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Mishkat al-anwar (Niche of Lights): We are
two spirits dwelling in one body.
From:
"jagbir singh" <www.adishakti.org@gmail.com>
Date: Sat Jan 8, 2005 7:09 am
Subject: Mishkat al-anwar (Niche of Lights): We
are two spirits dwelling in one body.
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—- In
shriadishakti@yahoogroups.com,
jagbir singh
<adishakti_org@y...> 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.
———————-
"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'n, 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
————————-
"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
——————————
"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 |
"The godly light is exactly the beginning of parousia in
holy souls"
"The Light is not more in Buddhas and not less in ordinary
beings."
Guru Nanak: "My Light is the name of One and only God"
"The discoverer of the Atman must also discover this inner
Light"
Light Above Shakti
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