Mishkat al-anwar (Niche of Lights): We are two spirits dwelling in one body.

[Guest guest]

shriadishakti , jagbir singh

<adishakti_org> wrote:

>

> A few months ago i asked my ten-year-old daughter Lalita what that

> immensely brilliant Light above the Adi Shakti in her Sahasrara

> is. She replied " God! "

>

> i remained silent for a long time to absorb the immensity of that

> single word answer.

>

>

 

 

" In his ecstasy, al-Hallaj had cried aloud: " I am the Truth! "

According to the Gospels, Jesus had made the same claim, when he had

said that he was the Way, the Truth and the Life. The Koran

repeatedly condemned the Christian belief in God's Incarnation in

Christ as blasphemous, so it was not surprising that Muslims were

horrified by al-Hallaj's ecstatic cry. Al-Haqq (the Truth) was

one of the names of God, and it was idolatry for any mere mortal to

claim this title for himself. Al-Hallaj had been expressing his

sense of a union with God that was so close that it felt like

identity. As he said in one of his poems:

 

I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I:

We are two spirits dwelling in one body.

If thou seest me, thou seest Him, and if thou seest Him, thou seest

us both.

 

It was a daring expression of that annihilation of self and union

with God that his master al-Junayd had called fina. Al-Hallaj

refused to recant when accused of blasphemy and died a saintly

death....

 

Al-Hallaj's cry anaal-Haqq: " I am the Truth! " shows that God of

the mystics is not an objective reality but profoundly subjective.

Later al-Ghazzali argued that he had not been blasphemous but only

unwise in proclaiming an esoteric truth that could be misleading to

the uninitiated. Because there is no reality but al-Lah — as

Shahadah maintains — all men are essentially divine. The Koran

taught that God had created Adam in his own image so that he could

contemplate himself as in a mirror. That is why he ordered the

angels to bow down and worship the first man. The mistake of the

Christians had been to assume that one man had contained the whole

incarnation of the divine, Sufis would argue. A mystic who had

regained his original vision of God had rediscovered the divine

image within himself, as it had happened on the day of creation....

 

The story of al-Hallaj shows the deep antagonism that can exist

between the mystic and the religious establishment who have

different notions of God and revelation. For the mystic the

revelation is an event that happens within his own soul, while for

the more conventional people like some of the elema it is an event

that is firmly fixed in the past. "

 

Karen Armstrong, A History of God,

Ballantine Books, 1993, p. 228-29.

 

 

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" The Mishkat al-Anwar, an examination of the Light-Verse in the

Koran and the symbolism of the Veils-Tradition, was written in the

eleventh century by al-Ghazzali, a man of formidable intellect

working in the Muslim tradition, who understood that spiritual

realization entailed making a jump from the limitations of the mind

and sensory experience. Abdullah discusses the inner teaching of the

Mishkat al-Anwar, explaining truths which are as relevant to twenty-

first century man as to seekers a thousand years ago. "

(Review)

 

Abdullah Dougan,

The Glimpse: The inner teaching of Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali's

Mishkat al-Anwar (The Niche for Lights);

 

 

--------------

 

" The Niche of Lights (Mishkat al-anwar) is an accessible and

richly rewarding text by one of the most fascinating and important

thinkers in the history of Islam.

 

Born in the eastern Iranian city of Tus in 450 A.H. (1058 C.E.), Abu

Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali also died there, relatively young, in 505

A.H. (1111 C.E.). Between those two dates, however, he established

himself as a pivotal figure throughout the Islamic world. By his

early thirties he was a pre-eminent legal scholar and teacher in

Baghdad. But then, overcome by skepticism and finding no other

satisfactory way to combat his doubts, he abandoned his academic

position to devote himself to reattaining religious certainty

through the practice of Sufi mysticism. By his own account, he

succeeded. After somewhat more than a decade of travel and ascetic

contemplation, and at the instance of the sultan at that time, he

emerged again into public life and teaching during his final years.

 

In The Niche of Lights, al-Ghazali maintains that one who truly

desires to understand the relationship between God and the world

must recognize not only His distance and absolute transcendence, as

emphasized in Islamic theology and jurisprudence, but also His

proximity to His creation--His inherent presence. The " symbolism " of

the Qur'an, suggests al-Ghazali, should not be thought of primarily

as literary imagery, as mere similes and metaphors. On the contrary,

God employs the language that He does in order to clarify the actual

nature of reality. An understanding of the structure of the cosmos

and of the human soul depends upon how accurately one perceives that

reality. "

 

Middle Eastern Text Initiative

 

METI Review of The Niche of Lights (Mishkat al-anwar), by al-

Ghazali, a parallel English-Arabic text translated, introduced, and

annotated by David Buchman

 

Biography of Translator

 

David Buchman received his Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from

the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he also

earned his master's degree. For his dissertation he completed two

years of field research on the beliefs and practices of a Sufi order

in Yemen. As a Stony Brook undergraduate, he majored in religious

studies with an emphasis on Islam. He has traveled throughout the

Middle East pursuing the study of Arabic, Islam, and the status of

contemporary Sufism. He is currently an assistant professor of

anthropology and Middle East studies at Hanover College in Indiana.

 

 

---------------

 

" Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali's philosophical explorations

covered nearly the entire spectrum of twelfth-century beliefs.

Beginning his career as a skeptic, he ended it as a scholar of

mysticism and orthodoxy. The Niche of Lights, written near the end

of his illustrious career, advances the philosophically important

idea that reason can serve as a connection between the devout and

God. Al-Ghazali argues that abstracting God from the world, as he

believed theologians did, was not sufficient for understanding.

Exploring the boundary between philosophy and theology, The Niche of

Lights seeks to understand the role of reality in the perception of

the spiritual. "

 

Amazon.com Book Review

 

 

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" Friday prayer leaders affirm from mosque pulpits around the

world belief in divine decree, be it good or evil. They warn their

faithful listeners with this hadith: `The most evil of things are

novelties; for every novelty is an innovation. Every innovation is

an error, and every error leads to the Fire.'

 

While Christians considered theology `the queen of the

sciences', Muslims came to consider it the work of Satan. This is

because theology has confused the rank and file of Muslims. It has

discouraged any kind of innovative thinking. It has paralyzed the

intellectuals, preoccupying them with unsolvable questions. "

 

Mahmoud M. Ayoub

World Religions: The Islamic Tradition

 

 

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" Ibn al-Arabi did not believe that the God he knew had an

objective existence. Even though he was a skilled metaphysician, he

did not believe that God's existence could be proved by logic. He

liked to call himself a disciple of Khidr, a name given to the

mysterious figure who appears in the Koran as the spiritual director

of Moses, who brought the external Law to the Israelites. God has

given Khidr a special knowledge of himself, so Moses begs him for

instruction, but Khidr tells him that he will not be able to put up

with this, since it lies outside his own religious experience. It is

no good trying to understand religious " information " that we have

not experienced ourselves. The name Khidr seems to have meant " the

Green One, " indicating that his wisdom was ever fresh and eternally

renewable. Even a prophet of Moses' stature cannot necessarily

comprehend esoteric forms of religion, for, in the Koran, he finds

that indeed he cannot put up with Khidr's method of instruction.

The meaning of this strange episode seems to suggest that the

external trappings of a religion do not always correspond to its

spiritual or mystical element. People, such as the ulema, might be

unable to understand the Islam of a Sufi like Ibn al-Arabi. Muslim

tradition makes Khidr the master of all who seek a mystic truth,

which is inherently superior to and quite different from the God

which is the same as everybody else's but to a God who is in the

deepest sense of the word subjective. "

 

Karen Armstrong, A History of God