The Súfís are folk who have preferred God to
everything, so that God has preferred them to
everything.--DHU'L-NUN.[3]
In the Islám faith there are eight Paradises arranged one within the
other in ascending stages. The highest is called "The Garden of Eden."
All are lovely gardens full of luxuriant flowers and trees, amid which
gleam the domes and minarets of gorgeous palaces, rich with precious
stones, where the departed are feasted and entertained by beautiful
_houris_. All the Paradises are watered by rivers, such as the Kevser,
the Tesním, and the Selsebíl. The great Tūba tree grows in the highest
Paradise; its branches fall into the seven other gardens.[4] This brief
description will be sufficient to show the nature of the Muslim heaven.
That it was a glorified creation of the earth in eight degrees is
evident. It was sensuous rather than metaphysical. The five worlds of
the Súfís are:
1. The "Plane of the Absolute Invisible."
2. The "Relatively Invisible."
3. The "World of Similitudes."
4. The "Visible World" (or the plane of "Form, Generation and
Corruption").
5. The "World of Man."
These Five Planes are often regarded as Three: the "Invisible," the
"Intermediate," and the "Visible," or yet again as simply the "Visible"
and "Invisible." Above the "Plane of the Absolute Invisible" is an
infinity which we might, perhaps, compare with Dante's "Spaceless
Empyrean." The Súfís regarded the existence of the soul as pre-natal.
Moreover that the full perception of Earthly Beauty was the remembrance
of that Supreme Beauty in the Spiritual world. The body was the veil;
but by ecstasy (_Hál_) the soul could behold the Divine Mysteries. As
Avicenna, in his poem on the soul, has written:
Lo, it was hurled
Midst the sign-posts and ruined abodes of this desolate world.
It weeps, when it thinks of its home and the peace it possessed,
With tears welling forth from its eyes without pausing or rest,
And with plaintive mourning it broodeth like one bereft
O'er such trace of its home as the fourfold winds have left.
Creation was regarded as the output of the All-Beautiful. The visible
world and all therein was a reflection of the Divine, an ever-changing
scene full of the Spirit of God. The following beautiful poem of Jámí,
from _Yúsuf-u-Zulaykhá_, will illustrate the Súfí's conception of the
Beloved and His significance and relationship to His world of lovers:
No mirror to reflect Its loveliness,
Nor comb to touch Its locks; the morning breeze
Ne'er stirred Its tresses; no collyrium
Lent lustre to Its eyes; no rosy cheeks
O'ershadowed by dark curls like hyacinth,
Nor peach-like down were there....
To Itself it sang of love
In wordless measure. By Itself it cast
The die of love....
One gleam fell from It on the Universe
And on the angels, and this single ray
Dazzled the angels, till their senses whirled
Like the revolving sky. In diverse forms
Each mirror showed it forth, and everywhere
Its praise was chanted in new harmonies.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The spirits who explore the depths
Of boundless seas, wherein the heavens swim
Like some small boat, cried with one mighty voice,
"Praise to the Lord of all the universe!"
His beauty everywhere doth show itself,
And through the forms of earthly beauties shines
Obscured as through a veil....
Where'er thou seest a veil,
Beneath that veil He hides. Whatever heart
Doth yield to love, He charms it. In His love
The heart hath life. Longing for Him, the soul
Hath victory.[5]
Man was, therefore, a part of God, because he was a fragment of the
Whole; or, better still, he was a divine emanation.[6] The Súfí
recognised this fact, and his supreme desire was to be reunited
with the Beloved. His difficulty, however, was to bear in mind that
his worship should ever be of God, and not of God's many beautiful
forms. Love came into his heart, and he endeavoured to recognise that
earthly objects, however dear and beautiful they might be, were but
lanterns where God's Light shone through. Here it must be readily
admitted that Súfíism often fails. The Súfí poets were much given to
excessive laudations of physical beauty, and we often find, with all
the toleration and ingenuity we can bring to bear, that some of Háfiz's
lines are no more spiritual than Anacreon's, to whom he has been
compared. We have a number of Súfí words with a strictly Súfí meaning;
but it would not be wise to strain the analogy of earthly love too far
and say that everything that Háfiz wrote was spiritual. The Súfí poets,
for the most part, wrote about the Love of God in the terms applied
to their beautiful women, for the simple reason that no one can write
the celestial language and be understood at the same time. Is it to be
wondered at that the Súfís, still remembering their old love-songs,
their old earthly delights in women dear to them, should find it
difficult _not_ to apply such names, such ideas even in their love of
the One Beloved? Take those expressions literally and many of them
are sensuous, but consider them as brave, strong strivings, fraught
with much spiritual fervour, after God, and you at once annihilate
prejudice and come very near understanding the meaning of Súfíism. We
need not fly to Mrs. Grundy and seek shelter under her hypocritical
wing when some really devout and sincere Súfí calls God "the Eternal
Darling" or sings about the Beloved's curls. In studying Súfíism from
Súfí poetry we must always remember that Eastern poetry is essentially
erotic in expression, but just as essentially symbolic in _meaning_.
We must also bear in mind--and this point must have had its influence
upon Súfíism--that the Muslim's reward for having lived a good life,
according to the teaching of Mohammed, was that he should enjoy an
eternal _liaison_ with lovely _houris_.
It may be questioned that if the earthly object of Love was a mere
passing shadow of God, the man who loved that object was equally
insignificant. And again, how can God be the All-One when, according
to the Súfí thesis, He divided Himself into creation? The part is not
equal to the whole. These questions are easily answered. The stars
shine in the sky, and on the bosom of the sea without diminution.
Let the sea pass away, and the star-shadows pass away too; but the
stars are still there. So when the world shall pass away it will only
be the fading of innumerable shadows we call Humanity. God will still
be there, and we shall still be there because we came alone from Him.
There was a Voice that sounded in men and women, in mountains and in
seas, in the beasts of the jungle and the swinging of the stars. It was
the Voice of Love, the great beckoning in the Hereafter to which all
things must go. That Voice to the Súfí was God calling His lovers into
one chamber, one mighty love-feast. Jámí has expressed the finality of
Love in the following lines:
Gaze, till Gazing out of Gazing
Grew to BEING Her I gaze on,
She and I no more, but in One
Undivided Being blended.
All that is not One must ever
Suffer with the Wound of Absence;
And whoever in Love's City
Enters, finds but Room for One,
And but in ONENESS Union.
The Rev. Professor W. R. Inge, in _Christian Mysticism_, has brought a
good deal of adverse criticism to bear upon Súfíism. He remarks: "The
Súfís, or Mohammedan Mystics, use erotic language very freely, and
appear, like true Asiatics, to have attempted to give a sacramental
or symbolic character to the indulgence of their passions." The same
writer accuses Emerson of "playing with pantheistic Mysticism of the
Oriental type," and goes on to compare him with the Persian Súfís on
account of his self-deification. This critic, in his desire to defame
the Súfís, states that they are among the most shocking and blasphemous
of the mystics, because they believe that state is present with them
even in their earthly life. This, however, is no teaching of the
Súfís, and, rightly considered, we cannot even except the sayings of
Bayázíd already referred to, because here he undoubtedly denies all
claim to human personality, admitting God only. _Self_-deification is
no teaching of the Súfís. As the Buddhist's belief in Nirvana was a
state only to be reached by degrees, after much striving and severe
discipline, so was the fusion of the Beloved and His lover a belief
and a beautiful hope far out on the spiritual horizon. Hadj Khan, in
his interesting book _With the Pilgrims to Mecca_, briefly touches
upon this sect and mentions "seven stages" in the spiritual growth
of the Súfí, and not an arrogant proclamation of Deity and man being
coequal in the earthly existence. The gradually ascending scale of
the Súfí's heaven is another point in favour of this argument. "For
the love that thou would'st find demands the sacrifice of self to the
end that the heart may be filled with the passion to stand within
the Holy of Holies, in which alone the mysteries of the True Beloved
can be revealed unto thee." The average Súfí was a poet. All that was
beautiful was God to him. He tried to be nearer the Beautiful every
day, and thus his soul swept on from flower to flower, higher and
higher, until he was absorbed into the Divine.
We have now seen that Súfíism is essentially a religion of Love without
a creed or dogma. No merciless hells leap up in the Súfí's beliefs.
He has no _one way_ theory for the Life beyond: "The ways of God are
as the number of the souls of men." There is splendid, magnificent
broad-mindedness in this Súfí remark. This unsectarian teaching should
be applied to every religion. It would tend to sweeten and deepen the
thoughts of men, who would forget the petty non-essentials of creeds
and dogmas, lost in the perception of the All-Beautiful.