acquiescence in the 
stereotyped creed of Islam to a real knowledge of 
God. The first four chapters of The Alchemy of 
Happiness are a commentary on the famous 
verse in the Hadis (traditional sayings of Mu¬ 
hammad), 44 He who knows himself knows God.” 
He is especially scornful of the parrot-like repe¬ 
tition of orthodox phrases. Thus alluding to the 
almost hourly use by Muhammadans of the 
phrase, “ I take refuge in God ” (Ma‘udhib'illah /), 
Ghazzali says, in the Ihya-ul-ulum : 44 Satan laughs 
at such pious ejaculations. Those who utter 
them are like a man who should meet a lion in a 
desert, while there is a fort at no great distance, 
and, when he sees the evil beast, should stand 
exclaiming, 4 I take refuge in that fortress,’ with¬ 
out moving a step towards it. What will such 
an ejaculation profit him ? In the same way 
the mere exclamation, 4 1 take refuge in God,’ 
will not protect thee from the terrors of His 


PREFACE 


li 


judgment unless thou really take refuge in Him.” 
It is related of some unknown Sufi that when 
asked for a definition of religious sincerity he 
drew a red-hot piece of iron out of a blacksmith’s 
forge, and said, “ Behold it ! ” This “ red-hot ” 
sincerity is certainly characteristic of Ghazzali, 
and there is no wonder that he did not admire his 
contemporary, Omar Khayyam. 

The little picture of the lion and the fort in 
the above passage is a small instance of another 
conspicuous trait in Ghazzali’s mind—his turn 
for allegory. Emerson says, “ Whoever thinks 
intently will find an image more or less luminous 
rise in his mind.” In Ghazzali’s writings many 
such images arise, some grotesque and some 
beautiful. His allegory of the soul as a fortress 
beleaguered by the “ armies of Satan ” is a 
striking anticipation of the Holy War of Bunyan. 
The greatest of all the Sufi poets, Jalaluddin 
Rumi, born a century after Ghazzali’s death 
(a.d. 1207), has paid him the compliment of 
incorporating several of these allegories which 
occur in the Iliya into his own Masnavi . Such 
is the famous one of the Chinese and Greek artists, 
which runs as follows : 

“ Once upon a time the Chinese having chal¬ 
lenged the Greeks to a trial of skill in painting, 
the Sultan summoned them both into edifices 
built for the purpose directly facing each other, 
and commanded them to show proof of their art. 


12 


PREFACE 


The painters of the two nations immediately 
applied themselves with diligence to their work. 
The Chinese sought and obtained of the king 
every day a great quantity of colours, but the 
Greeks not the least particle. Both worked in 
profound silence, until the Chinese, with a 
clangor of cymbals and of trumpets, announced 
the end of their labours. Immediately the king, 
with his courtiers, hastened to their temple, and 
there stood amazed at the wonderful splendour 
of the Chinese painting and the exquisite beauty 
of the colours. But meanwhile the Greeks, who 
had not sought to adorn the walls with paints, 
but laboured rather to erase every colour, drew T 
aside the veil which concealed their work. Then, 
wonderful to tell, the manifold variety of the 
Chinese colours was seen still more delicately 
and beautifully reflected from the walls of the 
Grecian temple, as it stood illuminated by the 
rays of the midday sun.” 

This parable, of course, illustrates the favourite 
Sufi tenet that the heart must be kept pure and 
calm as an unspotted mirror. Similarly, the apo¬ 
logue of the elephant in the dark ( vide chap. II.) 
has been borrowed by Jalaluddin Rumi from 
Ghazzali. 

Another characteristic of Ghazzali which ap¬ 
peals to the modern mind is the way in which he 
exjDounds the religious argument from probability 
much as Bishop Butler and Browning do (vide 


PREFACE 


13 


the end of Chapter IV. in the present book). 
Ghazzali might have said, with Blougram : 

With me faith means perpetual unbelief 
Kept quiet like the snake ’neath Michael’s foot, 
Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe. 

This combination of ecstatic assurance and 
scepticism is one of those antinomies of the 
human mind which annoy the rationalist and 
rejoice the mystic. Those in whom they co-exist, 
like Ghazzali in the eleventh century and Cardinal 
Newman in the nineteenth, are a perpetual 
problem to understand and therefore perennially 
interesting : 

He may believe, and yet, and yet. 

How can he ? 

Another point in which Ghazzali anticipates 
Bishop Butler is his representation of punishment 
as the natural working out of consequences, and 
not an arbitrary infliction imposed ab extra . He 
tries to rationalise the lurid threatenings of the 
Koran. 

In his own day Ghazzali was accused of having 
one doctrine for the multitude and one for himself 
and his intimate friends. Professor D. B. Mac¬ 
donald, of Hartford, after going thoroughly into 
the matter, says, “ If the charge of a secret 
doctrine is to be proved against Ghazzali it must 


14 


PREFACE 


be on other and better evidence than that which 
is now before ns.” 

At any rate, Ghazzali has been accepted as an 
orthodox authority by the Muhammadans, among 
whom his title is Hujjat-el-Islam, “ The Proof of 
Islam,” and it has been said, “ If all the books 
of Islam were destroyed it would be but a slight 
loss if only the Ihya of Ghazzali were preserved.” 
The great modern reformer of Islam in India, the 
late Sir Syud Ahmed, has had some portions of 
this enormous work printed separately for the 
purpose of familiarising the young Moslems at 
Aligarh with Ghazzali. 

The Ihya was written in Arabic, and Ghazzali 
himself wrote an abridgment of it in Persian for 
popular use which he entitled Kimiyale Saadat 
(“ The Alchemy of Happiness ”). This little 
book contains eight sections of that abridgment. 

Theologians are the best judges of theologians, 
and in conclusion we may quote Dr. August 
Tholuck’s opinion of Ghazzali: “ This man, if ever 
any have deserved the name, was truly a ‘ divine,’ 
and he may be justly placed on a level with 
Origen, so remarkable was he for learning and 
ingenuity, and gifted with such a rare faculty 
for the skilful and worthy exposition of doctrine. 
All that is good, noble, and sublime that his 
great soul had compassed he bestowed upon 
Muhammadanism, and he adorned the doctrines 
of the Koran with so much piety and learning 


PREFACE 


15 


that, in the form given them by him, they seem, 
in my opinion, worthy the assent of Christians. 
Whatsoever was most excellent in the philosophy 
of Aristotle or in the Sufic mysticism he discreetly 
adapted to the Muhammadan theology ; from 
every school he sought the means of shedding 
light and honour upon religion ; while his sincere 
piety and lofty conscientiousness imparted to all 
his writings a sacred majesty. He was the first 
of Muhammadan divines.” 



THE ALCHEMY OE 
HAPPINESS 


INTRODUCTION 

Know, 0 beloved, that man was not created in 
jest or at random, but marvellously made and 
for some great end. Although he is not from 
everlasting, yet he lives for ever; and though his 
body is mean and earthly, yet his spirit is lofty 
and divine. When in the crucible of abstinence 
he is purged from carnal passions he attains to 
the highest, and in place of being a slave to lust 
and anger becomes endued with angelic qualities. 
Attaining that state, he finds his heaven in the 
contemplation of Eternal Beauty, and no longer 
in fleshly delights. The spiritual alchemy which 
operates this change in him, like that which trans¬ 
mutes base metals into gold, is not easily dis¬ 
covered, nor to be found in the house of every 
old woman. It is to explain that alchemy and 
its methods of operation that the author has 

17 2 


18 


INTRODUCTION 


undertaken this work, which he has entitled, 
The Alchemy of Happiness. Now the treasuries 
of God, in which this alchemy is to be sought, 
are the hearts of the prophets, and he who seeks 
it elsewhere will be disappointed and bankrupt 
on the day of judgment when he hears the words, 
“We have lifted the veil from off thee, and thy 
sight to-day is keen.” 

God has sent on earth a hundred and twenty- 
four thousand prophets 1 to teach men the pre¬ 
scription of this alchemy, and how to purify 
their hearts from baser qualities in the crucible 
of abstinence. This alchemy may be briefly 
described as turning away from the world to God, 
and its constituents are four : 

1. The knowledge of self. 

2. The knowledge of God. 

3. The knowledge of this world as it really is. 

4. The knowledge of the next world as it 
really is. 

We shall now proceed to expound these four 
constituents in order. 

1 This is the fixed number of the prophets accordi ig to 
Muhammadan tradition. 


CHAPTER I 


THE 3\N0WLEDGE OF SELF 

Knowledge of self is the key to the knowledge 
of God, according to the saying : “ He who 

knows himself knows God,” 1 and, as it is written 
in the Koran, “We will show them Our signs 
in the world and in themselves , that the truth 
may be manifest to them.” Now nothing is 
nearer to thee than thyself, and if thou knowest 
not thyself how canst thou know anything 
else ? If thou sayest “ I know myself,” meaning 
thy outward shape, body, face, limbs, and so 
forth, such knowledge can never be a key to the 
knowledge of God. Nor, if thy knowledge as 
to that which is within only extends so far, 
that when thou art hungry thou eatest, and 
when thou art angry thou attachest some one, 
wilt thou progress any further in this path, 
for the beasts are thy partners in this. But 
real self-knowledge consists in knowing the 
following things : What art thou in thyself, 
and from whence hast thou come ? Whither 

1 Traditional saying of Muhammad. 

19 


20 THE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF 


art thou going, and for what purpose hast thou 
come to tarry here awhile, and in what does 
thy real happiness and misery consist ? Some 
of thy attributes are those of animals, some 
of devils, and some of angels, and thou hast to 
find out which of these attributes are accidental 
and which essential. Till thou knowest this, 
thou canst not find out where thy real happiness 
lies. The occupation of animals is eating, sleeping, 
and fighting ; therefore, if thou art an animal, 
busy thyself in these things. Devils are busy 
in stirring up mischief, and in guile and deceit ; 
if thou belongest to them, do their work. Angels 
contemplate the beauty of God, and are entirely 
free from animal qualities ; if thou art of angelic 
nature, then strive towards thine origin, that 
thou mayest know and contemplate the Most 
High, and be delivered from the thraldom of 
lust and anger. Thou shouldest also discover 

whv thou hast been created with these two 

«/ 

animal instincts : whether that they should subdue 
and lead thee captive, or whether that thou 
shouldest subdue them, and, in thy upward 
progress, make of one thy steed and of the other 
thy weapon. 

The first step to self-knowledge is to know 
that thou art composed of an outward shape, 
called the body, and an inward entity called the 
heart, or soul. By “ heart,” I do not mean the 
piece of flesh situated in the left of our bodies, 


THE REALITY OF THE HEART 21 


but that which uses all the other faculties as its 
instruments and servants. In truth it does not 
belong to the visible world, b ut to the invisible, 
and has come into this world as a traveller visits * 
a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, 
and will presently return to its native land. It 
is the knowledge of this entity and its attributes 
which is the key to the knowledge of God. 

Some idea of the reality of the heart, or spirit, 
may be obtained by a man closing his eyes and 
forgetting everything around except his indi¬ 
viduality. He will thus also obtain a glimpse of 
the unending nature of that individuality. Too 
* close inquiry, however, into the essence of spirit 
is forbidden by the Law. In the Koran it is 
written : “ They will question thee concerning 

the spirit. Say : 4 The Spirit comes by the 

command of my Lord.’ ” Thus much is known 
of it that it is an indivisible essence belonging to 
the world of decrees, and that it is not from 
everlasting, but created. An exact philosophical 
knowledge of the spirit is not a necessary pre¬ 
liminary to walking in the path of religion, but 
comes rather as the result of self-discipline and 
perseverance in that path, as it is said in the 
Koran : “ Those who strive in our way, verily 
we will guide them to the right paths.” 

For the carrying on of this spiritual warfare 
by which the knowledge of oneself and of God 
is to be obtained, the body may be figured as a 




22 THE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF 


kingdom, the soul as its king, and the different 
senses and faculties as constituting an army. 
Reason may be called the vizier, or prime minister, 
passion the revenue-collector, and anger the 
police-officer. Under the guise of collecting 
revenue, passion is continually prone to plunder 
on its own account, while resentment is always 
inclined to harshness and extreme severity. 
Both of these, the revenue-collector and the 
police-officer, have to be kept in due subordination 
to the king, but not killed or expelled, as they 
have their own proper functions to fulfil. But 
if passion and resentment master reason, the 
ruin of the soul infallibly ensues. A soul which 
allows its lower faculties to dominate the higher 
is as one who should hand over an angel to the 
power of a dog or a Mussalman to the tyranny 
of an unbeliever. The cultivation of demonic, 
animal, or angelic qualities results in the pro¬ 
duction of corresponding characters, which in 
the Day of Judgment will be manifested in visible 
shapes, the sensual appearing as swine, the 
ferocious as dogs and wolves, and the pure as 
^angels. The aim of moral discipline is to purify * 
the heart from the rust of passion and resentment, 
till, like a clear mirror, it reflects the light of God. 

- Some one may here object, “ But if man has 
been created with animal and demonic qualities 
as well as angelic, how are we to know that the 
latter constitute his real essence, while the former 



MAN’S HIGHEST FACULTY 


23 


are merely accidental and transitory ? ” To this 
I answer that the essence of each creature is to 
be sought in that which is highest in it and 
peculiar to it. Thus the horse and the ass are 
both burden-bearing animals, but the superiority 
of the horse to the ass consists in its being adapted 
for use in battle. If it fails in this, it becomes 
degraded to the rank of burden-bearing animals. 
Similarly with man : the highest faculty in him 
is reason, which fits him for the contemplation of 
God. If this predominates in him, when he dies, 
he leaves behind him all tendencies to passion 
and resentment, and becomes capable of associ¬ 
ation with angels. As regards his mere animal 
' qualities, man is inferior to many animals, but 
reason makes him superior to them, as it is 
written in the Koran : “ To man we have subjected 
all things in the earth.” But if his lower ten¬ 
dencies have triumphed, after death he will ever 
be looking towards the earth and longing for 
earthly delights. 

Now the rational soul in man abounds in 
marvels, both of knowledge and power. By 
means of it he masters arts and sciences, can pass 
in a flash from earth to heaven and back again, 
can map out the skies and measure the distances 
between the stars. By it also he can draw the 
fish from the sea and the birds from the air, and 
can subdue to his service animals like the elephant, 
the camel, and the horse. His five senses are 




24 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF 


like five doors opening on the external world; 
but, more wonderful than this, his heart has a 
window which opens on the unseen world of 
spirits. In the state of sleep, when the avenues 
of the senses are closed, this window is opened 
and man receives impressions from the unseen 
world and sometimes foreshadowings of the 
future. His heart is then like a mirror which 
reflects what is pictured in the Tablet of Fate. 
But, even in sleep, thoughts of worldly things 
dull this mirror, so that the impressions it receives 
are not clear. After death, however, such 
thoughts vanish and things are seen in their naked 
reality, and the saying in the Koran is fulfilled : 
“ We have stripped the veil from off thee and 
thy sight to-day is keen.” 

This opening of a window in the heart towards 
the unseen also takes place in conditions ap¬ 
proaching those of prophetic inspiration, when 
intuitions spring up in the mind unconveyed 
through any sense-channel. The more a man 
purifies himself from fleshly lusts and concen¬ 
trates his mind on God, the more conscious will 
he be of such intuitions. Those who are not 
conscious of them have no right to deny their 
i reality. 

Nor are such intuitions confined only to those 
of prophetic rank. Just as iron, by sufficient 
polishing, can be made into a mirror, so any mind 
by due discipline can be rendered receptive of 


THE POWER OE THE SOUL 


25 


such impressions. It was at this truth the 
Prophet hinted when he said, “ Every child is 
born with a predisposition towards Islam ; then 
his parents make a Jew, or a Christian, or a star- 
worshipper of him.” Every human being has in 
the depths of his consciousness heard the question 
“ Am I not your Lord ? ” and answered 44 Yes ” 
to it. But some hearts are like mirrors so befouled 
with rust and dirt that they give no clear reflec¬ 
tions, while those of the prophets and saints, 
though they are men 44 of like passions with us,” 
are extremely sensitive to all divine impressions. 

Nor is it only by reason of knowledge acquired 
and intuitive that the soul of man holds the 
first rank among created things, but also by 
reason of power. Just as angels preside over 
the elements, so does the soul rule the members 
of the body. Those souls which attain a special 
degree of power not only rule their own body 
but those of others also. If they wish a sick man 
to recover he recovers, or a person in health to 
fall ill he becomes ill, or if they will the presence 
of a person he comes to them. According as 
the effects produced by these powerful souls are 
.-good or bad they are termed miracles or sorceries, 
^ddiese souls differ from common folk in three 
ways : (1) What others only see in dreams they 
see in their waking moments. (2)~WhIIe others’ 
wills only affecUThelr^own bodies, these, by will- 
j power, can move bodies extraneous to themselves. 




26 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF 


(3) The knowledge which others acquire by 
laborious learning comes to them by intuition. 

These three, of course, are not the only marks 
which differentiate them from common people, 
but the only ones that come within our cognis¬ 
ance. Just as no one knows the real nature of 
God but God Himself, so no one knows the real 
nature of a prophet but a prophet. Nor is this 
to be w r ondered at, as in every-day matters we 
see that it is impossible to explain the charm of 
poetry to one whose ear is insusceptible of cadence 
and rhythm, or the glories of colour to one who 
is stone-blind. Besides mere incapacity, there 
are other hindrances to the attainment of spiritual 
truth. One of these is externally acquired know¬ 
ledge. To use a figure, the heart may be repre¬ 
sented as a well, and the five senses as five streams 
which are continually conveying water to it. In 
order to find out the real contents of the heart 
these streams must be stopped for a time, at any 
rate, and the refuse they have brought with them 
must be cleared out of the well. In other words, 
if we are to arrive at pure spiritual truth, we 
must put away, for the time, knowledge which 
has been acquired by external processes and 
which too often hardens into dogmatic prejudice. 

A mistake of an opposite kind is made by 
shallow people who, echoing some phrases which 
they have caught from Sufi teachers, go about 
decrying all knowledge. This is as if a person 


THE PERCEPTION OF TRUTH 27 


who was not an adept in alchemy were to go 
about saying, “ Alchemy is better than gold,” 
and were to refuse gold when it was offered to 
him. Alchemy is better than gold, but real 
alchemists are very rare, and so are real Sufis. 
He who has a mere smattering of Sufism is not 
superior to a learned man, any more than he who 
has tried a few experiments in alchemy has 
ground for despising a rich man. 

Any one who will look into the matter will see 
that happiness is necessarily linked with the 
knowledge of God. Each faculty of ours delights 
in that for which it was created : lust delights in 
accomplishing desire, anger in taking vengeance, 
the eye in seeing beautiful objects, and the ear 
in hearing harmonious sounds. The highest 
function of the soul of man is the perception of * 
truth ; in this accordingly it finds its special 
delight. Even in trifling matters, such as learning 
chess, this holds good, and the higher the subject- 
matter of the knowledge obtained the greater the 
delight. A man would be pleased at being ad¬ 
mitted into the confidence of a prime minister, 
but how much more if the king makes an intimate 
of him and discloses state secrets to him ! 

An astronomer who, by his knowledge, can map 
the stars and describe their courses, derives more 
pleasure from his knowledge than the chess¬ 
player from his. Seeing, then, that nothing is 
higher than God, how great must be the delight 


28 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF 


which springs from the true knowledge of 
Him ! 

A person in whom the desire for this know¬ 
ledge has disappeared is like one who has lost his 
appetite for healthy food, or who prefers feeding 
on clay to eating bread. All bodily appetites 
perish at death with the organs they use, but the 
soul dies not, and retains whatever knowledge of 
God it possesses; nay, increases it. 

An important part of our knowledge of God 
arises from the study and contemplation of our 
own bodies, which reveal to us the power, wisdom, 
and love of the Creator. His power, in that from 
a mere drop He has built up the wonderful frame 
of man ; His wisdom is revealed in its intricacies 
and the mutual adaptibility of its parts; and His 
love is shown by His not only supplying such 
organs as are absolutely necessary for existence, 
as the liver, the heart, and the brain, but those 
which are not absolutely necessary, as the hand, 
the foot, the tongue, and the eye. To these He 
has added, as ornaments, the blackness of the 
hair, the redness of lips, and the curve of the 
eyebrows. 

Man has been trulv termed a “ microcosm,” or 
little world in himself, and the structure of his 
body should be studied not only by those who 
wish to become doctors, but by those who wish 
to attain to a more intimate knowledge of God, 
just as close study of the niceties and shades of 


THE STEED AND ITS RIDER 29 


language in a great poem reveals to us more and 
more of the genius of its author. 

But, when all is said, the knowledge of the soul 
plays a more important part in leading to the 
knowledge of God than the knowledge of our 
body and its functions. The body may be 
compared to a steed and the soul to its rider ; 
the body was created for the soul, the soul for the 
body. If a man knows not his own soul, which 
is the nearest thing to him, what is the use of his 
claiming to know others ? It is as if a beggar 
who has not the wherewithal for a meal should 
claim to be able to feed a town. 

In this chapter we have attempted, in some 
degree, to expound the greatness of man’s soul. 
He who neglects it and suffers its capacities to 
rust or to degenerate must necessarily be the 
loser in this world and the next. The true 
greatness of man lies in his capacity for eternal 
progress, otherwise in this temporal sphere he is 
the weakest of all things, being subject to hunger, 
thirst, heat, cold, and sorrow. Those things he 
takes most delight in are often the most injurious 
to him, and those things which benefit him are 
not to be obtained without toil and trouble. As 
to his intellect, a slight disarrangement of matter 
in his brain is sufficient to destroy or madden 
him ; as to his power, the sting of a wasp is suffi¬ 
cient to rob him of ease and sleep ; as to his 
temper, he is upset by the loss of a sixpence; as 


30 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF SELF 


to his beauty, he is little more than nauseous 
matter covered with a fair skin. Without fre¬ 
quent washing he becomes utterly repulsive and 
disgraceful. 

In truth, man in this world is extremely weak 
and contemptible ; it is only in the next that he 
will be of value, if by means of the 44 alchemy of 
happiness 55 he rises from the rank of beasts to 
that of angels. Otherwise his condition will be 
worse than the brutes, which perish and turn to 
dust. It is necessary for him, at the same time 
that he is conscious of his superiority as the 
climax of created things, to learn to know also 
his helplessness, as that too is one of the keys to 
the knowledge of God. 


CHAPTER II 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 

It is a well-known saying of the Prophet that 
“ He who knows himself, knows God ” ; that is, 
by contemplation of his own being and attributes 
man arrives at some knowledge of God. But 
since many who contemplate themselves do not 
find God, it follows that there must be some 
special way of doing so. As a matter of fact, 
there are two methods of arriving at this know¬ 
ledge, but one is so abstruse that it is not adapted 
to ordinary intelligences, and therefore is better 
left unexplained. The other method is as follows : 
When a man considers himself he knows that 
there was a time when he was non-existent, as 
it is written in the Koran : “ Does it not occur to 
man that there was a time when he was nothing ? ” 
Further, he knows that he was made out of a drop 
of water in which there was neither intellect, 
nor hearing, sight, head, hands, feet, etc. From 
this it is obvious that, whatever degree of per¬ 
fection he may have arrived at, he did not make 
himself, nor can he now make a single hair. 

31 


32 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 


How much more helpless, then, was his condition 
when he was a mere drop of water! Thus, as we 
have seen in the first chapter, he finds in his own 
being reflected in miniature, so to speak, the 
power, wisdom, and love of the Creator. If all 
the sages of the v r orld were assembled, and their 
lives prolonged for an indefinite time, they could 
not effect any improvement in the construction 
of a single part of the body. 

For instance, in the adaptation of the front 
and side-teeth to the mastication of food, and 
in the construction of the tongue, salivating 
glands, and throat for its deglutition, we find a 
contrivance which cannot be improved upon. 
Similarly, whoever considers his hand, with its 
five fingers of unequal lengths, four of them with 
three joints and the thumb with only two, and 
the way in wdiich it can be used for grasping, or 
for carrying, or for smiting, will frankly acknow¬ 
ledge that no amount of human wdsdom could 
better it by altering the number and arrangement 
of the fingers, or in any other way. 

When a man further considers how his various 
* wants of food, lodging, etc., are amply supplied 
from the storehouse of creation, he becomes aware 
that God’s mercy is as great as His power and 
wisdom, as He has Himself said, “ My mercy is 
greater than My wrath,” and according to the 
Prophet’s saying, “ God is more tender to His 
servants than a mother to her suckling-child.” 


GOD’S ATTRIBUTES REFLECTED 33 


Thus from his own creation man comes to know 
God’s existence, from the wonders of his bodily 
frame God’s power and wisdom, and from the 
ample provision made for his various needs 
God’s love. In this way the knowledge of oneself 
becomes a key to the knowledge of God. 

Not only are man’s attributes a reflection of 
God’s attributes, but the mode of existence of 
man’s soul affords some insight into God’s mode 
of existence. That is to say, both God and the 
soul are invisible, indivisible, unconfined by 
space and time, and outside the categories of 
quantity and quality ; nor can the ideas of shape, 
colour, or size attach to them. People find it 
hard to form a conception of such realities as are 
devoid of quality and quantity, etc., but a similar 
difficulty attaches to the conception of our every¬ 
day feelings, such as anger, pain, pleasure, or love. 
They are thought-concepts,and cannot be cognised 
by the senses ; whereas quality, quantity, etc., are 
sense-concepts. Just as the ear cannot take 
cognisance of colour, nor the eye of sound, so, in 
conceiving of the ultimate realities, God and the 
soul, we find ourselves in a region in which sense- 
concepts can bear no part. So much, however, 
we can see, that, as God is Ruler of the universe, 
and, being Himself beyond space and time, 
quantity and quality, governs things that are so 
conditioned, so the soul rules the body and its 
members, being itself invisible, indivisible, and 






34 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 


unlocated in any special part. For how can the 
indivisible be located in that which is divisible ? 
From all this we see how true is the saying of the 
Prophet, “ God created man in His own likeness.” 
r And, as we arrive at some knowledge of God’s 
essence and attributes from the contemplation of 
the soul’s essence and attributes, so we come to 
understand God’s method of working and govern¬ 
ment and delegation of power to angelic forces, 
etc., by observing how each of us governs his 
own little kingdom. To take a simple instance : 
suppose a man wishes to write the name of God. 
First of all the wish is conceived in his heart, it 
is then conveyed to the brain by the vital spirits, 
>.the form of the word “ God ” takes shape in the 
thought-chambers of the brain, thence it travels 
by the nerve-channels, and sets in motion the 
fingers, which in their turn set in motion the pen, 
and thus the name “ God ” is traced on paper 
exactly as it had been conceived in the writer’s 
brain. Similarly, when God wills a thing it 
appears in the spiritual plane, which in the Koran 
is called “ The Throne ” 1 ; from the throne it 
passes, by a spiritual current, to a lower plane 
called “ The Chair” 2 ; then the shape of it appears 
on the “ Tablet of Destiny ” 3 ; whence, by the 
mediation of the forces called “ angels,” it 
assumes actuality, and appears on the earth in 
the form of plants, trees, and animals, repre- 
1 A1 Arsh. 2 A1 Kursi. 3 A1 Lauh A1 Mahfuz. 




A KING IN MINIATURE 


35 


senting the will and thought of God, as the 
written letters represent the wish conceived in 
the heart and the shape present in the brain of 
the writer. 

No one can understand a king but a king ; 
therefore God has made each of us a king in 
miniature, so to speak, over a kingdom which is 
an infinitely reduced copy of His own. In the 
kingdom of man God’s “ throne ” is represented 
by the soul, the Archangel by the heart, “ the 
chair ” by the brain, “ the tablet ” by the 
treasure-chamber of thought. The soul, itself 
unlocated and indivisible, governs the body as 
God governs the universe. In short, each of us 
is entrusted with a little kingdom, and charged 
not to be careless in the administration of it. 

As regards the recognition of God’s providence, 
there are many degrees of knowledge. The mere 
physicist is like an ant who, crawling on a sheet 
of paper and observing black letters spreading 
over it, should refer the cause to the pen alone. 
The astronomer is like an ant of somewhat wider 
vision who should catch sight of the fingers moving 
the pen, i.e. he knows that the elements are under 
the power of the stars, but he does not know that 
the stars are under the power of the angels. 
Thus, owing to the different degrees of perception 
in people, disputes must arise in tracing effects to 
causes. Those whose eyes never see beyond the 
world of phenomena are like those who mistake 


36 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 


servants of the lowest rank for the king. The 
laws of phenomena must be constant, or there 
could be no such thing as science; but it is a 
great error to mistake the slaves for the master. 

As long as this difference in the perceptive 
faculty of observers exists, disputes must neces¬ 
sarily go on. It is as if some blind men, hearing 
that an elephant had come to their town, should 
go and examine it. The only knowledge of it 
which they can obtain comes through the sense 
of touch : so one handles the animal’s leg, 
another his tusk, another his ear, and, according 
to their several perceptions, pronounce it to be 
a column, a thick pole, or a quilt, each taking 
a part for the whole. So the physicist and 
astronomer confound the laws they perceive with 
the Lawgiver. A similar mistake is attributed 
to Abraham in the Koran, where it is related that 
he turned successively to stars, moon, and sun 
as the objects of his worship, till, grown aware of 
Him who made all these, he exclaimed, “ I love 
not them that set.” 

We have a common instance of this referring 
to second causes what ought to be referred to the 
First Cause in the case of so-called illness. For 
instance, if a man ceases to take any interest in 
worldly matters, conceives a distaste for common 
pleasures, and appears sunk in depression, the 
doctor will say, “ This is a case of melancholy, 

1 Koran, chap. vi. 




FROM THE WORLD TO THE CREATOR 37 


and requires such and such a prescription.” 
The physicist will say, “ This is a dryness of the 
brain caused by hot weather and cannot be re¬ 
lieved till the air becomes moist.” The astrologer 
will attribute it to some particular conjunction 
or opposition of planets. “ Thus far their 
wisdom reaches,” says the Koran. It does not 
occur to them that what has really happened is 
this : that the Almighty has a concern for the 
welfare of that man, and has therefore com¬ 
manded his servants, the planets or the elements, 
to produce such a condition in him that he may 
turn away from the world to his Maker. The 
knowledge of this fact is a lustrous pearl from 
the ocean of inspirational knowledge, to which 
all other forms of knowledge are as islands in 
the sea. 

The doctor, physicist, and astrologer are 
doubtless right each in his particular branch of 
knowledge, but they do not see that illness is, 
so to speak, a cord of love by which God draws 
to Himself the saints concerning whom He has 
said, “ I was sick and ye visited Me not.” Illness 
itself is one of those forms of experience by which 
man arrives at the knowledge of God, as He says 
by the mouth of His Prophet, ct Sicknesses them¬ 
selves are My servants, and are attached to My 
chosen.” 

The foregoing remarks may enable us to enter 
a little more fully into the meaning of those 


38 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 


exclamations so often on the lips of the Faithful : 
“ God is holy,” “ Praise be to God,” “ There is 
no God but God,” “ God is great.” Concerning 
the last we may say that it does not mean that 
God is greater than creation, for creation is His 
manifestation as light manifests the sun, and it 
would not be correct to say that the sun is 
greater than its own light. It rather means that 
God’s greatness immeasurably transcends our 
cognitive faculties, and that we can only form 
a very dim and imperfect idea of it. If a child 
asks us to explain to him the pleasure which 
exists in wielding sovereignty, we may say it is 
like the pleasure he feels in playing bat and ball, 
though in reality the two have nothing in common 
except that they both come under the category of 
pleasure. Thus, the exclamation “ God is great ” 
means that His greatness far exceeds all our 
powers of comprehension. Moreover, such im¬ 
perfect knowledge of God as we can attain to 
is not a mere speculative knowledge, but must 
be accompanied by devotion and worship. When 
a man dies he has to do with God alone, and if 
we have to live with a person, our happiness 
entirely depends on the degree of affection we 
feel towards him. Love is the seed of happiness, 
and love to God is fostered and developed by 
worship. Such worship and constant remem¬ 
brance of God implies a certain degree of austerity 
and curbing of bodily appetites. Not that a 




SPIRITUAL GUIDES 


39 


man is intended altogether to abolish these, for 
then the human race would perish. But strict 
limits must be set to their indulgence, and as 
a man is not the best judge in his own case as to 
what these limits should be, he had better con¬ 
sult some spiritual guide on the subject. Such 
spiritual guides are the prophets, and the laws 
which they have laid down under divine inspira¬ 
tion prescribe the limits which must be observed 
in these matters. He who transgresses these 
limits “ wrongs his own soul,” as it is written in 
the Koran. 

Notwithstanding this clear pronouncement of 
the Koran there are those who, through their 
ignorance of God, do transgress these limits, and 
this ignorance may be due to several different 
causes : Firstly, there are some who, failing to 
find God by observation, conclude that there is 
no God and that this world of wonders made 
itself, or existed from everlasting. They are 
like a man who, seeing a beautifully-written 
letter, should suppose that it had written itself 
without a writer, or had always existed. People 
in this state of mind are so far gone in error that 
it is of little use to argue with them. Such are 
some of the physicists and astronomers to whom 
we referred above. 

Some, through ignorance of the real nature of 
the soul, repudiate the doctrine of a future life, 
in which man will be called to account and be 


40 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 


rewarded or punished. They regard themselves 
as no better than animals or vegetables, and 
equally perishable. Some, on the other hand, 
believe in God and a future life, but with a weak 
belief. They say to themselves, “ God is great 
and independent of us ; our worship or abstin¬ 
ence from worship is a matter of entire indiffer¬ 
ence to Him.” Their state of mind is like that 
of a sick man who, when prescribed a certain 
regime by his doctor, should say, “ Well, if I 
follow it or don’t follow it, what does it matter 
to the doctor ? ” It certainly does not matter to 
the doctor, but the patient may destroy himself 
by his disobedience. Just as surely as unchecked 
sickness of body ends in bodily death, so does 
uncured disease of the soul end in future misery, 
according to the saying of the Koran, “ Only 
those shall be saved who come to God with a 
sound heart.” 

A fourth kind of unbelievers are those who 
say, “ The Law tells us to abstain from anger, 
lust, and hypocrisy. This is plainly impossible, 
for man is created with these qualities inherent 
in him. You might as well tell us to make black 
white.” These foolish people ignore the fact 
that the law does not tell us to uproot these 
passions, but to restrain them within due limits, 
so that, by avoiding the greater sins, we may 
obtain forgiveness of the smaller ones. Even 
the Prophet of God said, “ I am a man like you, 


EXCEPT YE STRIVE 


41 


and get angry like others ” ; and in the Koran it 
is written, “ God loves those who swallow down 
their anger,” not those who have no anger at all. 

A fifth class lay stress on the beneficence of 
God, and ignore His justice, saying to themselves, 
“ Well, whatever we do, God is merciful.” They 
do not consider that, though God is merciful, 
thousands of human beings perish miserably in 
hunger and disease. They know that whosoever 
wishes for a livelihood, or for wealth, or learning, 
must not merely say, “ God is merciful,” but 
must exert himself. Although the Koran says, 
“ Every living creature’s support comes from 
God,” it is also written, “ Man obtains nothing 
except by striving.” The fact is, such teaching 
is really from the devil, and such people only 
speak with their lips and not with their heart. 

A sixth class claim to have reached such a 
degree of sanctity that sin cannot affect them. 
Yet, if you treat one of them with disrespect, he 
will bear a grudge against you for years, and if 
one of them be deprived of a morsel of food 
which he thinks his due, the whole world will 
appear dark and narrow to him. Even if any of 
them do really conquer their passions, they have 
no right to make such a claim, for the prophets, 
the highest of human kind, constantly confessed 
and bewailed their sins. Some of them had 
such a dread of sin that they even abstained from 
lawful things ; thus, it is related of the Prophet 


42 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 


that, one day, when a date had been brought to 
him he would not eat it, as he was not sure that 
it had been lawfully obtained. Whereas these 
free-livers will swallow gallons of wine and claim 
(I shudder as I write) to be superior to the Prophet 
whose sanctity was endangered by a date, while 
theirs is unaffected by all that wine ! Surely 
they deserve that the devil should drag them 
down to perdition. Real saints know that he 
who does not master his appetites does not de¬ 
serve the name of a man, and that the true 
Moslem is one who will cheerfully acknowledge 
the limits imposed by the Law. He who endeav¬ 
ours, on whatever pretext, to ignore its obliga¬ 
tions is certainly under Satanic influence, and 
should be talked to, not with a pen, but with a 
sword. These pseudo-mystics sometimes pretend 
to be drowned in a sea of wonder, but if you ask 
them what they are wondering at they do not 
know. They should be told to wonder as much 
as they please, but at the same time to remember 
that the Almighty is their Creator and that they 
are His servants. 


CHAPTER III 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS WORLD 

This world is a stage or market-place passed by 
pilgrims on their way to the next. It is here 
that they are to provide themselves with pro¬ 
visions for the way; or, to put it plainly, man 
acquires here, by the use of his bodily senses, 
some knowledge of the works of God, and, through 
them, of God Himself, the sight of whom will 
constitute his future beatitude. It is for the 
acquirement of this knowledge that the spirit of 
man has descended into this world of water and 
clay. As long as his senses remain with him he 
is said to be “in this world ” ; when they depart, 
and only his essential attributes remain, he is 
said to have gone to “ the next world.” 

While man is in this world, two things are 
necessary for him: first, the protection and nurture 
of his soul ; secondly, the care and nurture of his 
body. The proper nourishment of the soul, as 
above shown, is the knowledge and love of God, 
and to be absorbed in the love of anything but 

43 


44 THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS WORLD 


God is the ruin of the soul. The body, so to 
speak, is simply the riding-animal of the soul, and 
perishes while the soul endures. The soul should 
take care of the body, just as a pilgrim on his 
way to Mecca takes care of his camel; but if 
the pilgrim spends his whole time in feeding and 
adorning his camel, the caravan will leave him 
behind, and he will perish in the desert. 

Man’s bodily needs are simple, being comprised 
under three heads : food, clothing, and a dwelling- 
place ; but the bodily desires which were im¬ 
planted in him with a view to procuring these 
are apt to rebel against reason, which is of 
later growth than they. Accordingly, as we 
saw above, they require to be curbed and re¬ 
strained by the divine laws promulgated by the 
prophets. 

Considering the world with which we have for 
a time to do, we find it divided into three depart¬ 
ments—animal, vegetable, and mineral. The 
products of all three are continually needed by 
man and have given rise to three principal 
occupations—those of the weaver, the builder, 
and the worker in metal. These, again, have 
many subordinate branches, such as tailors, 
masons, smiths, etc. None can be quite inde¬ 
pendent of others ; this gives rise to various 
business-connections and relations, and these too 
frequently afford occasions for hatred, envy, 
jealousy, and other maladies of the soul. Hence 


THE THREE NECESSITIES 


15 


come quarrels and strife, and the need of political 
and civil government and knowledge of law. 

Thus the occupations and businesses of the 
world have become more and more complicated 
and troublesome, chiefly owing to the fact that 
men have forgotten that their real necessities are 
only three—clothing, food, and shelter, and that 
these exist only with the object of making the 
body a fit vehicle for the soul in its journey to¬ 
wards the next world. They have fallen into 
the same mistake as the pilgrim to Mecca, men¬ 
tioned above, who, forgetting the object of his 
pilgrimage and himself, should spend his whole 
time in feeding and adorning his camel. Unless 
a man maintains the strictest watch he is certain 
to be fascinated and entangled by the world, 
which, as the Prophet said, is “ a more potent 
sorcerer than Harut and Marut.” 1 

The deceitful character of the world comes out 
in the following ways. In the first place, it 
pretends that it will always remain with you, 
while, as a matter of fact, it is slipping away from 
you, moment by moment, and bidding you fare¬ 
well, like a shadow which seems stationary, but 
is actually always moving. Again, the world 
presents itself under the guise of a radiant but 
immoral sorceress, pretends to be in love with 
you, fondles you, and then goes off to your 
enemies, leaving you to die of chagrin and despair. 

1 Two fallen angels. 



46 THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS WORLD 


Jesus (upon whom be peace !) saw the world 
revealed in the form of an ugly old hag. He 
asked her how many husbands she had possessed ; 
she replied that they were countless. He asked 
whether they had died or been divorced ; she 
said that she had slain them all. “I marvel,” 
he said, “ at the fools who see what you have 
done to others, and still desire you.” 

This sorceress decks herself out in gorgeous 
and jewelled apparel and veils her face. Then 
she goes forth to seduce men, too many of whom 
follow her to their own destruction. The Prophet 
has said that in the Judgment Day the world will 
appear in the form of a hideous witch with green 
eyes and projecting teeth. Men, beholding her, 
will say, “ Mercy on us ! who is this ? ” The 
angels will answer, “ This is the world for whose 
sake you quarrelled and fought and embittered one 
another’s lives.” Then she will be cast into hell, 
whence she will cry out, “ 0 Lord ! where are 
those, my former lovers ? ” God will then com¬ 
mand that they be cast after her. 

Whoever will seriously contemplate the past 
eternity during which the world was not in 
existence, and the future eternity during which 
it will not be in existence, will see that it is 
essentially like a journey, in which the stages 
are represented by years, the leagues by months, 
the miles by days, and the steps by moments. 
What words, then, can picture the folly of the 


INDULGENCE AND RETRIBUTION 47 


man who endeavours to make it liis permanent 
abode, and forms plans ten years ahead regarding 
things he may never need, seeing that very 
possibly he may be under the ground in ten days ! 

Those who have indulged without limit in the 
pleasures of the world, at the time of death will 
be like a man who has gorged himself to repletion 
on delicious viands and then vomits them up. 
The deliciousness has gone, but the disgrace 
remains. The greater the abundance of the 
possessions which they have enjoyed in the shape 
of gardens, male and female slaves, gold, silver, 
etc., the more keenly they will feel the bitterness 
of parting from them. This is a bitterness which 
will outlast death, for the soul which has con¬ 
tracted covetousness as a fixed habit will neces¬ 
sarily in the next world suffer from the pangs of 
unsatisfied desire. 

Another dangerous property of worldly things 
is that they at first appear as mere trifles, but 
each of these so-called “ trifles ” branches out 
into countless ramifications until they swallow up 
the whole of a man’s time and energy. Jesus 
(on whom be peace !) said, “ The lover of the 
world is like a man drinking sea-water ; the more 
he drinks, the more thirsty he gets, till at last 
he perishes with thirst unquenched.” The Pro¬ 
phet said, “You can no more mix with the 
world without being contaminated by it than 
you can go into water without getting wet.” 


48 THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS WORLD 


The world is like a table spread for successive 
relays of guests who come and go. There are 
gold and silver dishes, abundance of food and 
perfumes. The wise guest eats as much as is 
sufficient for him, smells the perfumes, thanks 
his host, and departs. The foolish guest, on the 
other hand, tries to carry off some of the gold 
and silver dishes, only to find them wrenched out 
of his hands and himself thrust forth, disappointed 
and disgraced. 

We may close these illustrations of the deceit¬ 
fulness of the world with the following short 
parable. Suppose a ship to arrive at a certain 
well-wooded island. The captain of the ship 
tells the passengers he will stop a few hours 
there, and that they can go on shore for a short 
time, but warns them not to delay too long. 
Accordingly the passengers disembark and stroll 
in different directions. The wisest, however, 
return after a short time, and, finding the ship 
empty, choose the most comfortable places in it. 
A second band of the passengers spend a some¬ 
what longer time on the island, admiring the 
foliage of the trees and listening to the song of 
the birds. Coming on board, they find the best 
places in the ship already occupied, and have to 
content themselves with the less comfortable 
ones. A third party wander still farther, and, 
finding some brilliantly coloured stones, carry 
them back to the ship. Their lateness in coming 


KNOWLEDGE AND GOOD DEEDS 49 


on board compels them to stow themselves away 
in the lower parts of the ship, where they find 
their loads of stones, which by this time have 
lost all their brilliancy, very much in their way. 
The last group go so far in their wanderings that 
they get quite out of reach of the captain’s voice 
calling them to come on board, and at last he has 
to sail away without them. They wander about 
in a hopeless condition and finally either perish 
of hunger or fall a prey to wild beasts. 

The first group represents the faithful who 
keep aloof from the world altogether, and the 
last group the infidels who care only for this 
world and nothing for the next. The two inter¬ 
mediate classes are those who preserve their 
faith, but entangle themselves more or less with 
the vanities of things present. 

Although we have said so much against the 
W'orld, it must be remembered that there are 
some things in the world which are not oj it, 
such as knowledge and good deeds. A man 
carries what knowledge he possesses with him 
into the next world, and, though his good deeds 
have passed, yet the effect of them remains in 
his character. Especially is this the case with 
acts of devotion, which result in the perpetual 
remembrance and love of God. These are among 
“ those good things ” which, as the Koran says, 
“ pass not away.” 

Other good things there are in the world, such 



50 THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS WOELD 


as marriage, food, clothing, etc., which a wise 
man uses just in proportion as they help him to 
attain to the next world. Other things which 
engross the mind, causing it to cleave to this 
world and to be careless of the next, are purely 
evil and were alluded to by the Prophet when he 
said, “ The world is a curse, and all which is in 
it is a curse, except the remembrance of God, and 
that which aids it.” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEXT WORLD 

As regards the joys of heaven and the pains of 
hell which will follow this life, all believers in the 
Koran and the Traditions are sufficiently informed. 
But it often escapes them that there is also a 
spiritual heaven and hell, concerning the former 
of which God said to His Prophet, “ Eye hath 
not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered 
into the heart of man to conceive the things 
which are prepared for the righteous.” In the 
heart of the enlightened man there is a window 
opening on the realities of the spiritual world, so 
that he knows, not by hearsay or traditional * 
belief, but by actual experience, what produces 
wretchedness or happiness in the soul just as 
clearly and decidedly as the physician knows 
what produces sickness or health in the body. 
He recognises that knowledge of God and worship 
are medicinal, and that ignorance and sin are 
deadly poisons for the soul. Many even so- 
called “ learned ” men, from blindly following 

51 


52 KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEXT WORLD 


others’ opinions, have no real certainty in their 
beliefs regarding the happiness or misery of souls 
in the next world, but he who will attend to the 
matter with a mind unbiassed by prejudice will 
arrive at clear convictions on this matter. 

The effect of death on the composite nature of 
man is as follows : Man has two souls, an animal 
soul and a spiritual soul, which latter is of angelic 
nature. The seat of the animal soul is the 
heart, from which this soul issues like a subtle 
vapour and pervades all the members of the body, 
giving the power of sight to the eye, the power 
of hearing to the ear, and to every member the 
faculty of performing its own appropriate func¬ 
tions. It may be compared to a lamp carried 
about within a cottage, the light of which falls 
upon the walls wherever it goes. The heart is 
the wick of this lamp, and when the supply of oil 
is cut off for any reason, the lamp dies. Such is 
the death of the animal soul. With the spiritual, 
or human soul, the case is different. It is in¬ 
divisible, and by it man knows God. It is, so to 
speak, the rider of the animal soul, and when that 
perishes it still remains, but is like a horseman 
who has been dismounted, or like a hunter who 
has lost his weapons. That steed and those 
weapons were granted the human soul that by 
means of them it might pursue and capture the 
Phoenix of the love and knowledge of God. If it 
has effected that capture, it is not a grief but 


INDIVIDUALITY OF THE SOUL 53 


rather a relief to be able to lay those weapons 
aside, and to dismount from that weary steed. 
Therefore the Prophet said, “ Death is a welcome 
gift of God to the believer.” But alas for that 
soul which loses its steed and hunting-weapons 
before it has captured the prize ! Its misery and 
regret will be indescribable. 

A little further consideration will show how 
| entirely distinct the human soul is from the body 
i'and its members. Limb after limb may be para¬ 
lysed and cease working, but the individuality of 
the soul is unimpaired. Further, the body which 
you have now is no longer the body which you 
had as a child, but entirely different, yet your 
Personality now is identical with your personality 
then. It is therefore easy to conceive of it as 
persisting when the body is done with altogether, 
along with its essential attributes which were 
independent of the body, such as the knowledge 
and love of God. This is the meaning of that 
saying of the Koran, “ The good things abide.” 
But if, instead of carrying away with you know¬ 
ledge, you depart in ignorance of God, this ignor¬ 
ance also is an essential attribute, and will abide as 
darkness of soul and the seed of misery. Therefore 
the Koran says, “He who is blind in this life will be 
blind in the next life, and astray from the path.” 

The reason of the human spirit seeking to return 
to that upper world is that its origin was from 
thence, and that it is of angelic nature. It was 


54 KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEXT WORLD 


sent down into this lower sphere against its will 
to acquire knowledge and experience, as God said 
in the Koran : “Go down from hence, all of you ; 
there will come to you instruction from Me, and 
they who obey the instruction need not fear, 
neither shall they be grieved.” The verse, “ I 
breathed into man of My spirit,” also points to 
the celestial origin of the human soul. Just as 
the health of the animal soul consists in the 
equilibrium of its component parts, and this 
equilibrium is restored, when impaired, by appro¬ 
priate medicine, so the health of the human soul 
consists in a moral equilibrium which is main¬ 
tained and repaired, when needful, by ethical 
instruction and moral precepts. 

As regards its future existence, we have already 
seen that the human soul is essentially inde¬ 
pendent of the body. All objections to its 
existence after death based on the supposed 
necessity of its recovering its former body fall, 
therefore, to the ground. Some theologians have 
supposed that the human soul is annihilated 
after death and then restored, but this is con¬ 
trary both to reason and to the Koran. The 
former shows us that death does not destroy the 
essential individuality of a man, and the Koran 
says, “ Think not that those who are slain in the 
path of God are dead ; nay, they are alive, 
rejoicing in the presence of their Lord, and in 
the grace bestowed on them.” Not a word is 


REVELATIONS OF THE UNSEEN 55 


said in the Law about any of the dead, good or 
bad, being annihilated. Nay, the Prophet is said 
to have questioned the spirits of slain infidels as 
to whether they had found the punishments, 
with which he had threatened them, real or not. 
When his followers asked him what was the good 
of questioning them, he replied, “ They hear my 
words better than you do.” 

Some Sufis have had the unseen world of 
heaven and hell revealed to them when in a state 
of death-like trance. On their recovering con¬ 
sciousness their faces betray the nature of the 
revelations they have had by marks of joy or 
terror. But no visions are necessary to prove 
what will occur to every thinking man, that when 
death has stripped him of his senses and left him 
nothing but his bare personality, if while on earth 
he has too closely attached himself to objects 
perceived by the senses, such as wives, children, 
wealth, lands, slaves, male and female, etc., he 
must necessarily suffer when bereft of those 
objects. Whereas, on the contrary, if he has as 
far as possible turned his back on all earthly 
objects and fixed his supreme affection upon 
God, he will welcome death as a means of escape 
from worldly entanglements, and of union with 
Him whom he loves. In his case the Prophet’s 
sayings will be verified : “ Death is a bridge which 
unites friend to friend,” and “ The world is a 
paradise for infidels, but a prison for the faithful.” 



KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEXT WORLD 


On the other hand, the pains which souls suffer 
after death all have their source in excessive love 
of the w T orld. The Prophet said that every un¬ 
believer, after death, will be tormented by ninety- 
nine snakes, each having nine heads. Some 
simple-minded people have examined the un¬ 
believers’ graves and wondered at failing to see 
these snakes. They do not understand that 
these snakes have their abode within the unbe¬ 
liever’s spirit, and that they existed in him even 
^before he died, for they were his own evil qualities 
Isymbolised, such as jealousy, hatred, hypocrisy, 
pride, deceit, etc., every one of which springs, 
directly or remotely, from love of the world. 
Such is the doom of those who, in the words of 
the Koran, “ set their hearts on this world rather 
than on the next.” If those snakes were merely 
external they might hope to escape their torment, 
if it were but for a moment; but, being their own 
inherent attributes, how can they escape ? 

Take, for instance, the case of a man who has 
sold a slave-girl without knowing how much he 
was attached to her till she is quite out of his 
reach. Then the love of her, hitherto dormant, 
wakes up in him with such intensity as to amount 
to torture, stinging him like a snake, so that he 
would fain cast himself into fire or water to escape 
it. Such is the effect of love of the world, which 
those who have it often suspect not till the world 
is taken from them, and then the torment of vain 


THEIR INSTRUMENTS OF PUNISHMENT 57 

longing is such that they would gladly exchange 
it for any number of mere external snakes and 
scorpions. 

Every sinner thus carries with him into the 
world beyond death the instruments of his own 
punishment ; and the Koran says truly, “ Verily 
you shall see hell ; you shall see it with the 
eye of certainty,” and “ hell surrounds the un¬ 
believers.” It does not say “ will surround 
them,” for it is round them even now. 

Some may object, “ If such is the case, then 
who can escape hell, for who is not more or less 
bound to the world by various ties of affection 
and interest ? ” To this we answer that there are 
some, notably the faqirs, who have entirely dis¬ 
engaged themselves from love of the world. But 
even among those who have worldly possessions 
such as wife, children, houses, etc., there are 
those who, though they have some affection for 
these, love God yet more. Their case is like that 
of a man who, though he may have a dwelling 
which he is fond of in one city, when he is called 
by the king to take up a post of authority in 
another city, does so gladly, as the post of 
authority is dearer to him than his former 
dwelling. Such are many of the prophets and 
saints. 

Others there are, and a great number, who have 
some love to God, but the love of the world so 
preponderates in them that they will have to 


58 KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEXT WORLD 


suffer a good deal of pain after death before they 
are thoroughly weaned from it. Many profess 
to love God, but a man may easily test himself 
by watching which way the balance of his affec¬ 
tion inclines when the commands of God come 
into collision with some of his desires. The 
profession of love to God which is insufficient to 
restrain from disobedience to God is a lie. 

We have seen above that one kind of spiritual 
hell is the forcible separation from worldly things 
to which the heart clave too fondly. Many carry 
about within them the germs of such a hell with¬ 
out being aware of it ; hereafter they will feel 
like some king who, after living in luxury, has 
been dethroned and made a laughing-stock. The 
second kind of spiritual hell is that of shame, 
when a man wakes up to see the nature of the 
actions he committed in their naked reality. 
Thus he who slandered will see himself in the 
guise of a cannibal eating his dead brother’s 
flesh, and he who envied as one who cast stones 
against a wall, which stones, rebounding, put 
out the eyes of his own children. 

This species of hell, i.e. of shame, may be 
symbolised by the following short parable : 
Suppose a certain king has been celebrating his 
son’s marriage. In the evening the young man 
goes off with some companions and presently 
returns to the palace (as he thinks) intoxicated. 
He enters a chamber where a light is burning and 


SOME SPIRITUAL HELLS 


59 


lies down, as he supposes, by his bride. In the 
morning, when soberness returns, he is aghast to 
find himself in a mortuary of the fire-worshippers, 
his couch a bier, and the form which he mistook 
for that of his bride the corpse of an old woman 
beginning to decay. On emerging from the 
mortuary with his garments all soiled, what is 
his shame to see his father, the king, approaching 
with a retinue of soldiers ! Such is a feeble 
picture of the shame those will feel in the next 
world who in this have greedily abandoned them¬ 
selves to what they thought were delights. 

The third spiritual hell is that of disappoint¬ 
ment and failure to reach the real objects of 
existence. Man was intended to mirror forth 
the light of the knowledge of God, but if he arrives * 
in the next world with his soul thickly coated 
with the rust of sensual indulgence he will entirely 
fail of the object for which he was made. His 
disappointment may be figured in the following 
way: Suppose a man is passing with some com¬ 
panions through a dark wood. Here and there, 
glimmering on the ground, lie variously coloured 
stones. His companions collect and carry these 
and advise him to do the same. “For,” say they, 

“ we have heard that these stones will fetch a 
high price in the place whither we are going.” 
He, on the other hand, laughs at them and calls 
them fools for loading themselves in the vain 
hope of gain, while he walks free and unencum- 


60 KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEXT WORLD 


bered. Presently they emerge into the full day¬ 
light and find that these coloured stones are 
rubies, emeralds, and other jewels of priceless 
value. The man’s disappointment and chagrin 
at not having gathered some when so easily 
within his reach may be more easily imagined 
than described. Such will be the remorse of 
those hereafter, who, while passing through this 
world, have been at no pains to acquire the 
jewels of virtue and the treasures of religion. 

This journey of man through the world may be 
divided into four stages—the sensuous, the ex¬ 
perimental, the instinctive, the rational. In the 
first he is like a moth which, though it has sight, 
has no memory, and will singe itself again and 
again at the same candle. In the second stage 
he is like a dog which, having once been beaten, 
will run away at the sight of a stick. In the 
third he is like a horse or a sheep, both of which 
instinctively fly at the sight of a lion or a wolf, 
their natural enemies, while they will not fly 
from a camel or a buffalo, though these last are 
much greater in size. In the fourth stage man 
altogether transcends the limits of the animals 
and becomes capable, to some extent, of fore¬ 
seeing and providing for the future. His move¬ 
ments at first may be compared to ordinary 
walking on land, then to traversing the sea in a 
ship, then, on the fourth plane, where he is 
conversant with realities, to walking on the sea, 


FROM ANIMAL TO ANGEL 


61 


while beyond this plane there is a fifth, known to 
the prophets and saints, whose progress may be 
compared to flying through the air. 

Thus man is capable of existing on several 
different planes, from the animal to the angelic, 
and precisely in this lies his danger, i.e. of falling 
to the very lowest. In the Koran it is written, 
“We proposed the burden (i.e. responsibility or 
free-will) to the heavens and the earth and the 
mountains, and they refused to undertake it. 
But man took it upon himself : Verily he is 
ignorant.” Neither animals nor angels can 
change their appointed rank and place. But 
man may sink to the animal or soar to the angel, 
and this is the meaning of his undertaking that 
“ burden ” of which the Koran speaks. The 
majority of men choose to remain in the two 
lower stages mentioned above, and the stationary 
are always hostile to the travellers or pilgrims, 
whom they far outnumber. 

Many of the former class, having no fixed 
convictions about the future world, when mastered 
by their sensual appetites, deny it altogether. 
They say that hell is merely an invention of 
theologians to frighten people, and they regard 
theologians themselves with thinly veiled con¬ 
tempt. To argue with fools of this kind is of 
very little use. This much, however, may be 
said to such a man, with the possible result of 
making him pause and reflect : “ Do you really 


62 KNOWLEDGE OF THE NEXT WORLD 


think that the hundred and twenty-four thousand 1 
prophets and saints who believed in the future 
life were all wrong, and you are right in deny¬ 
ing it ? 75 If he replies, “ Yes ! I am as sure 
as I am that two are more than one, that there 
is no soul and no future life of joy and penalty, 77 
then the case of such a man is hopeless ; all one 
can do is to leave him alone, remembering the 
words of the Koran, “ Though thou call them 
to instruction, they will not be instructed.” 

But, should he say that a future life is possible 
but that the doctrine is so involved in doubt and 
mystery that it is impossible to decide whether it 
be true or not, then one may say to him : “ Then 
you had better give it the benefit of the doubt ! 
Suppose you are about to eat food and some one 
tells you a serpent has spat venom on it, you 
would probably refrain and rather endure the 
pangs of hunger than eat it, though your in¬ 
formant may be in jest or lying. Or suppose 
you are ill and a charm-writer says, ‘ Give me 
a rupee and I will write a charm which you can 
tie round your neck and which will cure you,’ 
you would probably give the rupee on the chance 
of deriving benefit from the charm. Or if an 
astrologer say, ‘ When the moon has entered a 
certain constellation, drink such and such a 
medicine, and you will recover,’ though you 

1 The number of prophets according to Muhammadan 
tradition. 


LORD ALI AND THE UNBELIEVER 63 


may have very little faith in astrology, yon very 
likely would try the experiment on the chance 
that he might be right. And do you not think 
that reliance is as well placed on the words of all 
the prophets, saints, and holy men, convinced as 
they were of a future life, as on the promise of 
a charm-writer or an astrologer ? People take 
perilous voyages in ships for the sake of merely 
probable profit, and will you not suffer a little 
pain of abstinence now for the sake of eternal 
joy hereafter ? ” 

The Lord Ah once, in arguing with an unbeliever, 
said, “ If you are right, then neither of us will be 
any the worse in the future; but if we are right, 
then we shall escape, and you will suffer.” This 
he said not because he himself was in any doubt, 
but merely to make an impression on the unbe¬ 
liever. From all that we have said it follows 
that man’s chief business in this world is to 
prepare for the next. Even if he is doubtful 
about a future existence, reason suggests that he 
should act as if there were one, considering the 
tremendous issues at stake. Peace be on those 
who follow the instruction ! 


CHAPTER V 

CONCERNING MUSIC AND DANCING AS AIDS TO THE 

RELIGIOUS LIFE 

The heart of man has been so constituted by the 
Almighty that, like a flint, it contains a hidden 
fire which is evoked by music and harmony, and 
renders man beside himself with ecstasy. These 
harmonies are echoes of that higher world of 
beauty which we call the world of spirits ; they 
remind man of his relationship to that world, and 
produce in him an emotion so deep and strange 
that he himself is powerless to explain it. The 
effect of music and dancing is deeper in proportion 
as the natures on which they act are simple and 
prone to emotion ; they fan into a flame what¬ 
ever love is already dormant in the heart, whether 
it be earthly and sensual, or divine and spiritual. 

Accordingly there has been much dispute 
among theologians as to the lawfulness of music 
and dancing regarded as religious exercises. One 
sect, the Zahirites, 1 holding that God is altogether 

1 Literally, “ Outsiders.” 

64 


MUSIC AND THE EMOTIONS 


65 


incommensurable with man, deny the possibility 
of man’s really feeling love to God, and say that 
he can only love those of his own species. If he 
does feel what he thinks is love to his Creator they 
say it is a mere projection, or shadow cast by his 
own fantasy, or a reflection of love to the creature ; 
music and dancing, according to them, have only 
to do with creature love, and are therefore un¬ 
lawful as religious exercises. If we ask them 
what is the meaning of that “ love to God ” 
which is enjoined by the religious law, they reply 
that it means obedience and worship. This is 
an error which we hope to confute in a later 
chapter dealing with the love of God. At present 
we content ourselves with saying that music and 
dancing do not put into the heart what is not 
there already, but only fan into a flame dormant 
emotions. Therefore if a man has in his heart 
that love to God which the Law enjoins it is 
perfectly lawful, nay, laudable in him to take 
part in exercises which promote it. On the 
other hand, if his heart is full of sensual desires, 
music and dancing will only increase them, and 
are therefore unlawful for him. While, if he 
listens to them merely as a matter of amusement, 
they are neither lawful nor unlawful, but in¬ 
different. For the mere fact that they are 
pleasant does not make them unlawful, any more 
than the pleasure of listening to the singing of 
birds or looking at green grass and running water 


66 CONCERNING MUSIC AND DANCING 


is unlawful. The innocent character of music 
and dancing, regarded merely as a pastime, is also 
corroborated by an authentic tradition which we 
have from the Lady Ayesha, 1 who narrates : “ One 
festival-day some negroes were performing in a 
mosque. The Prophet said to me, 4 Do you wish 
to see them ? ’ I replied, 6 Yes.’ Accordingly 
he lifted me up with his own blessed hand, and 
I looked on so long that he said more than once, 
6 Haven’t you had enough ? ’ ” Another tradi¬ 
tion from the Lady Ayesha is as follows : 44 One 
festival-day two girls came to my house and 
began to play and sing. The Prophet came in 
and lay down on the couch, turning his face 
away. Presently Abu Bakr 1 entered, and, seeing 
the girls playing, exclaimed, 4 What ! the pipe 
of Satan in the Prophet’s house ! ’ Whereupon 
the Prophet turned and said, 4 Let them alone, 
Abu Bakr, for this is a festival-day.’ ” 

Passing over the cases where music and dancing 
rouse into a flame evil desires already dormant in 
the heart, we come to those cases where they are 
quite lawful. Such are those of the pilgrims who 
celebrate the glories of the House of God at 
Mecca in song, and thus incite others to go on 
pilgrimage, and of minstrels whose music and 
songs stir up martial ardour in the breasts of 
their auditors and incite them to fight against 

1 Muhammad’s favourite wife. 

2 Subsequently the first caliph. 


MUSIC AND RELIGION 


67 


the infidels. Similarly, mournful music which 
excites sorrow for sin and failure in the religious 
life is lawful; of this nature was the music of 
David. But dirges which increase sorrow for 
the dead are not lawful, for it is written in the 
Koran, “ Despair not over what you have lost.” 
On the other hand, joyful music at weddings and 
feasts and on such occasions as a circumcision or 
the return from a journey is lawful. 

We come now to the purely religious use of 
music and dancing : such is that of the Sufis, 
who by this means stir up in themselves greater 
love towards God, and, by means of music, often 
obtain spiritual visions and ecstasies, their heart 
becoming in this condition as clean as silver in 
the flame of a furnace, and attaining a degree of 
purity which could never be attained by any 
amount of mere outward austerities. The Sufi 
then becomes so keenly aware of his relationship 
to the spiritual world that he loses all conscious¬ 
ness of this world, and often falls down senseless. 

It is not, however, lawful for the aspirant to 
Sufiism to take part in this mystical dancing 
without the permission of his “ Pir,” or spiritual 
director. It is related of the Sheikh Abu’l Qasim 
Girgani that, when one of his disciples requested 
leave to take part in such a dance, he said, 14 Keep 
a strict fast for three days ; then let them cook 
for you tempting dishes; if, then, you still prefer 
the ‘ dance,’ you may take part in it.” The 


68 CONCERNING MUSIC AND DANCING 


disciple, however, whose heart is not thoroughly 
purged from earthly desires, though he may have 
obtained some glimpse of the mystics’ path, 
should be forbidden by his director to take part 
in such dances, as they will do him more harm 
than good. 

Those who deny the reality of the ecstasies and 
other spiritual experiences of the Sufis merely 
betray their own narrow-mindedness and shallow 
insight. Some allowance, however, must be 
made for them, for it is as difficult to believe in 
the reality of states of which one has no personal 
experience as it is for a blind man to understand 
the pleasure of looking at green grass and running 
water, or for a child to comprehend the pleasure 
of exercising sovereignty. A wise man, though he 
himself may have no experience of those states, 
will not therefore deny their reality, for what 
folly can be greater than his who denies the 
reality of a thing merely because he himself has 
not experienced it ! Of such people it is written 
in the Koran, “ Those who have not the guidance 
will say, ‘ This is a manifest imposture.’ ” 

As regards the erotic poetry which is recited in 
Sufi gatherings, and to which people sometimes 
make objection, we must remember that, when 
in such poetry mention is made of separation 
from or union with the beloved, the Sufi, who is 
an adept in the love of God, applies such expres¬ 
sions to separation from or union with Him. 


THE SYMBOLISM OF POETRY 69 


Similarly, “dark locks” are taken to signify 
the darkness of unbelief ; “ the brightness of the 
face ” the light of faith, and drunkenness the 
Sufi’s ecstasy. Take, for instance, the verse : 

Thou may’st measure out thousands of measures of wine, 
But, till thou drink it, no joy is thine. 

By this the writer means that the true delights 
of religion cannot be reached by way of formal 
instruction, but by felt attraction and desire. A 
man may converse much and write volumes 
concerning love, faith, piety, and so forth, and 
blacken paper to any extent, but till he himself 
possesses these attributes all this will do him no 
good. Thus, those who find fault with the Sufis 
for being powerfully affected, even to ecstasy, by 
these and similar verses, are merely shallow 
and uncharitable. Even camels are sometimes 
so powerfully affected by the Arab-songs of 
their drivers that they will run rapidly, bearing- 
heavy burdens, till they fall down in a state of 
exhaustion. 

The Sufi hearer, however, is in danger of 
blasphemy if he applies some of the verses which 
he hears to God. For instance, if he hears such 
a verse as “ Thou art changed from thy former 
inclination,” he must not apply it to God, who 
cannot change, but to himself and his own varia¬ 
tions of mood. God is like the sun, which is 


70 CONCERNING MUSIC AND DANCING 


always shining, but sometimes for us His light 
is eclipsed by some object which intervenes 
between us and Him. 

Regarding some adepts it is related that they 
attain to such a degree of ecstasy that they lose 
themselves in God. Such was the case with 
Sheikh Abu’l Hassan Nuri, who, on hearing a 
certain verse, fell into an ecstatic condition, and, 
coming into a field full of stalks of newly cut 
sugar-canes, ran about till his feet were wounded 
and bleeding, and, not long afterwards, expired. 
In such cases some have supposed that there 
occurs an actual descent of Deity into humanity, 
but this would be as great a mistake as that of 
one who, having for the first time seen his re¬ 
flection in a mirror, should suppose that, some¬ 
how or other, he had become incorporated with 
the mirror, or that the red-and-white hues which 
the mirror reflects were qualities inherent in it. 

The states of ecstasy into which the Sufis fall 
vary according to the emotions which pre¬ 
dominate in them—love, fear, desire, repentance, 
etc. These states, as we have mentioned above, 
are often the result not only of hearing verses of 
the Koran, but erotic poetry. Some have ob¬ 
jected to the reciting of poetry, as well as of the 
Koran, on these occasions; but it should be re¬ 
membered that all the verses of the Koran are 
not adapted to stir the emotions—such, for in¬ 
stance, as that which commands that a man should 


SUFI STATES OF ECSTASY 


71 


leave his mother the sixth part of his property 
and his sister the hah, or that which orders that 
a widow must wait four months after the death 
of her husband before becoming espoused to 
another man. The natures which can be thrown 
into religious ecstasy by the recital of such verses 
are peculiarly sensitive and very rare. 

Another reason for the use of poetry as well as 
of the Koran on these occasions is that people are 
so familiar with the Koran, many even knowing 
it by heart, that the effect of it has been dulled 
by constant repetition. One cannot be always 
quoting new verses of the Koran as one can of 
poetry. Once, when some wild Arabs were 
hearing the Koran for the first time and were 
strongly moved by it, Abu-Bakr said to them, 
“ We were once like you, but our hearts have 
grown hard,” meaning that the Koran loses some 
of its effect on those familiar with it. For the 
same reason the Caliph Omar used to command 
the pilgrims to Mecca to leave it quickly, “ For,” 
he said, “ I fear if you grow too familiar with 
the Holy City the awe of it will depart from 
your hearts.” 

There is, moreover, something pertaining to 
the light and frivolous, at least in the eyes of the 
common people, in the use of singing and musical 
instruments, such as the pipe and drum, and it 
is not befitting that the majesty of the Koran 
should be, even temporarily, associated with 


72 CONCERNING MUSIC AND DANCING 


these things. It is related of the Prophet that 
once, when he entered the house of Rabia, the 
daughter of Mauz, some singing-girls who were 
there began extemporising in his honour. He 
abruptly bade them cease, as the praise of the 
Prophet was too sacred a theme to be treated in 
that way. There is also some danger, if verses 
of the Koran are exclusively used, that the hearers 
should attach to them some private interpretation 
of their own, and this is unlawful. On the other 
hand, no harm attaches to interpreting lines of 
poetry in various ways, as it is not necessary to 
apply to a poem the same meaning which the 
author had. 

Other features of these mystic dances are the 
bodily contortions and tearing of clothes with 
which they are sometimes accompanied. If 
these are the result of genuine ecstatic conditions 
there is nothing to be said against them, but if 
they are self-conscious and deliberate on the part 
of those who wish to appear “ adepts,” then they 
are merely acts of hypocrisy. In any case the 
more perfect adept is he who controls himself 
till he is absolutely obliged to give vent to his 
feelings. It is related of a certain youth who 
was a disciple of the Sheikh Junaid that, on 
hearing singing commence in an assembly of the 
Sufis, he could not restrain himself, but began to 
shriek in ecstasy. Junaid said to him, “ If you 
do that again, don’t remain in my company.” 


MYSTIC DANCES 


73 


After this the youth used to restrain himself on 
such occasions, but at last one day his emotions 
were so powerfully stirred that, after long and 
forcible repression of them, he uttered a shriek 
and died. 

To conclude: in holding these assemblies, 
regard must be had to time and place, and 
that no spectators come from unworthy motives. 
Those who participate in them should sit in 
silence, not looking at one another, but keeping 
their heads bent, as at prayer, and concen¬ 
trating their minds on God. Each should watch 
for whatever may be revealed to his own heart, 
and not make any movements from mere self- 
conscious impulse. But if any one of them 
stands up in a state of genuine ecstasy all the 
rest should stand up with him, and if any one’s 
turban fall off the others should also lay their 
turbans down. 

Although these matters are comparative novel¬ 
ties in Islam and have not been received from 
the first followers of the Prophet, we must re¬ 
member that all novelties are not forbidden, but 
only those which directly contravene the Law. 
For instance, the “ Tarawih,” or night-prayer, 
was first instituted by the Caliph Omar. The 
Prophet said, “ Live with each man according to 
his habits and disposition,” therefore it is right 
to fall in with usages that please people, when 
non-conformity would vex them. It is true that 


74 CONCERNING MUSIC AND DANCING 


the Companions were not in the habit of rising 
on the entrance of the Prophet, as they disliked 
this practice ; but where it has become established, 
and abstaining from it would cause annoyance, it 
is better to conform to it. The Arabs have their 
own customs, and the Persians have theirs, and 
God knoweth which is best. 


CHAPTER VI 

CONCERNING SELF-EXAMINATION AND THE 
RECOLLECTION OF GOD 

Know, O brother, that in the Koran God hath 
said, “ We will set up a just balance on the day 
of resurrection, and no soul shall be wronged in 
anything.” Whosoever has wrought a grain of 
good or ill shall then behold it. In the Koran it 
is also written, “ Let every soul see what it sends 
on before it for the day of account.” It was a 
saying of the Caliph Omar’s, “ Call yourselves to 
account before ye be called to account”; and 
God says, “0 ye believers, be patient and strive 
against your natural desires, and maintain the 
strife manfully.” The saints have always under¬ 
stood that they have come into this world to 
carry on a spiritual traffic, the resulting gain or 
loss of which is heaven or hell. They have, there¬ 
fore, always kept a jealous eye upon the flesh, 
which, like a treacherous partner in business, may 
cause them great loss. He, therefore, is a wise 
man who, after his morning prayer, spends a whole 

75 


76 CONCERNING SELF-EXAMINATION 


hour in making a spiritual reckoning, and says 
to his soul, “ 0 my soul, thou hast only one life ; 
no single moment that has passed can be re¬ 
covered, for in the counsel of God the number 
of breaths allotted thee is fixed, and cannot be 
increased. When life is over no further spiritual 
traffic is possible for thee ; therefore what thou 
doest, do now ; treat this day as if thy life had 
been already spent, and this were an extra day 
granted thee by the special favour of the Almighty. 
What can be greater folly than to lose it ? ” 

At the resurrection a man will find all the 
hours of his life arranged like a long series of 
treasure-chests. The door of one will be opened, 
and it will be seen to be full of light : it repre¬ 
sents an hour which he spent in doing good. 
His heart will be filled with such joy that even a 
fraction of it would make the inhabitants of hell 
forget the fire. The door of a second will be 
opened ; it is pitch-dark within, and from it 
issues such an evil odour as will cause every one 
to hold his nose : it represents an hour which 
he spent in ill-doing, and he will suffer such terror 
that a fraction of it would embitter Paradise for 
the blessed. The door of a third treasure-chest 
will be opened; it will be seen to be empty and 
neither light nor dark within : this represents 
the hour in which he did neither good nor evil. 
Then he will feel remorse and confusion like that 
of a man who has been the possessor of a great 


SEVEN GATES TO HELL 


77 


treasure and wasted it or let it slip from his 
grasp. Thus the whole series of the hours of his 
life will be displayed, one by one, to his gaze. 
Therefore a man should say to his soul every 
morning, “ God has given thee twenty-four 
treasures ; take heed lest thou lose any one of 
them, for thou wilt not be able to endure the 
regret that will follow such loss.” 

The saints have said, “ Even suppose God 
should forgive thee, after a wasted life, thou 
wilt not attain to the ranks of the righteous and 
must deplore thy loss ; therefore keep a strict 
watch over thy tongue, thine eye, and each of 
thy seven members, for each of these is, as it 
were, a possible gate to hell. Say to thy flesh, 
‘ If thou art rebellious, verily I will punish thee ’; 
for, though the flesh is headstrong, it is capable 
of receiving instruction, and can be tamed by 
austerity.” Such, then, is the aim of self-examina¬ 
tion, and the Prophet has said, “ Happy is he 
who does now that which will benefit him after 
death.” 

We come now to the recollection of God. This 
consists in a man’s remembering that God 
observes all his acts and thoughts. People only 
see the outward, while God sees both the outer 
and the inner man. He who really believes this 
will have both his outer and inner being well 
disciplined. If he disbelieve it, he is an infidel, 
and if, while believing it, he acts contrary to that 


78 CONCERNING SELF-EXAMINATION 


belief, he is guilty of the grossest presumption. 
One day a negro came to the Prophet and said, 
“ O Prophet of God ! I have committed much 
sin. Will my repentance be accepted, or not ? ” 
The Prophet said “Yes.” Then the negro said, 
“ O Prophet of God, all the time I was committing 
sin, did God really behold it ? ” “ Yes,” was 

the answer. The negro uttered a cry and fell 
lifeless. Till a man is thoroughly convinced of 
the fact that he is always under God’s observation 
it is impossible for him to act rightly. 

A certain sheikh once had a disciple whom he 
favoured above his other disciples, thus exciting 
their envy. One day the sheikh gave each of 
them a fowl and told each to go and kill it in a 
place where no one could see him. Accordingly 
each killed his fowl in some retired spot and 
brought it back, with the exception of the sheikh’s 
favourite disciple, who brought his back alive, 
saying, “ I have found no such place, for God 
sees everywhere.” The sheikh said to the others, 
“You see now this youth’s real rank ; he has 
attained to the constant remembrance of God.” 

When Zuleikha tempted Joseph she cast a 
cloth over the face of the idol she used to worship. 
Joseph said to her, “ 0 Zuleikha, thou art ashamed 
before a block of stone, and should I not be 
ashamed before Him who created the seven 
heavens and the earth ? ” A man once came to 
the saint Junaid and said, “ I cannot keep my 


STORY OF THE CALIPH OMAR 79 


eyes from casting lascivious looks. How shall I 
do so ? ” “ By remembering,” Junaid answered, 

“ that God sees you much more clearly than you 
see any one else.” In the traditions it is written 
that God has said, “ Paradise is for those who 
intend to commit some sin and then remember 
that My eye is upon them and forbear.” Ab¬ 
dullah Ibn Dinar relates, “ Once I was walking 
with the Caliph Omar near Mecca when we met 
a shepherd’s slave-boy driving his flock. Omar 
said to him, “ Sell me a sheep.” The boy 
answered, “ They are not mine, but my master’s.” 
Then, to try him, Omar said, “ Well, you can 
tell him that a wolf carried one off, and he will 
know nothing about it.” “ No, he won’t,” said 
the boy, “but God will.” Omar then wept, and, 
sending for the boy’s master, purchased him and 
set him free, exclaiming, “ For this saying thou 
art free in this world and shalt be free in the 
next.” 

There are two degrees of this recollection of 
God. The first degree is that of those saints 
whose thoughts are altogether absorbed in the 
contemplation of the majesty of God, and have 
no room in their hearts for anything else at all. 
This is the lower degree of recollection, for when 
a man’s heart is fixed, and his limbs are so con¬ 
trolled by his heart that they abstain from even 
lawful actions, he has no need of any device or 
safeguard against sins. It was to this kind of 


80 CONCERNING SELF-EXAMINATION 


recollection that the Prophet referred when he 
said, “ He who rises in the morning with only God 
in his mind, God shall look after him, both in 
this world and the next.” 

Some of these recollectors of God are so ab¬ 
sorbed in the thought of Him that, if people speak 
to them they do not hear, or walk in front of 
them they do not see, but stumble as if they 
collided with a wall. A certain saint relates as 
follows : “ One day I passed by a place where 
archers were having a shooting-match. Some 
way off a man was sitting alone. I approached 
him and attempted to engage him in talk, but 
he replied, “ The remembrance of God is better 
than talk.” I said, “ Are you not lonely ? ” 
“ No,” he answered, “ God and two angels are 
with me.” Pointing to the archers, T asked, 
“ Which of these has carried off the prize ? ” 
“ That one,’ was his reply, “ to whom God has 
allotted it.” Then I inquired, “Where does this 
road come from ? ” Upon which, lifting up his 
eyes to heaven, he rose and departed, saying, 
“ 0 Lord ! many of Thy creatures hold one back 
from the remembrance of Thee ! ” 

The saint Shibli one day went to see the Sufi 
Thaury ; he found him sitting so still in con¬ 
templation that not a hair of his body moved. 
He asked him, “ From whom didst thou learn to 
practise such fixity of contemplation ? ” Thaury 
answered, “ From a cat which I saw waiting at a 


THE RECOLLECTION OF THE SAINTS 81 


mouse-hole in an attitude of even greater fixity 
than this.” Ibn Hanif relates : “I was informed 
that in the city of Sur a sheikh and his disciple 
were always sitting lost in the recollection of God. 
I went there and found them both sitting with 
their faces turned in the direction of Mecca. I 
saluted them thrice, but they gave no answer. 
I said, ‘ I adjure you, by God, to return my saluta¬ 
tion.’ 1 The youth raised his head and replied, 
‘ O Ibn Hanif ! The world lasts but for a little 
time, and of this little time only a little is re¬ 
maining. Thou art hindering us by requiring us 
to return thy salutation.’ He then bent his 
head again and was silent. I was hungry and 
thirsty at the time, but the sight of those two 
quite carried me out of myself. I remained 
standing and prayed with them the afternoon 
and evening prayer. I then asked them for some 
spiritual advice. The younger replied, ‘ 0 Ibn 
Hanif, we are afflicted ; we do not possess that 
tongue which gives advice.’ I remained standing 
there three days and nights ; no word passed 
between us and none of us slept. Then I said 
within myself, ‘ I will adjure them by God to 
give me some counsel.’ The younger, divining 
my thoughts, again raised his head : ‘ Go and 
seek such a man, the visitation of whom will 
bring God to thy remembrance and infix His 

1 A Moslem is bound by the Koran to return the salutation 
of a Moslem. 




82 CONCERNING SELF-EXAMINATION 


fear in thy heart, and he will give thee that 
counsel which is conveyed by silence and not by 
speech.’ ” 

Such is the “ recollection ” of the saints which 
consists in being entirely absorbed in the con¬ 
templation of God. The second degree of the 
recollection of God is that of “ the companions 
of the right hand.” 1 These are aware that God 
knows all about them, and feel abashed in His 
presence, yet they are not carried out of them¬ 
selves by the thought of His majesty, but remain 
clearly conscious of themselves and of the world. 
Their condition is like that of a man who should 
be suddenly surprised in a state of nakedness and 
should hastily cover himself, while the other 
class resemble one who suddenly finds himself 
in the presence of the King and is confused and 
awestruck. The former subject every project 
which enters their minds to a thorough scrutiny, 
for at the Last Day three questions will be asked 
respecting every action : the first, “ Why did 
you do this ? ” the second, “ In what way did 
you do this ? ” the third, “ For what purpose 
did you do this ? ” The first will be asked 
because a man should act from divine and not 
merely Satanic or fleshly impulse. If this ques¬ 
tion is satisfactorily answered, the second will 
test in what way the action was done, wisely, or 
carelessly and negligently, and the third, whether 
1 Koranic phrase for the righteous. 


QUESTIONS AT THE RESURRECTION 83 


it was done simply to please God, or to gain 
the approval of men. If a man understands the 
meaning of these questions he will be very watch¬ 
ful over the state of his heart, and how he enter¬ 
tains thoughts which are likely to end in action. 
Rightly to discriminate among such thoughts is 
a very difficult and delicate matter, and he who 
is not capable of it should attach himself to 
some spiritual director, intercourse with whom 
may illuminate his heart. He should avoid with 
the utmost care the merely worldly learned man 
who is an agent of Satan. God said to David, 
“ 0 David ! ask no questions of the learned man 
who is intoxicated with love of the world, for he 
will rob thee of My love,” and the Prophet said: 
“ God loves that man who is keen to discern in 
doubtful things, and who suffers not his reason 
to be swayed by the assaults of passion.” Reason 
and discrimation are closely connected, and he in 
whom reason does not rule passion will not be 
keen to discriminate. 

Besides such cautious discrimination before 
acting a man should call himself strictly to ac¬ 
count for his past actions. Every evening he 
should examine his heart as to what he has done 
to see whether he has gained or lost in his spiritual 
capital. This is the more necessary as the heart 
is like a treacherous business-partner, always 
ready to cajole and deceive ; sometimes it pre¬ 
sents its own selfishness under the guise of 


84 CONCERNING SELF-EXAMINATION 


obedience to God, so that a man supposes he has 
gained, whereas he has really lost. 

A certain saint named Amiya, sixty years of 
age, counted up the days of his life. He found 
they amounted to twenty-one thousand six 
hundred days. He said to himself, “ Alas ! if 
I have committed one sin every day, how can I 
escape from the load of twenty-one thousand six 
hundred sins ? ” He uttered a cry and fell to 
the ground ; when they came to raise him they 
found him dead. But most people are heedless, 
and never think of calling themselves to account. 
If for every sin a man committed he placed a 
stone in an empty house, he would soon find that 
house full of stones ; if his recording angels 1 
demanded wages of him for writing down his 
sins, all his money would soon be gone. People 
count on their rosaries 2 with self-satisfaction the 
numbers of times they have recited the name of 
God, but they keep no rosary for reckoning the 
numberless idle words they speak. Therefore the 
Caliph Omar said, “ Weigh well your words and 
deeds before they be weighed at the Judgment.” 
He himself, before retiring for the night, used to 
strike his feet with a scourge and exclaim, “ What 
hast thou done to-day ? ” Abu Talha was once 
praying in a palm-grove, when the sight of a 

1 Two of these are attached to every man. 

9 The Muhammadan rosary consists of ninety-nine beads, 
each representing a name of God. 





INFLUENCE OF THE SAINTS 


85 


beautiful bird which flew out of it caused him to 
make a mistake in counting the number of pro¬ 
strations he had made. To punish himself for 
his inattention, he gave the palm-grove away. 
Such saints knew that their sensual nature was 
prone to go astray, therefore they kept a strict 
watch over it, and punished it for each trans¬ 
gression. 

If a man finds himself sluggish and averse 
from austerity and self-discipline he should con¬ 
sort with one who is a proficient in such practices 
so as to catch the contagion of his enthusiasm. 
One saint used to say, “ When I grow lukewarm 
in self-discipline, I look at Muhammad Ibn Wasi, 
and the sight of him rekindles my fervour for at 
least a week.” If one cannot find such a pattern 
of austerity close at hand, then it is a good thing 
to study the fives of the saints ; he should also 
exhort his soul somewhat in the following way : 
“ O my soul ! thou thinkest thyself intelligent 
and art angry at being called a fool, and yet what 
else art thou, after all ? Thou preparest cloth¬ 
ing to shield thee from the cold of winter, yet 
makest no preparation for the after-life. Thy 
state is like that of a man who in mid-winter 
should say, ‘ I will wear no war m clothing, but 
trust to God’s mercy to shield me from the cold. 
He forgets that God, at the sa me time that He 
created cold, showed man th e way to make 
clothing to protect himself from it, and provided 


86 CONCERNING SELF-EXAMINATION 


the material for that clothing. Remember this 
also, O soul, that thy punishment hereafter will 
not be because God is angry with thy disobedience ; 
and say not, 4 How can my sin hurt God ? ’ 
It is thy lusts themselves which will have kindled 
the flames of hell within thee ; just as, from eating 
unwholesome food, disease is caused in a man’s 
body, and not because his doctor is vexed with 
him for disobeying his orders. 

“ Shame upon thee, 0 soul, for thy over¬ 
weening love of the world ! If thou dost not 
believe in heaven or hell, at any rate thou be- 
lievest in death, which will snatch from thee all 
worldly delights and cause thee to feel the pangs 
of separation from them, which will be intenser 
just in proportion as thou hast attached thyself 
to them. Why art thou mad after the world ? 
If the whole of it, from East to West, were thine 
and worshipped thee, yet it would all, in a brief 
space, turn to dust along with thyself, and 
oblivion would blot out thy name, as those of 
ancient kings before thee. But now, seeing thou 
hast only a very small fragment of the world, 
and that a defiled one, wilt thou be so mad as to 
barter eternal joy for it, a precious jewel for a 
broken cup of earthenware, and make thyself 
the laughing-stock of all around thee ? ” 


CHAPTER VII 

MARRIAGE AS A HELP OR HINDRANCE TO 
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE 

Marriage plays such a large part in human 
affairs that it must necessarily be taken into 
account in treating of the religious life and be 
regarded in both its aspects of advantage and 
disadvantage. 

Seeing that God, as the Koran says, “ only 
created men and genii for the purpose of wor¬ 
shipping,” the first and obvious advantage of 
marriage is, that the worshippers of God may 
increase in number. Theologians have therefore 
laid it down as a maxim that it is better to be 
engaged in matrimonial duties than in superero¬ 
gatory devotions. 

Another advantage of marriage is that, as the 
Prophet said, the prayers of children profit their 
parents when the latter are dead, and children 
who die before their parents intercede for them 
on the Day of Judgment. “ When a child,” 
said the Prophet, “ is told to enter heaven, it 

87 


88 MARRIAGE AS A HELP OR HINDRANCE 


weeps and says, ‘ I will not enter in without my 
father and mother.’ ” Again, one day the Prophet 
seized hold of a man’s sleeves and drew him 
violently towards himself, saying, “ Even thus 
shall children draw their parents into heaven.” 
He added, “ Children crowd together at the 
gate of heaven and cry out for their fathers 
and mothers, till those of the latter who are 
outside are told to enter in and join their 
children.” 

It is related of a certain celibate saint that he 
once dreamt that the Judgment Day had come. 
The sun had approached close to the earth and 
people were perishing of thirst; a crowd of boys 
were moving about giving them water out of 
gold and silver vessels. But when the saint asked 
for water he was repulsed, and one of the boys 
said to him, “ Not one of us here is your son.” 
As soon as the saint awoke he made preparations 
to marry. 

Another advantage of marriage is that to sit 
with and be friendly to one’s wife is a relaxation 
for the mind after being occupied in religious 
duties, and after such relaxation one may return 
to one’s devotions with renewed zest. Thus the 
Prophet himself, when he found the weight of his 
revelations press too heavily upon him touched 
his wife Ayesha and said, “ Speak to me, O 
Ayesha, speak to me ! ” This he did that, from 
that familiar human touch, he might receive 


ADVANTAGES OF MARRIAGE 89 


strength to support fresh revelations. For a 
similar reason he used to bid the Muezzin Bilal 
give the call to prayer, and sometimes he used to 
smell sweet perfumes. It is a well-known saying 
of his, “ I have loved three things in the world : 
perfumes, and women,and refreshment in prayer.” 
On one occasion Omar asked the prophet what 
were the things specially to be sought in the 
world. He answered, “ A tongue occupied in the 
remembrance of God, a grateful heart, and a 
believing wife.” 

A further advantage of marriage is that there 
should be some one to take care of the house, 
cook the food, wash the dishes, and sweep the 
floor, etc. If a man is busy in such work he 
cannot acquire learning, or carry on his business, 
or engage in his devotions properly. For this 
reason Abu Suleiman has said, “ A good wife is 
not a blessing of this world merely, but of the 
next, because she provides a man leisure in which 
to think of the next world”; and one of the 
Caliph Omar’s sayings is, “ After faith, no 
blessing is equal to a good wife.” 

Marriage has, moreover, this good in it, that to 
be patient with feminine peculiarities, to provide 
the necessaries which wives require, and to keep 
them in the path of the law, is a very important 
part of religion. The Prophet said, “ To give 
one’s wife the money she requires is more im¬ 
portant than to give alms.” Once, when Ibn 


90 MARRIAGE AS A HELP OR HINDRANCE 


Mubarak was engaged in a campaign against the 
infidels, one of his companions asked him, “ Is 
any work more meritorious than religious war ? ” 
“ Yes,” he replied : “ to feed and clothe one’s 
wife and children properly.” The celebrated 
saint Bishr Hafi said, “It is better that a man 
should work for wife and children than merely 
for himself.” In the Traditions it has been 
recorded that some sins can only be atoned 
for by enduring trouble for the sake of one’s 
family. 

Concerning a certain saint it is related that 
his wife died and he would not marry again, 
though people urged him, saying it was easier to 
concentrate his thoughts in solitude. One night 
he saw in a dream the door of heaven opened 
and numbers of angels descending. They came 
near and looked upon him, and one said, 
“ Is this that selfish wretch ? ” and his fellow 
answered, “ Yes, this is he.” The saint was too 
alarmed to ask whom they meant, but presently 
a boy passed and he asked him. “It is you they 
are speaking about,” replied the boy ; “ only up 
to a week ago your good works were being re¬ 
corded in heaven along with those of other saints, 
but now they have erased your name from the 
roll.” Greatly disturbed in mind as soon as he 
awoke, he hastened to be married. From all the 
above considerations it will be seen that marriage 
is desirable. 


DRAWBACKS TO MARRIAGE 91 


We come now to treat of the drawbacks to 
marriage. One of these is that there is a danger, 
especially in the present time, that a man should 
gain a livelihood by unlawful means in order to 
support his family, and no amount of good works 
can compensate for this. The Prophet said that 
at the resurrection a certain man with a whole 
mountain load of good works will be brought 
forward and stationed near the Balance. 1 He 
will then be asked, “ ‘ By what means did you 
support your family ? ’ He will not be able to 
give a satisfactory answer, and all his good works 
will be cancelled, and proclamation will be made 
concerning him, ‘ This is the man whose family 
have devoured all his good deeds ! ’ ” 

Another drawback to marriage is this, that to 
treat one’s family kindly and patiently and to 
bring their affairs to a satisfactory issue can only 
be done by those who have a good disposition. 
There is great danger lest a man should treat his 
family harshly, or neglect them, and so bring sin 
upon himself. The Prophet said: “ He who 
deserts his wife and children is like a runaway 
slave ; till he returns to them none of his fasts 
or prayers will be accepted by God.” In brief, 
man has a lower nature, and, till he can control 
his own lower nature, he had better not assume 
the responsibility of controlling another’s. Some 

1 The Mizan, or Balance for weighing good and evil deeds, 
which will be erected on the Judgment Day. 


92 MARRIAGE AS A HELP OR HINDRANCE 


one asked the saint Bishr Hah why he did not 
marry. “ I am afraid,” he replied, “ of that 
verse in the Koran, ‘ The rights of women over 
men are precisely the same as the rights of men 
over women.’ ” 

A third disadvantage of marriage is that the 
cares of a family often prevent a man from con¬ 
centrating his thoughts on God and on a future 
life, and may, unless he is careful, lead to his 
destruction, for God has said, “ Let not your 
wives and children turn you away from remem¬ 
bering God.” He who thinks he can concen¬ 
trate himself better on his religious duties by 
not marrying had better remain single, and he 
who fears falling into sin if he does not marry, 
had better do so. 

We now come to the qualities which should be 
sought in a wife. The most important of all is 
chastity. If a wife is unchaste, and her husband 
keeps silent, he gets a bad name and is hindered 
in his religious life; if he speaks, his life be¬ 
comes embittered ; and if he divorces her, he may 
feel the pang of separation. A wife who is 
beautiful but of evil character is a great calamity ; 
such a one had better be divorced. The Prophet 
said, “ He who seeks a wife for the sake of her 
beauty or wealth will lose both.” 

The second desirable quality in a wife is a 
good disposition. An ill-tempered or ungrateful 
or loquacious or imperious wife makes existence 


THE QUALITY OF WOMEN 


93 


unbearable, and is a great hindrance to leading 
a devout life. 

The third quality to be sought is beauty, as 
this calls forth love and affection. Therefore 
one should see a woman before marrying her. 
The Prophet said, “ The women of such a tribe 
have all a defect in their eyes ; he who wishes to 
marry one should see her first.” The wise have 
said that he who marries a wife without seeing 
her is sure to repent it afterwards. It is true 
that one should not marry solely for the sake of 
beauty, but this does not mean that beauty 
should be reckoned of no account at all. 

The fourth desirable point is that the sum 
paid by the husband as the wife’s marriage-portion 
should be moderate. The Prophet said, “ She 
is the best kind of wife whose marriage-portion 
is small, and whose beauty is great.” He him¬ 
self settled the marriage-portion of some women 
at ten dirhems, 1 and his own daughters’ marriage- 
portions were not more than four hundred 
dirhems. 

Fifthly, she should not be barren. “ A piece 
of old matting lying in the corner of the house 
is better than a barren wife.” 2 

Other qualities in a desirable wife are these : 
she should be of a good stock, not married pre¬ 
viously, and not too nearly related to her husband. 

1 The dirhem = about sixpence. 

2 Saying of Muhammad. 


94 MARRIAGE AS A HELP OR HINDRANCE 


Regarding the Observances of Marriage 

Marriage is a religious institution, and should 
be treated in a religious way, otherwise the mating 
of men and women is no better than the mating 
of animals. The Law enjoins that there should 
be a feast on the occasion of every marriage. 
When Abdurrahman Ibn Auf married, the Prophet 
said to him, “ Make a marriage-feast, even if you 
have only a goat to make it with.” When the 
Prophet himself celebrated his marriage with 
Safia he made a marriage-feast of dates and 
barley. It is also right that marriage should be 
accompanied with the beating of drums and of 
music, for man is the crown of creation. 

Secondly, a man should remain on good terms 
with his wife. This does not mean that he 
should never cause her pain, but that he should 
bear any annoyance she causes him, whether by 
her unreasonableness or ingratitude, patiently. 
Woman is created weak, and requiring conceal¬ 
ment ; she should therefore be borne with 
patiently, and kept secluded. The Prophet said, 
“ He who bears the ill-humour of his wife pati¬ 
ently will earn as much merit as Job did by the 
patient endurance of his trials.” On his death¬ 
bed also he was heard to say, “ Continue in 
prayer and treat your wives well, for they are 
your prisoners.” He himself used to bear pati¬ 
ently the tempers of his wives. One day Omar’s 


THE TREATMENT OF WIVES 95 


wife was angry and scolded him. He said to 
her, “ Thou evil-tongued one, dost thou answer 
me back ? ” She replied, “ Yes ! the Lord of 
the prophets is better than thou, and his wives 
answer him back.” He replied, “ Alas for Hafsa 
[Omar’s daughter and Muhammad’s wife] if she 
does not humble herself ” ; and when he met her 
he said, “ Take care not to answer the Prophet 
back.” The Prophet also said, “ The best of 
you is he who is best to his own family, as I am 
the best to mine.” 

Thirdly, a man should condescend to his wife’s 
recreations and amusements, and not attempt to 
check them. The Prophet himself actually on 
one occasion ran races with his young wife 
Ayesha. The first time he beat her, and the 
second time she beat him. Another time he held 
her up in his arms that she might look at some 
performing negroes. In fact, it would be difficult 
to find any one who was so kind to his wives as 
the Prophet was to his. Wise men have said, 
“ A man should come home smiling and eat what 
he finds and not ask for anything he does not 
find.” However, he should not be over-indul¬ 
gent, lest his wife lose her respect for him. If he 
sees anything plainly wrong on her part, he 
should not ignore but rebuke it, or he will become 
a laughing-stock. In the Koran it is written, 
“ Men should have the upper hand over women,” 
and the Prophet said, “ Woe to the man who is 


96 MARRIAGE AS A HELP OR HINDRANCE 


the servant of his wife,” for she should be his 
servant. Wise men have said, “ Consult women, 
and act the contrary to what they advise.” In 
truth there is something perverse in women, and 
if they are allowed even a little licence, they get 
out of control altogether, and it is difficult to 
reduce them to order again. In dealing with 
them one should endeavour to use a mixture of 
severity and tenderness, with a greater propor¬ 
tion of the latter. The Prophet said, “Woman 
was formed of a crooked rib ; if you try to bend 
her, you will break her ; if you leave her alone, 
she will grow more and more crooked ; therefore 
treat her tenderly.” 

As regards propriety, one cannot be too careful 
not to let one’s wife look at or be looked at by a 
stranger, for the beginning of all mischief is in 
the eye. As far as possible, she should not be 
allowed out of the house, nor to go on the roof, 
nor to stand at the door. Care should be taken, 
however, not to be unreasonably jealous and 
strict. The Prophet one day asked his daughter 
Fatima, “ What is the best thing for women ? ” 
She answered, “ They should not look on 
strangers, nor strangers on them.” The Prophet 
was pleased at this remark, and embraced her, 
saying, “ Verily, thou art a piece of my liver ! ” 
The Commander of the Faithful, Omar, said, 
“ Don’t give women fine clothes, for as soon as 
they have them they will want to go out of the 


A WIFE’S MAINTENANCE 


97 


house.” In the time of the Prophet women had 
permission to go to the mosques and stand in the 
last row of the worshippers ; but this was sub¬ 
sequently forbidden. 

A man should keep his wife properly supplied 
with money, and not stint her. To give a wife 
her proper maintenance is more meritorious than 
to give alms. The Prophet said, “ Suppose a 
man spends one dinar 1 in religious war, another 
in ransoming a slave, a third in charity, and 
gives the fourth to his wife, the giving of this 
last surpasses in merit all the others put together.” 

A man should not eat anything especially good 
by himself, or, if he has eaten it, he should keep 
silent about it and not praise it before his wife. 
It is better for husband and wife to eat together, 
if a guest be not present, for the Prophet said, 
“ When they do so, God sends His blessing upon 
them, and the angels pray for them.” The most 
important point to see to is that the supplies 
given to one’s wife are acquired by lawful 
means. 

If a man’s wife be rebellious and disobedient, 
he should at first admonish her gently ; if this 
is not sufficient he should sleep in a separate 
chamber for three nights. Should this also fail 
he may strike her, but not on the mouth, nor 
with such force as to wound her. Should she be 
remiss in her religious duties, he should manifest 

1 About ten shillings. 




98 MARRIAGE AS A HELP OR HINDRANCE 


his displeasure to her for an entire month, as the 
Prophet did on one occasion to all his wives. 

The greatest care should be taken to avoid 
divorce, for, though divorce is permitted, yet God 
disapproves of it, because the very utterance of 
the word “ divorce ” causes a woman pain, and 
how can it be right to pain any one ? When 
divorce is absolutely necessary, the formula for 
it should not be repeated thrice all at once, but 
on three different occasions. 1 A woman should 
be divorced kindly, not through anger and con¬ 
tempt, and not without a reason. After divorce 
a man should give his former wife a present, and 
not tell others that she has been divorced for 
such and such a fault. Of a certain man who 
was instituting divorce-proceedings against his 
wife it is related that people asked him, “ Why 
are you divorcing her ? 55 He answered, “I do 
not reveal my wife’s secrets.” When he had 
actually divorced her, he was asked again, and 
said, “ She is a stranger to me now ; I have 
nothing to do with her private affairs.” 

Hitherto we have treated of the rights of the 
wife over her husband, but the rights of the 
husband over the wife are even more binding. 
The Prophet said, “If it were right to worship 
any one except God, it would be right for wives 
to worship their husbands.” A wife should not 

1 The formula for divorce has to be repeated thrice to make 
it complete. 


THE RIGHTS OF HUSBANDS 99 


boast of her beauty before her husband, she 
should not requite his kindness with ingratitude, 
she should not say to him, “ Why have you 
treated me thus and thus ? ” The Prophet said, 
“ I looked into hell and saw many women there ; 
I asked the reason, and received this reply, 
4 Because they abused their husbands and were 
ungrateful to them.’ 55 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE LOVE OF GOD 

The love of God is the highest of all topics, and 
is the final aim to which we have been tending 
hitherto. We have spoken of spiritual dangers as 
they hinder the love of God in a man’s heart, and 
we have spoken of various good qualities as being 
the necessary preliminaries to it. Human per¬ 
fection resides in this, that the love of God should 
conquer a man’s heart and possess it wholly, and 
even if it does not possess it wholly it should 
predominate in the heart over the love of all 
other things. Nevertheless, rightly to under¬ 
stand the love of God is so difficult a matter that 
one sect of theologians have altogether denied 
that man can love a Being who is not of his own 
species, and they have defined the love of God 
as consisting merely in obedience. Those who 
hold such views do not know what real religion is. 

All Moslems are agreed that the love of God is 
a duty. God says concerning the believers, “ He 
loves them and they love Him,” 1 and the Prophet 

1 Koran. 

100 


DEFINITION OF LOVE 


101 


said, “ Till a man loves God and His Prophet 
more than anything else he has not the right 
faith.” When the angel of death came to take 
the soul of Abraham the latter said, “ Have you 
ever seen a friend take his friend’s life ? ” God 
answered him, “ Have you ever seen a friend 
unwilling to see his friend ? ” Then Abraham 
said, “ 0 Azrael ! take my soul ! ” The following 
prayer was taught by the Prophet to his com¬ 
panions, “ 0 God, grant me to love Thee and to 
love those who love Thee, and whatsoever brings 
me nearer to Thy love, and make Thy love more 
precious to me than cold water to the thirsty.” 
Hassan Basri used to say, “ He who knows God 
loves Him, and he who knows the world hates it.” 

We come now to treat of love in its essential 
nature. Love may be defined as an inclination 
to that which is pleasant. This is apparent in 
the case of the five senses, each of which may be 
said to love that which gives it delight; thus the 
eye loves beautiful forms, the ear music, etc. 
This is a kind of love we share with the animals. 
But there is a sixth sense, or faculty of perception, 
implanted in the heart, which animals do not 
possess, through which we become aware of 
spiritual beauty and excellence. Thus, a man 
who is only acquainted with sensuous delights 
cannot understand what the Prophet meant 
when he said he loved prayer more than perfumes 
or women, though the last two were also pleasant 


102 


THE LOVE OE GOD 


to him. But he whose inner eye is opened to 
behold the beauty and perfection of God will 
despise all outward sights in comparison, how T - 
ever fair they may be. 

The former kind of man will say that beauty 
resides in red-and-white complexions, well-pro¬ 
portioned limbs, and so forth, but he will be 
blind to moral beauty, such as men refer to when 
they speak of such and such a man as possessing 
a “beautiful” character. But those possessed 
of inner perception find it quite possible to love 
the departed great, such as the Caliphs Omar and 
Abu Bakr, on account of their noble qualities, 
though their bodies have long been mingled wdth 
the dust. Such love is directed not towards any 
outward form, but towards the inner character. 
Even when we wash to excite love in a child to¬ 
wards any one, we do not describe their outward 
beauty of form, etc., but their inner excellencies. 

When we apply this principle to the love of 
God we shall find that He alone is really worthy of 
our love, and that, if any one loves Him not, it is 
because he does not know Him. Whatever we 
love in any one we love because it is a reflection of 
Him. It is for this reason that we love Muham¬ 
mad, because he is the Prophet and the Beloved 
of God, and the love of learned and pious men 
is really the love of God. We shall see this more 
clearly if we consider what are the causes which 
excite love. 


THE GIFT OF GOD 


103 


The first cause is this, that man loves himself 
and the perfection of his own nature. This leads 
him directly to the love of God, for man’s very 
existence and man’s attributes are nothing else 
but the gift of God, but for whose grace and 
kindness man would never have emerged from 
behind the curtain of non-existence into the 
visible world. Man’s preservation and eventual 
attainment to perfection are also entirely de¬ 
pendent upon the grace of God. It would 
indeed be a wonder, if one should take refuge 
from the heat of the sun under the shadow of a 
tree and not be grateful to the tree, without which 
there would be no shadow at all. Precisely in the 
same way, were it not for God, man would have 
no existence nor attributes at all; wherefore, then, 
should he not love God, unless he be ignorant of 
Him ? Doubtless fools cannot love Him, for the 
love of Him springs directly from the knowledge of 
Him, and whence should a fool have knowledge ? 

The second cause of this love is that man loves 
his benefactor, and in truth his only Benefactor 
is God, for whatever kindness he receives from 
any fellow-creature is due to the immediate in¬ 
stigation of God. Whatever motive may have 
prompted the kindness he receives from another, 
whether the desire to gain religious merit or a 
good name, God is the Agent who set that motive 
to work. 

The third cause is the love that is aroused by 


104 


THE LOVE OF GOD 


contemplation of the attributes of God, His 
power and wisdom, of which human power and 
wisdom are but the feeblest reflections. This 
love is akin to that we feel to the great and good 
men of the past, such as the Imam Malik and the 
Imam Shaft, 1 though we never expect to receive 
any personal benefits from them, and is therefore 
a more disinterested kind of love. God said to 
the prophet David, “ That servant is dearest to 
Me who does not seek Me from fear of punishment 
or hope of reward, but to pay the debt due to 
My Deity.” And in the Psalms it is written, 
“ Who is a greater transgressor than he who 
worships Me from fear of hell or hope of heaven ? 
If I had created neither, should I not then have 
deserved to be worshipped ? ” 

The fourth cause of this love is the affinity 
between man and God, wffiich is referred to in the 
saying of the Prophet, “ Verily God created man 
in His own likeness.” Furthermore, God has 
said, “ My servant seeks proximity to Me, that 
I may make him My friend, and when I have 
made him My friend I become his ear, his eye, 
his tongue.” Again, God said to Moses, “ I was 
sick, and thou didst not visit Me ? ” Moses 
replied, “ 0 God ! Thou art Lord of heaven and 
earth: how couldest Thou be sick ? ” God 
said, “ A certain servant of Mine was sick ; hadst 
thou visited him, thou wouldst have visited Me.” 

1 Founders of the sects which bear their names. 


AFFINITY BETWEEN GOD AND MAN 105 


This is a somewhat dangerous topic to dwell 
upon, as it is beyond the understanding of common 
people, and even intelligent men have stumbled 
in treating of it, and come to believe in incarna¬ 
tion and union with God. Still, the affinity 
which does exist between man and God disposes 
of the objection of those theologians mentioned 
above, who maintain that man cannot love a 
Being who is not of his own species. However 
great the distance between them, man can love 
God because of the affinity indicated in the 
saying, “ God created man in His own likeness.” 

The Vision of God 

All Moslems profess to believe that the Vision 
of God is the summit of human felicity, because 
it is so stated in the Law; but with many this is 
a mere lip-profession which arouses no emotion 
in their hearts. This is quite natural, for how 
can a man long for a thing of which he has no 
knowledge ? We will endeavour to show briefly 
why the Vision of God is the greatest happiness 
to which a man can attain. 

In the first place, every one of man’s faculties 
has its appropriate function which it delights to 
fulfil. This holds good of them all, from the 
lowest bodily appetite to the highest form of 
intellectual apprehension. But even a com¬ 
paratively low form of mental exertion affords 


106 


THE LOVE OF GOD 


greater pleasure than the satisfaction of bodily 
appetites. Thus, if a man happens to be absorbed 
in a game of chess, he will not come to his meal, 
though repeatedly summoned. And the higher 
the subject-matter of our knowledge, the greater 
is our delight in it ; for instance, we would take 
more pleasure in knowing the secrets of a king 
than the secrets of a vizier. Seeing, then, that 
God is the highest possible object of knowledge, 
the knowledge of Him must afford more delight 
than any other. He who knows God, even in 
this world, dwells, as it were, in a paradise, “ the 
breadth of which is as the breadth of the heavens 
and the earth,” 1 a paradise the fruits of which 
no envy can prevent him plucking, and the extent 
of which is not narrowed by the multitude of 
those who occupy it. 

But the delight of knowledge still falls short 
of the delight of vision, just as our pleasure in 
thinking of those we love is much less than the 
pleasure afforded by the actual sight of them. 
Our imprisonment in bodies of clay and water, 
and entanglement in the things of sense constitute 
a veil which hides the Vision of God from us, 
although it does not prevent our attaining to 
some knowledge of Him. For this reason God 
said to Moses on Mount Sinai, “ Thou shalt not 
see Me.” 2 

The truth of the matter is this, that, just as the 
1 Koran. 2 Ibid. 


IN MANY MIRRORS 


107 


seed of man becomes a man, and a buried date- 
stone becomes a palm-tree, so the knowledge of 
God acquired on earth will in the next world 
change into the Vision of God, and he who has 
never learnt the knowledge will never have the 
Vision. This Vision will not be shared alike by 
all who know, but their discernment of it will 
vary exactly as their knowledge. God is one, 
but He will be seen in many different ways, just 
as one object is reflected in different ways by 
different mirrors, some showing it straight, and 
some distorted, some clearly and some dimly. 
A mirror may be so crooked as to make even a 
beautiful form appear misshapen, and a man 
may carry into the next world a heart so dark 
and distorted that the sight which will be a 
source of peace and joy to others will be to him 
a source of misery. He, in whose heart the love 
of God has prevailed over all else, will derive 
more joy from this vision than he in whose heart 
it has not so prevailed ; just as in the case of 
two men with equally powerful eyesight, gazing 
on a beautiful face, he who already loves the 
possessor of that face will rejoice in beholding it 
more than he who does not. For perfect happi¬ 
ness mere knowledge is not enough, unaccom¬ 
panied by love, and the love of God cannot take 
possession of a man’s heart till it be purified 
from love of the world, which purification can 
only be effected by abstinence and austerity. 


108 


THE LOVE OF GOD 


While lie is in this world a man’s condition with 
regard to the Vision of God is like that of a lover 
who should see his Beloved’s face in the twilight, 
while his clothes are infested with hornets and 
scorpions, which continually torment him. But 
should the sun arise and reveal his Beloved’s 
face in all its beauty, and the noxious vermin 
leave off molesting him, then the lover’s joy will 
be like that of God’s servant, who, released from 
the twilight and the tormenting trials of this 
world, beholds Him without a veil. Abu 
Suleiman said, 44 He who is busy with himself 
now will be busy with himself then, and he who 
is occupied with God now will be occupied v r ith 
Him then.” 

Yahya Ibn Muaz relates, “I watched Bayazid. 
Bistami at prayer through one entire night. 
When he had finished he stood up and said, 
4 0 Lord ! some of Thy servants have asked and 
obtained of Thee the power to perform miracles, 
to walk on the sea, and to fly in the air, but this 
I do not ask ; some have asked and obtained 
treasures, but these I do not ask.’ Then he 
turned, and, seeing me, said, 4 Are you there, 
Yahya ? ’ I replied, 4 Yes.’ He asked, 4 Since 
when ? ’ I answered, 4 For a long time.’ I then 
asked him to reveal to me some of his spiritual 
experiences. 4 1 will reveal,’ he answered, 4 what 
is lawful to tell you. The Almighty showed me 
His kingdom, from its loftiest to its lowest; He 


TREASURES SURPASSING 


109 


raised me above the throne and the seat and all 
the seven heavens. Then He said, 44 Ask of me 
whatsoever thing thon desirest.” I answered, 
44 Lord ! I wish for nothing beside Thee.” 

44 Verily,” He said, 44 thou art My servant.” 5 ” 
On another occasion Bayazid said, 44 Were God 
to offer thee the intimacy with Himself of Abra¬ 
ham, the power in prayer of Moses, the spirituality 
of Jesus, yet keep thy face directed to Him only, 
for He has treasures surpassing even these.” 
One day a friend said to him, 44 For thirty years 
I have fasted by day and prayed by night and 
have found none of that spiritual joy of which 
thou speakest.” Bayazid answered, 44 If you 
fasted and prayed for three hundred years, you 
would never find it.” 44 How is that ? ” asked 
the other. 44 Because,” said Bayazid, 44 your 
selfishness is acting as a veil between you and 
God.” 44 Tell me, then, the cure.” 44 It is a cure 
which you cannot carry out.” However, as his 
friend pressed him to reveal it, Bayazid said, 
44 Go to the nearest barber and have your beard 
shaved ; strip yourself of your clothes, with the 
exception of a girdle round your loins. Take a 
horse’s nose-bag full of walnuts, hang it round 
your neck, go into the bazaar and cry out, 4 Any 
boy who gives me a slap on the nape of my neck 
shall have a walnut.’ Then, in this manner, go 
where the Cadi and the doctors of the law are 
sitting.” 44 Bless my soul! ” said his friend, 


110 


THE LOVE OF GOD 


“ I really can’t do that; do suggest some other 
remedy.” “ This is the indispensable preliminary 
to a cure,” answered Bayazid, “ but, as I told 
you, you are incurable.” 

The reason Bayazid indicated this method of 
cure for want of relish in devotion was that his 
friend was an ambitious seeker after place and 
honour. Ambition and pride are diseases which 
can only be cured in some such way. God said 
unto Jesus, “ O Jesus ! when I see in My servants 5 
hearts pure love for Myself unmixed with any 
selfish desire concerning this world or the next, 
I act as guardian over that love.” Again, when 
people asked Jesus “ What is the highest work 
of all ? ” he answered, “ To love God and to be 
resigned to His will.” The saint Rabia was once 
asked whether she loved the Prophet : “ The 

love of the Creator,” she said, “ has prevented 
my loving the creature.” Ibrahim Ben Adham, 
in his prayers, said, “ 0 God ! In my eyes heaven 
itself is less than a gnat in comparison with the 
love of Thee and the joy of Thy remembrance 
which Thou hast granted me.” 

He who supposes that it is possible to enjoy 
happiness in the next world apart from the love 
of God is far gone in error, for the very essence 
of the future life is to arrive at God as at an 
Object of desire long aimed at and attained 
through countless obstacles. This enjoyment of 
God is happiness. But if he had no delight in 


STORY OF THE SCAVENGER 111 


God before, he will not delight in Him then, and 
if his joy in God was but slight before it will be 
but slight then. In brief, our future happiness 
will be in strict proportion to the degree in which 
we have loved God here. 

But (and may God preserve us from such a 
doom !) if in a man’s heart there has been growing 
up a love of what is opposed to God, the conditions 
of the next life will be altogether alien to him,, 
and that which will cause joy to others will to 
him cause misery. 

This may be illustrated by the following 
anecdote : A certain scavenger went into the 
perfume-sellers’ bazaar, and, smelling the sweet 
scents, fell down unconscious. People came 
round him and sprinkled rose-water upon him 
and held musk to his nose, but he only became 
worse. At last one came who had been a 
scavenger himself ; he held a little filth under 
the man’s nose and he revived instantly, ex¬ 
claiming, with a sigh of satisfaction, “ Ah ! this 
is perfume indeed ! ” Thus in the next life a 
worldling will no longer find the filthy lucre and 
the filthy pleasures of the world ; the spiritual 
joys of that world will be altogether alien to him 
and but increase his wretchedness. For the next 
world is a world of Spirit and of the manifestation 
of the Beauty of God ; happy is that man who 
has aimed at and acquired affinity with it. All- 
austerities, devotions, studies have the acquire- 


112 


THE LOVE OF GOD 


ment of that affinity for their aim, and that 
affinity is love. This is the meaning of that 
saying of the Koran, “ He who has purified his 
soul is happy.” Sins and lusts directly oppose 
the attainment of this affinity ; therefore the 
Koran goes on to say, “ And he who has cor¬ 
rupted his soul is miserable.” 1 Those who are 
gifted with spiritual insight have really grasped 
this truth as a fact of experience, and not a merely 
traditional maxim. Their clear perception of it 
leads them to the conviction that he by whom it 
was spoken was a prophet indeed, just as a man 
who has studied medicine knows when he is 
listening to a physician. This is a kind of cer¬ 
tainty which requires no support from miracles 
such as the conversion of a rod into a snake,, the 
credit of which may be shaken by apparently 
equally extraordinary miracles performed by 
magicians. 

The Signs of the Love of God 

Many claim to love God, but each should ex¬ 
amine himself as to the genuineness of the love 
which he professes. The first test is this : he 
should not dislike the thought of death, for no 
friend shrinks from going to see a friend. The 
Prophet said, “ Whoever wishes to see God, God 
wishes to see him.” It is true a sincere lover of 

1 Koran, chap. 91. 


TESTS OF SINCERITY 


113 


God may shrink from the thought of death coming 
before he has finished his preparation for the 
next world, but if he is sincere, he will be diligent 
in making such preparation. 

The second test of sincerity is that a man 
should be willing to sacrifice his will to God’s, 
should cleave to what brings him nearer to God, 
and should shun what places him at a distance 
from God. The fact of a man’s sinning is no 
proof that he does not love God at all, but it 
proves that he does not love Him with his whole 
heart. The saint Fudhail said to a certain man, 
“ If any one asks you whether you love God, 
keep silent; for if you say, 4 1 do not love Him,’ 
you are an infidel; and if you say, ‘ I do,’ your 
deeds contradict you.” 

The third test is that the remembrance of God 
should always remain fresh in a man’s heart 
without effort, for what a man loves he constantly 
remembers, and if his love is perfect he never 
forgets it. It is possible, however, that, while 
the love of God does not take the first place in 
a man’s heart, the love of the love of God may, 
for love is one thing and the love of love 
another. 

The fourth test is, that he will love the Koran, 
which is the Word of God, and Muhammad, who 
is the Prophet of God ; if his love is really strong, 
he will love all men, for all are God’s servants, 
nay, his love will embrace the whole creation, for 



114 


THE LOVE OF GOD 


he who loves any one loves the works he composes 
and his handwriting. 

The fifth test is, he will be covetous of retire¬ 
ment and privacy for purposes of devotion ; he 
will long for the approach of night, so that he 
may hold intercourse with his Friend without 
let or hindrance. If he prefers conversation by 
day and sleep at night to such retirement, then 
his love is imperfect. God said to David, “ Be 
not too intimate with men ; for two kinds of 
persons are excluded from My presence: those 
who are earnest in seeking reward and slack when 
they obtain it, and those who prefer their own 
thoughts to the remembrance of Me. The sign 
of My displeasure is, that I leave such to them¬ 
selves.” 

In truth, if the love of God really take possession 
of the heart all other love is excluded. One of 
the children of Israel was in the habit of praying 
at night, but, observing that a bird sang in a 
certain tree very sweetly, he began to pray under 
that tree, in order to have the pleasure of listening 
to the bird. God told David to go and say to 
him, “ Thou hast mingled the love of a melodious 
bird with the love of Me ; thy rank among the 
saints is lowered.” On the other hand, some 
have loved God with such intensity that, while 
they were engaged in devotion, their houses have 
caught fire and they have not noticed it. 

A sixth test is that worship becomes easy. A 


WHO ARE THY LOVERS ? 


115 


certain saint said, “ During one space of thirty 
years I performed my night-devotions with great 
difficulty, but during a second space of thirty 
years they became a delight.” When love to 
God is complete no joy is equal to the joy of 
worship. 

The seventh test is that lovers of God will love 
those who obey Him and hate the infidels and 
the disobedient, as the Koran says: “ They are 
strenuous against the unbelievers and merciful 
to each other.” The Prophet once asked God 
and said, “ 0 Lord ! who are Thy lovers ? ” 
and the answer came, “ Those who cleave to Me 
as a child to its mother, take refuge in the re¬ 
membrance of Me as a bird seeks the shelter of 
its nest, and are as angry at the sight of sin as an 
angry lion who fears nothing.” 


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