CHAP. III.] “THE COLLOQUY OF THE BIRDS.” thy desolation. 179 Then, when thy heart has been set on fire, shalt thou enter the second valley-the Valley of Love-a valley that has no limits. Next is the Valley of Knowledge, which has no beginning, neither ending. There each who enters is enlightened, so far as he is able to bear it, and finds in the contemplation of truth the place which belongs to him. The mystery of the essence of being is revealed to him. He sees the almond within its shell; he sees God under all the things of sense or rather he sees nothing but Him whom he loves. But, for one who has attained to these mysteries, how many millions have turned aside out of the way upon the road! The fourth valley is the Valley of Sufficiency,' where God is all in all: where the contemplation of the Divinity is the one reality, and all things else, sensible or intellectual, are absorbed in nothingness. The fifth valley is the Valley of the Unity;2 there the Divine Essence, independent of its attributes, is the object of contemplation. Thence the elect soul passes to the sixth valley: the Valley of Amazement: a dolorous region where, blind with excess of light from the revelation of the Unity, it gropes its way in pain and confusion. He who has the Unity graven on his heart forgets all else and himself also. Should 1 Or, as M. Garcin de Tassy renders it, "Independence." He who attains to this stage is called by the mystical theologians of Islâm 'Arif, 66 one who knows." 2 This is also called Hâl, the State, or Wajd, Ecstacy. any man say to such an one. Art thou annihilated or existent, or both or neither? Art thou thyself or not thyself? he would reply: I know nothing at all, not even that I know nothing. I love; but I know not whom I love. I am neither Muslim nor infidel. What am I then? What say I? I have no knowledge of my love. My heart is at the same time full and empty. Last stage of all is the Valley of Annihilation of Self: of complete Poverty--the seventh and supreme degree, which no human words can describe. There is the great ocean of Divine Love. The world present and the world to come are but as figures reflected in it. And, as it rises and falls, how can they remain? He who plunges in that sea, and is lost in it, finds perfect peace. Such are the seven stages in the scale of perfection, as the Muslim masters of the spiritual life teach and such is the goal to which they conduct; a goal not unlike the Nirvána of the Buddhists.2 Saadî, in his Third Conference, relates an incident 1 This is the common term among the Muslim mystics for the highest degree of the contemplative life: absolute quietism; the praises of which are thus sung by an Arab poet, quoted by M. Silvestre de Sacy (p. 304): " Poverty is the substance; all else is but accident; poverty is health, all else is sickness; the whole world is illusion and falsity; poverty only is an excellent possession and real riches." 2 So M. Renan: "Sept degrès, disent les Soufis, mènent l'homme jusqu'au terme, qui est la disparition de la disparition, le Nirvana buddique par l'anéantissement de personalité."-L'Averroes, p. 112. CHAP. III.] "QUIT THYSELF AND COME." 191 from the life of a widely renowned saint, which may be fitly cited here in illustration of this teaching: One night Abû Yezid Bestâmî, being alone in his cell and plunged in ecstacy, cried out in his vivid apprehension of the feebleness and impotence of human nature, "O my God, when shall I unite myself to Thee? O God most High, how long wilt Thou leave me to consume away in this cruel separation? When wilt Thou give me the wine of Thy enjoyment?" Then a voice from out of the impenetrable abode of the Divine Majesty sounded above his head, and he heard the words, "Abû Yezîd, thy Thou is still with thee. If thou wilt attain unto Me, quit thyself and come." And so Jelâlu-'D-Dîn, the great Muslim saint and teacher, in the Mesnevi : One knocked at the door of the Beloved, and a voice from within said: "Who is there?" Then he answered: "It is I." The voice replied: "This house will not hold me and thee!" So the door remained shut. The lover retired to a wilderness, and spent some time in solitude, fasting, and prayer. One year elapsed, when he again returned, and knocked at the door. "Who is there?" said the voice. The lover answered, "It is thou." Then the door was opened. It is under this allegorical veil that the Sûfîs ordinarily expound their doctrines, for the setting forth of which they find the vulgar speech of this working-day world inadequate. As Jelâl elsewhere says, "They profess eager desire, but with no carnal affection; and circulate the cup, but no material goblet: since all things are spiritual, all is mystery within mystery." Thus does he interpret the deeper signification of the four pillars of the Mohammedan faith-the great duties of worship, almsgiving, fasting, and pilgrimage. Oh! thou who layest a claim to Islam, Without the inner meaning thy claim hath no stability. Know that fasting is abstinence from the fashions of mankind, Pilgrimage to the place of the wise. Is to find escape from the flame of separation. Alms are the flinging at His feet All else beside Him in the whole range of possibilities. In the path of religion (deen) a thousand souls of mine are One of the great offences of the Sûfis in the eyes of Muslim orthodoxy is their attitude towards religions other than the Mohammedan. There is a proverbial saying, often quoted by their writers, which literally rendered means, "A Sûfi knows no religion," and which their adversaries take literally, while they themselves expound it to signify, “A Sûfi thinks ill of no religion." It cannot be doubted that, at all events, the more advanced of them in the mystical doctrine, consider religious systems to be merely instruments, whereby is expressed, faintly and inadequately at the best, celestial melody, or, as the Germans would say, 1 Translated from the Mesnevi, by Professor Cowell, Oxford Essays, 1855, p. 171. CHAP. III.] THE ESOTERIC DOCTRINE. 183 Vorstellungsarten, "modes of representation," some better, some worse, but all imperfect. Thus, while themselves scrupulously observing the precepts of Islâm, they regard other forms of faith with benevolence, as being also means—although, as they judge, inferior means-of attaining to the same realities which are hidden under the Muslim symbols: all true in a measure, but not the absolute truth to those who have attained a purer air Whose faith has centre everywhere, "Ils M. Garcin de Tassy goes so far as to say, pensent que la Bible et le Coran ont été seulement écrits pour l'homme que se contente de l'apparence des choses, que s'occupe de l'extérieur, pour le záhir parast comme ils le nomment, et non pour le Sofi, que sonde le fond des choses.”1 I incline to think that this is too strongly put. But that is a large question and cannot be discussed here. Certain it is that the system of the Sûfîs is imbued, and that largely, with pantheism, but pantheism of no vulgar or ignoble kind; not the pantheism so widely spread in this nineteenth-century Europe, which is 1 La Poésie Philosophique et Religieuse chez les Persans, p. 12. 2 The late Professor Palmer was of opinion that Sûfism "steers a middle course between the Pantheism of India on the one hand, and the Deism of the Corán on the other"; that it "is really the development of the Primeval Religion of the Aryan race."Oriental Mysticism, Pref. pp. ix. x. |