Landolt • Stages of God-Cognition and the Praise of Folly According to Najm-i Razi

STAGES OF GOD-COGNITION AND THE PRAISE OF FOLLY According to Najm -i RazI

1. “K now thy sel f...” Islamic mysticism recognizes itself in the Koran as well as in a certain number of extra-Koranic tradition which, as guiding statements, are usually attributed to the Prophet Muhammad or in some other way ‘naturalized’ as part pa rt o f Islamic Isla mic traditi trad ition. on. Such Suc h extra ex tra-Ko -Koran ranic ic wi wisdo sdom m includ inc ludes es the Gnost Gn ostic ic sentence “He who knows himself knows his Lord”, which is known in Arabic as man (arafa nafsahu fa q a d ‘arafa rabbahu. A very similar sentence sentence has been found in the writings of Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 AD);1 and this in turn calls into play an even older model, the famous oracular saying of Delphi, “Know thyself...”. Thus we read in the opening pages of the Ra R a w sh a n a ’i-nam i-n ama a, a mystical poem traditionally ascribed to the 1lth-ce 1lth -centu ntury ry Ism a‘111poet 1p oet Nasir-i Khusraw:

Thus spake [the wise]: ‘Go, ‘Go, know thys elf!’ Know both the way of unbelief and of religion, religion, of good and bad! bad! For this way you’ll find the way to God; This is certain evidence for you.

1. See especially F. Rosenthal (1970), pp. 137ff., 185f.

The world’s largest digital library

Try Scribd FREE for 30 days to access over 125 million titles without ads or interruptions! Start Free Trial Cancel Anytime.











302

Rech Re cherc erc hes he s en spirit sp iritua ualite lite iranie ira nienne nne

Once you have known your self se lf truly, truly, You will also attain gnosis of the Real ( ‘irfan-i Haqq). (Nasir-i Khusraw 1348 h.s., p. 511, lines 6-10. Cf. also ibid. p. 528, lines 7ff.)

As with most oracular sayings, our Gnostic sentence can be interpreted in various ways. In its Arabic form, the difficulty is compounded by the fact that the Arabic term used for ‘self, nafs, can also mean ‘souf, and ‘souF designated - in the classical classical Sufi use of the word - not in the first place that which leads to God but on the contrary the ‘compulsive souf, the ‘seat of evil’, or the ‘flesh’ if you like. However, even if we leave the ‘compulsive soul’ and the like out of the picture for the time being, our Gnostic sentence has led to so many contradictory interpretations that one could write a whole book bo ok on this thi s subje su bject ct alone, alon e, as an Irania Ira nian n scho sc holar lar has poin po inte tedl dly y noted no ted (J. Huma’I, note to Mahmud-i Kashani n.d. [intro, dated 132 h.s./l365 h.q.], p. 92). An interpretation that at first seems innocuous postulates that things are recognized through their contrary. Without night I cannot know the day. By tasting the bitter, I learn to appreciate the sweet. Through the imperfect I can gain an idea of the perfect. The classical 9th-century mystic TirmidhI is said to have put it this way: “He who does not know what it means to be a servant o f God, has even less less an idea of lordship” lordship” (Hujwlrl 1336/1965, 1336/1965, p. 178).2 178).2 The much later Kubrawi Sufi Simnani (1261-1336) commented on our Arabic sentence in a similar vein: “He who recognizes himself as being weak, deficient, imperfect and needy knows his lord as powerful, sublime, perfect and self-sufficient”, or “He who recognized himself as contingent being knows his lord as the necessary being; he who recognized himself as multiple knows his lord as one; he who recognizes himself as tarnished with the faults of forgetfulness and ignorance knows his lord as sublime and perfect; perf ect; he who wh o recog re cogniz nizes es him hi m self se lf as serf, know kn owss his lord lor d as Lord Lo rd”” . ( ‘Ala ‘A la’’ al-Dawla al-Simnanl 1362 h.s./1404 h.q. [1983/84 AD], pp. 478f). 478 f). This kind o f God-cognition God-cognition through self-cognition seems, at first sight, sight, to have little to to do with w hat is commonly known as mysticism. mysticism. The terms and images used here to highlight the contrast between humans as the utterly imperfect and God as the Perfect hardly convey an idea of the God-











Stages o f God-cog God-cognit nition ion an d the Praise o f Folly.

303

intoxicated enthusiasm of the mystics. They are marked by the strict rules of a religion in which man, a feeble serf, faces an absolute king. Yet, it was prec pr ecise isely ly on this thi s sense sen se o f the absol ab solut utee depe de pend nden ence ce o f ‘Go ‘G o d’s bo ndsm nd sm en’ en ’ that tha t the Islamic mystics’ relationship to God was based. They did not consider themselves ‘God’s children’. Going even beyond the merely devout feeling of the serf lying in the dust at the feet of his master, they rather intensified the sense of nothingness to such a degree that it was transposed onto the plan pl anee o f abso ab solut lutee non-b no n-bein eing g and being, bein g, or ‘anni ‘an nihi hila lati tion on’’ i f a n a ’) and ‘subsistence’ ( haqa ’), respectively. This is the p oint made b y one o f the the 1lth-century authorities of Sufism, Hujwlri, who noted in his widely used Sufi manual, The Unveiling Unveiling o f the Veiled Veiled : “It happens that cognition of Being in the absolutely Real (God) produces despair about one’s own being. Once the ‘serf has recognized the ‘master’, he sees his whole existence in the bonds of his power... Hence states the Prophet: ‘He who knows himself knows his Lord’, meaning, whoever knows himself inannihilation i f a n d ’) knows God in subsistence {baq {b aqd’ d’)” )” (Hujwlri 1336/1965, p. 353).3 It probably lies in the nature of the matter that this intensification of the feeling of nothingness vis-a-vis an absolute Being leads to a point where it seems to turn into its exact opposite. A little before Hujwlri, the equally authoritative theoretician of Sufism, Qushayri, made a distinction between an annihilation ‘which concerns the attributes’ and one ‘which concerns the essence’, (Qushayri 1379/1959, p. 40, lines 16-17),4 thereby hinting at what Najm Na jmud uddln dln-i -i Kubr Ku braa (114 (1 1455-12 1221 21)) was later lat er to state stat e explic exp licitl itly: y: The more your being disappears [is ‘annihilated’], the more you don His being. First, Fir st, the attribut attr ibutes es o f your yo ur being bei ng disapp dis appear ear,, the blame bla mewo worth rthy y along with the praiseworthy. Therewith you don the attributes of His being, ja lal] l] and of grace [or including the attributes of grandeur [or ‘Majesty’, jala ja m dl]. dl ]. Thereupon, your essence disappears, so His being covers ‘Beauty’, jam [you]. At this moment there is no being but His being. (F. Meier (ed.) 1957, Arabic text para 141; German intro pp. 82-87)

The same passage from opposition to unity already seems to have been achieved, on the cognitive plane, by Junayd, the leading master of the 9th-century Baghdad Sufis. When he was asked about the nature of the knowledge of God, he at first explained it by saying: “The coming-about of your own un-knowing and the being-there of His knowing!” But when he











304

Rech Re cherc erc hes en s pir ituali itu alite te iranie ira nienne nne

was pressed to say more, he exclaimed: “He is the one who knows and he is the one who is known!” know n!” (Al-KalabadhI 1380/1960, 1380/1960, p. 66). 66). Another classical Sufi statement that can similarly convey an idea of nondualistic consciousness is this: “I knew God through God and I knew what is other-than-God other-than-God through the light o f God”.5 Thus the reduction of man to the level of ‘feeble serf, really, to nothing, is counter-balanced counter-balanced - often often for the the very same mystics - with a heightening heightening or broad bro adeni ening ng o f his being bei ng to the th e point po int where wh ere he becom be com es the Al All, l, the very ver y image of God. The celebrated 9th-century Khurasanl mystic, Bayazld-i BastamI, whose paradoxical utterings can give an impression of extreme self-denial and extreme self-elevation at the same time, is also credited with a saying prefiguring the concept of the ‘Perfect Man’ ( al-insan al-kamil altamm ), (Nicholson 1921, p. 77) which would eventually become one of the doctrinal keystones of Sufism, especially wiht the great Ibn ‘Arab! (11651240). Najm-i RazI, of whom we shall be shortly speaking, has expressed this idea in a Persian quatrain that makes the point in such a succinct way that it has become, so to speak, the common good of persian myticism; it is, in fact, often quoted anonymously and also ascribed to others. Addressing the human being, the poet states: O thou copy of the script divine! O thou m irror of the royal beauty! Nau N augh ghtt in i n the world wo rld lies outside o f thee; thee; Ask of thyse lf thine thine every desire, thou art it! (Najm-i RazI 13 52/1973A, p. 3/ English translation by H. Algar 1982, p. 28)

In view of this optimal broadening of the image of man one may wonder what has happened with the sense for human imperfection. Najm-i RazI, as we shall see later, can give us an interesting answer to this question. To

5. According to H ujwlri (1336/1956), p. 344, this is a saying o f ‘All, whereas SulamI (1960),











Stages o f God-c God-cogni ognitio tion n and the Praise o f Folly. Folly.

305 305

prepar pre paree for this thi s answe ans wer, r, we shall first pres pr esen entt his theory the ory o f mystic mys tical al cognition. 2. Najm-i RazFs theory of mytical mytical cognition

Najm N ajm -i RazI, prop pr oper erly ly N ajmu aj mudd ddln ln-i -i RazI,6 Ra zI,6 kno k nown wn also als o by his sobr so briq ique uett of Daya (the ‘wetnurse’), belongs to a distinguished circle of mystical thinkers thinkers who enmerged from the the school o f Najmuddln-i Kubra. Kubra. The abovementioned SimnanI, about three generations his junior, also belonged to this school. RazI, born probably in 1177 or 1178 in the city of Ray (hence his surname RazI), spent some critical years in Khurasan and Khwarazm, where he came in touch with Kubra and some of his immediate disciples. Among the latter, Majduddln-i Baghdadi (from Baghdadak, a village in Khwarazm) seems to have played a decisive role as his teacher of Sufism. As well, this teacher, rather than Kubra himself, may have impressed on RazI the model of a certain Sufi involvement in worldly matters, for he was indeed for some time an influential figure at the court of the Khwarazmshah; he died, however, under som ewhat unclear circumstances, circumstances, most mos t likely in 1209.7 In the tumultuous tumult uous years yea rs 1220-21 1220-21 w e find RazI on the flight before the rampaging Mongols. Like many other Iranians of those days, such as the family of the famous RumI, he emigrated to ‘Rum’ or Anatolia, which seemed to him to be the last refuge of the Islamic faith. ir sa d al- ‘ib ‘ibad ad min alThis was to be the site of his Persian masterpiece, M irsa m ab da ’ ila al-ma-ad (The Path o f G od ’s Bondsmen fro m Origin Origin to Ret R etur urn n ), a work written in the first place for dervishes, though also a

prin pr ince cely ly code co de o f cond co nduc uctt and an d a spiri sp iritu tual al coun co unse sell for fo r prac pr actit titio ione ners rs o f the most diverse professions. The original ‘dervish v ersion’ ersi on’ of this book, issued in 1221 in the Anatolian town of Qaysariyya [modern Kayseri], was soon followed by a ‘royal version’ or second recension, which was dedicated to the Seljuk sultan ‘Ala’uddln Keyqubad I, and completed in the town of Slwas on 31 July 1223. Still another version of basically the same book bo ok appe ap pear arss to have ha ve been be en issue iss ued d only on ly a few year ye arss later la ter unde un derr anot an othe herr title, tit le, A s a d i ’s S ym bo l in the Psal Ps alms ms o f D avid av id ( Ma M a rm uza uz a t-i t- i A s a d i dar d ar m azm az m urat ur at-i -i

6. On him, see Mohammad-Amln RIahl, article “Daya, Najm-al Din Abu Bakr ‘Abdallah”, in En cyc cyclop lopae aedia dia Iranic Ira nica. a.











306

Recher Rec herch ches es en spirit spi ritual ualite ite iranien iran ienne ne

D a w u d i f and was dedicated to a local rival of the sultan, ‘Ala’uddln Shah

Dawud b. Bahramshah. Addressing himself in this way to princes of this world, RazI was making an attempt to alert them to the inner meaning of the ‘kingship’ they embodied in fact fact - t h e Islamic prince prince being the the ‘Shadow of Go d’ - and thus ‘to know themse the mse lves’ as ‘kin ‘kin gs’ in in a mystical or esoteric sense. Whether these spiritual counseling efforts met ready ears in the Anatolian court circles may, however, be doubted. RazI probably did not stay in Anatolia for very long, as he appears to have spent the last three decades of his life in Baghdad, where he died in 1256 and was buried in the Sufi cemetery. Given that virtually nothing is known of Razl’s activities as a Sufi master, no direct disciples of his being on record, his fame as a Sufi rests almost entirely on his writings, particularly The Path. Indeed this work becam be came, e, despi de spite te its outsp ou tspok oken en Sunni outlook outl ook,, one o f the most mo st popu po pula larr works wo rks of Persian Sufism that was being read and studied all over the Eastern part of the Islamic world including Shi‘ite Iran. It seems that RazI himself had a sense of its importance, for he wrote towards the end of his life still another version of it, this time in Arabic, thereby ensuring that, as he put it, the Arabs may no longer be “deprived of its benefits”. This Arabic version is titled Guiding Lights fo r the Travelers Travelers to to G od and Stations o f Those Carried Aw ay through thro ugh God Go d (Man (M anar arat at al-sd al- sd ’in ’in n ila Allah Al lah wa-m wa -maq aqdm dmat at al-ta al- ta ’irm ’irm bi Allah) All ah).. One of the distinguishing virtues of the Path may be seen in the fact that

the theme of god-cognition is discussed in it in a systematic and clear way. In dealing with this theme, the author does not beat around the bush but goes straight to the heart of the matter. He distinguishes three different basic forms of ‘knowing’ or ‘cognition’ (m a ‘rifat)9, all of which he establishes as valid if unequal forms of god-cognition: first, that of reason or the intellect (ma (m a ‘rifa ri fatt-ii ‘aqlT); aqlT); second, what amounts to a kind of intllectual vision; and third, third, what is best rendered as experience - although the terms used by the author to designate the latter two are somewhat unusual, as we shall see in a moment. The first fundamental form, the rational, is accessible to all beings endowed with reason, even the unbelieving. It permits to recognize the

8. Edited by M. R. Sh afi‘1 Kadka ni with an English introduction by H. L andolt, Tehran













Stages o f God-cogni God-cognition tion an d the Praise o f Folly.

307

existence of God by inference of the cause from the effect, the creator from the creation or, in more philosophical terms, the necessary from the merely possib pos sible le or contin con tingen gent. t. There Ther e is effec eff ectiv tivel ely y litt little le differ dif feren ence ce betwe bet ween en this form o f ‘philoso ‘philosophical’ phical’ god-cognition god-cognition and the rational approach cherished by the dialectical theologians. Nonetheless, the latter, i.e., the Sunnite-Ash’arite theologians, are singled out in one version of The Path -the aboveSym boll (Najm-i mentioned A s a d i ’s Symbo (Najm- i RazI 1352/1973B, 1352/1973B , intro pp. 13f.) —as enjoying a somewhat higher status (maqdm) than the philosophers; for in addition to God’s existence, they also know God’s attributes through Scripture. The second, or visionary, basic form of god-cognition involves a quite different approach. RazI calls it literally, ‘speculative cognition’ (m a ‘rifat-i nazarf)\ but this term, contrary to its usual meaning, does not refer here to the formal ‘speculations’ of the just mentioned theologians, but to ‘speculating’ in a much more fundamental way. The one who is ‘speculating’ in this way looks at the world as speculum or Mirror, as it were: beholding God’s attributes in every atom of the world, he recognizes the world as totally endowed with divine qualities. It would appear, therefore, that RazI assigns to this second stage of god-cognition the view known as wahdat al-wujud - roughly, roughly, something approaching a form of pant pa nthe heism ism or panen pa nenthe theism ism.. However, it should be noted that the ‘world’ in this context comprises not only the objective world of nature, but also the domain of supra-sensory pheno ph enome mena. na. The subtle sub tle organs org ans o f perce pe rcepti ption on nece ne cessa ssary ry for this vision vis ion are seen as supplementing reason on a higher level. They grow in a human being only in the course of a maturation process, which is induced by the mystical praxis pra xis o f religion reli gion.. The ‘real’ or ‘true’ cognition (m a ‘rifat-i haqlqi), then, corresponds to the completion of this maturation process, whereby the visionary cognition is











308

Rech Re cherc erc hes en spir s pir itual itu alite ite irani ira nienn enn e

than that between the latter two, which both belong after all to the domain of the mystic. We shall come back to the distinction between the second and third forms of cognition below. At this point let us first take up the question of how RazI arrived at putting rational cognition on a par with the two forms of mystical cognition, even if only as, say, a prior stage to them. Is it not really the direct opposite to them? As a matter of fact, while Islamic mysticism may be said to be more ‘rational’ on the whole than other mystical traditions, the insufficiency of human reason has been consistently emphasized by Sufis. Even a Sufi such as Razl’s younger contemporary, Sadruddln-i Qunawi (Konyavi, 12101274), who unlike our author shows much sympathy for the ‘philosopher’, still accepts the validity of reason only in a limited sense, as an instrument to be supp su pplem lem ented ent ed by highe hig herr organs orga ns o f perce per cepti ption on or cogni co gnitio tion n (Qun (Q unaw awii 1995, Ar. Text pp. 165f./German p. 29)." This, in fact, is precisely the view held by RazI as well, we ll, as w e shall see in more m ore detail de tail later. Howe Ho wever ver,, in a part p articu icular lar Treatise on L ove a nd Reason, Reason, ( Risa Ri sala la-y -yii ‘ishq u ‘a q l f 2 treatise known as the Treatise where ‘Love’ stands, of course, for the way of the mystics, he expounds on the natural opposition between love and reason in such a way that the two appear to be as radically incompatible incompatible as fire fire and w ater - or so it seems at first sight. In particular, Razl’s target here is the famous philosophical postulate of the unity of intellect, of the subject and the object of intellection, and the claim that the intellect in its perfection comprises everything in existence. Not N ot unlike unl ike Ghaza Gh azall ll before bef ore him, him , he only on ly cites cite s the philo ph ilosop sophe hers rs to beat be at them the m with their own weapons. Thus, he accepts their definition of the human intellect as the organ capable of perceiving the quiddity ( mdhiyat ) or essence of things for the sole purpose of demonstrating that this ‘essence’ is not identical with the reality of the thing itself: it is only an image that was abstracted from the real object, not the object itself in its concrete reality











Stages o f God-co God-cogni gnitio tion n and the Praise Praise o f Folly.

309

resort to the help o f special special organs to grasp even the things o f this world, he argues, how could it, out of its own perfection, grasp what lies beyond it in its reality (Najm-i Razi 1345/1966, pp. 68-74). O f course, course, Razi does not use this this argument - which he might well have taken from S uhrawardi’s uhrawardi’s criticism o f Peripatetic Peripatetic theory o f knowledge13knowledge13- to say that a ‘real’ grasp of the thing in itself is impossible. What he infers from his critique of the power of reason is simply this: that only its very opposite, that is, ‘love’, is capable of grasping the thing ‘as it really is.’ His argumentation here relies almost entirely on poetic images. Thus, reason is pers pe rson onifie ified d as the ‘teache ‘teac herr o f arro ar roga ganc nce’ e’ (,khwajagi-amuz), in contrast to which ‘love’ is the ‘sorrow’ which is a ‘kingdom-burner’ (padishahi-suz). Like water, reason draws everthing down under, intensifying existence in the material world, that is, in the wrong direction, while the fire of love is the ‘bestower of annihilation’ (fanabakhsh ), striving ever upward to the ‘center of celestial unity’ (ibid., pp. 6 Iff; cf. p. 54). Now N ow this poeti po eticc image im agery ry shoul sh ould d not, o f course cou rse,, be misu mi sund nders erstoo tood d as a kind of romantic demonisation of the mind as the antagonist per se. Razi was not a romantic but a religious thinker standing firmly in the medieval intellectual tradition. He suggests on the contrary that perfect love and perfec per fectt reaso rea son n are a unit u nited ed pair pa ir w ithin ith in the figure figu re o f the Proph Pr ophet et Muham Mu hamma mad; d; for within this perennial figure, the fire of divine love has indeed ignited the pure spiritspi rit-oil oil o f reason reas on in such suc h a way w ay that th at the ‘lam p’ reall re ally y ‘bum ‘bu m s ’ and the t here re is ‘light upon light’, as indicated in the Koranic ‘Light Verse’ (24:35) (ibid., pp. 76ff.; cf. p. 36). M oreove ore over, r, like his philo ph iloso soph phica icall oppone opp onents nts,, our religious thinker cannot do without the idea of a ‘universal intellect’ ( ‘aql-i hull), which he discusses at some length in the cosmological sections of the Path (Najm-i (N ajm-i Razi 1973A, pp. 46ff., 5 If., 56ff.; cf. p. 21 OF). There is no place pla ce to dwell dw ell extens ext ensive ively ly on this here; but we must mu st menti me ntion on the point po int characteristic for our author, and which does set him apart from the purely











310

Rec herch he rches es en spirit sp iritua ualite lite iran ienne ien ne

of Muhammad: while they are at the origin of the opposition between love and reason in mankind; fire and water in nature, they really belong together like ‘light above light’. Indeed, before the splitting of the ‘primordial substance’ (jawhar ) into the opposing elements of fire and water, they circulated through the worlds as cosmic light-rays entwined on top of each other. Only after the splitting apart the opposites pulled away from each other: fire moving always upward, water downward. Interestingly, however, even after the splitting, according to Razi, some part of the water in the form of steam joins the fire in its thrust towards the origin above. Thus, only the water not warmed by fire, in other words, profane reason, stays ‘below’. Once ‘warmed’, reason too has the possibility of ascending to higher regions. The concept of the dual light emanation as well as the image of the secondary warming of water by fire make it evident that reason and love in Razl’s thought are not after all as irresolvable contraries as would appear on first view. Indeed, we can already gain the idea of the way it works out, how, despite his apparent contempt for reason, Razi can nevertheless recognize it as the lowest step on a scale which ends in pure mysticism at the top. Both the lower and the upper end of this scale, in fact, represent a certain kind of perfe pe rfecti ction on,, a tw twof ofold old poten po tential tial for ‘perf pe rfec ectio tio n’ (kamaliyat ) innate in mankind, which our author discusses at some length in the Treatise on Love and Reason Reason (Najm-i Razi 1345/1966, pp. 42-48). According to this model, the human being is, first, the perfect recipient of qabul-i fa yz -i ‘aql aq l) because within man as endemanation from the Intellect (iqabul-i prod pr oduc uctt o f the creatio cre ation n process pro cess all the other oth er forms for ms o f creati cre ation on are presen pre sent. t. As such, he is the ‘perfectly balanced structure’ ( kamal-i taswiya ) alluded to in the Koran (38:72), the microcosm containing the inner aspect {malakut) o f the entire creation. Even though ‘perfect’, however, this potentiality, which Razi identifies with man’s natural, rational potential for cognition, represents











Stages o f God-cognition God-cognition and the Praise o f Folly..

311 311

‘wholeness’ or ‘completeness’ in this case, for this concept clearly involves the existence of man as body and soul taken as a whole. As we shall see later, this concept is one of the cornerstones of Razi’s mystical doctrine, in which hierarchical emanation theory is tied in an original way with belief in a creation act willed out of love. love. Obviously this idea of the human being also implies the claim of mysticism to lead man beyond merely intellectual perfection towards his true self, to ‘hatch’ him, as our author likes to put it. Philosophers and theologians who practice intellectual perfection in such a way that the spiritual and angelic prevail over the animal in them, may be counted among those called in the Koran ‘the Companions of the Right’ ( ashab almaymana ) and can serve as sites of manifestation of divine ‘grace’ ( lutj), al-ma sh ’ama), ama ), in whom the counter to the ‘Companions of the Left’ ( ashab al-mash animal and demonic prevail over the spiritual and the angelic, whereby they serve as sites of manifestation of divine ‘wrath’ ( cjahr ). ). There exists, however, according to the Koranic imagery (56:8-11) which is brought to play pl ay here, here , yet ye t a third thi rd group, grou p, known kno wn as the ‘Outs ‘Ou tstri tripp pper ers’ s’ (al-sabiqun) or ‘Those Brought Nigh’ ( al-muqarrabun ). To this third group belong only those few, the elect, the prophets and the great mystics ( awliya ’) who are by essence beyond all duality, indeed beyond their own dual nature as a body and a soul {ibid., pp. 50-61, 66f., 8If). It is their task ‘to hatch the SImurgh’s egg’ and to make sure, through appropriate care, that the ‘birds’ can grow towards their true goal {ibid., pp. 83-99). Razi evidently counted himself to this third group, as may be seen from one of his quatrains, in which he alludes to his sobriquet o f Daya, or ‘wetnurse’: wetnurse ’: Whatever you’ve seen of us is only our shadow;













312

Rech Re cherc erches hes en spir s pir ituali itu alite te iran ienn e

It is by no means incidental to Razl’s elaboration of his theory of mystical upbringing that time time and again he uses images images out o f the domain of organic life, of ‘gardening’. After all, his entire spiritual pedagogy is based on the decisive assumption that humankind is established to attain wholeness or completeness on the basis of its body-and-soul ground-plan. The same dynamic principle makes it also possible to say that humankind is fundamentally fundam entally higher that God ’s intimate angels themsel ves.15 ves.15 Indeed, for Razi, the angels are purely static representatives of intellectual or celestial perfect per fection ion.. In this very perfe pe rfecti ction on they the y are, accord acc ording ing to rank, ran k, boun bo und d to their the ir ‘designated station’ (maqam malum , Kor. 37:164). They cannot grow beyo be yond nd it. “Man, “M an, on the contrar con trary, y, is capab cap able le o f ascendi asce nding ng (itaraqqi), as recipient of emanation from the Intellect, so that the intellect of every one can develop, through spiritual breeding ( tarbiyat ), ), from potential to act, poss po ssibl ibly y reach rea ch anot an othe her’s r’s intellec inte llect, t, or even eve n go beyond. bey ond. So, perfe pe rfect ct capa ca pabil bility ity [of attaining all] the levels of the Intellect belongs to man; for he possesses the instruments needed for this spiritual breeding (parwarish-i an), including the outer senses, the inner faculties, and other organs of perception such as the ‘heart’, the ‘inner consciousness’ [or ‘secret’, sirr], and the ‘spirit’, all of which he has to perfection” (ibid., p. 4 6 ).1 ). 16 At this point it becomes clear how Razl’s idea of the human effectively differs from that of the ‘philosophers’. What distinguishes human beings, according to our mystic, enabling them to grow above solely rational











Stages o f God-cognition God-cognition and the Praise o f Folly..

313 313

kanzan makhfiyyan...). So, on the one hand, the spirit lost its immediate

vicinity to God when it came down into the world of bodies and the ‘seventy thousand veils of light and darkness’ appeared as a result; but paradoxically, this very alienation, this acquaintance with the ‘veils’ brought the spirit closer to its true destination, that is, perfect cognition of God. To put it in a nutshell, only the sowing of the seed of the spirit in the earth of the body can lead to the growing of those perceptive organs which the angels lack. This means that the step from merely rational god-cognition towards the vision of ‘all atoms of all worlds’ as a ‘manifestation of the divine Attributes’, or the emergence of mystical ma ‘rifat-i rifat- i naz n azar arll in a given individual, is only made possi po ssible ble thank tha nkss to the descen des centt o f the spirit spi rit to the bodil bo dily y w orld or ld (Najm(Na jm-ii Razi Ra zi 1973A, pp. 101-114; 10 1-114; 117f.).1 117f .).17 One has to add, though, that this transplanation of the spirit into the body is only the necessary prerequisite for this developement to happen; it does not by itself guarantee its realization or completion. What is decisive is the care and growth of the truly mystical organ, the ‘heart’. But it remains true that, according to Razi, it does not matter whether vision ( mushahadat ) happens in the ‘inner’ or the ‘outer’ world once the ‘heart’ is ‘pure’ or ‘clear’. Such a ‘heart’ may equally mirror suprasensory visions within itself with the aid o f imagination imagination,, or behold the reflection o f divine divine radiation in the physic phy sical al world wo rld wi with th the help hel p o f outer out er perce pe rceptio ption. n. Once On ce the mirro mi rrorr o f the heart is perfectly ‘clear’, the mystic can ‘see God in all things’, whether he











314

Rech Re cherc erches hes en spir s piritua itua lite iranien iran ienne ne

(1973A), pp. 305f.; Razi (1973B), para p ara 50).19 50).19 More often, how ever, to point rifa t-i shuhu shu hudl, dl, Razi tends to to the characteristic difference of the higher ma ‘rifat-i omit the term ‘vision’ {mushahadat) altogether, replacing it with ‘unveiling’ (,mukdshafat )20 )20 and reaching for other supravisual ‘senses of the heart’. Amongst the ‘five senses of the heart’ with which, if they are ‘sound’, one gha yb), the can ‘perceive the totality of the suprasensory world’ { ‘dlam-i ghayb), heart’s ‘palate’ is the one designated for the ‘taste of love, faith and mystical cognition (7 rfdrif (Najm-i (Najm-i Razi (1973A), pp. 192f.; Razi (1973B), para 65). According to Kubra, the difference between the ‘visionary’ and the ‘experiential’ lies in the former coming about through the opening up of the inward sight (baslra ), while the ‘experiential’, defined as a state of ‘being inwardly touched by something met’, refers to a real ‘transformation of being bei ng {tabdll al-wujud) and of the spirit’. This total transformation appears to be the final stage of a process which includes at some earlier stage a transformation of the five senses into ‘other senses reaching into the supra sensory realm’. Kubra does not say precisely what these ‘other senses’ are; he only hints at an answer to this question by comparing them to the powers of imagination, those ‘servants of reason’ that are active in our dreams (Meier 1957, paras 41-43/German intro pp. 97ff). By doing so, he implicitly admits their identity with the so-called ‘faculties of the soul’ of Peripatetic school-psychology. Razi, on the contrary, makes a clear distinction between those ‘faculties’ of the philosophical tradition, which he usually calls the











Stages o f God-cog God-cognit nition ion a nd the Praise o f Folly.

315 315

substances’: ‘intellect’, ‘heart’, ‘secret’, ‘spirit’, ‘arcane’ (Razi 1973A, pp. 55, 117, 117, 121, 200, 311-315 311- 315 and Razi Ra zi 1973B, para pa ra 45). Again Ag ain one can see here that ‘intellect’ is not excluded from the realm of the mystical but it occupies only the place traditionally assigned in Sufism to the ‘lower soul’. Obviously, this fivefold structure of ‘subtle substances’ or ‘senses of the heart’ parallels the five external senses in some way. In fact, our author is quite explicit in establishing a parallel between the physical sense of touch and the intellect considered as one among the five ‘senses of the heart’. He writes: “Just as the tactile sense is present in every limb of the body, enabling the body with all its parts to benefit from whatever is accessible to the tactile sense, the same applies to the intellect with regard to the heart, so the heart in its totality is enabled, thanks to intellect, to benefit from all intelligibles”. In a similar way, the ‘heart’ qua ‘subtle substance’, the ‘secret’ and the ‘spirit’ can function as sight, hearing and olfactory ‘senses of the heart’, respectively, while the ‘arcane’, of course, plays the role of the palat pa latee (Razi (Ra zi 1973A, p. 193; 193; 1973B, para par a 65).2 65) .21 In the light of the foregoing descriptions, it is more than evident that the arcane, or ‘palate of the heart’, is the true organ of mafifat-i shuhudl, the direct mystical ‘experience’. What is fundamentally meant by this ‘experiencing’ or ‘tasting’ of cognition can, however, be fully understood only when we return with Razi to the Koranic ‘Niche of lights’ (24:35) and imagine the arcane as the wick in the burning oil-lamp. Indeed, he explains,











316

Rec herche her che s en spiritucilite iranienn iran iennee

word ‘wellnight’ in the verse under discussion. As long as the ‘oil’ is not, in fact, ‘touched by fire’, it is only an improper or non-authentic ( majazi) glow that obtains. One is reminded here of the ‘cold water’, Razl’s metaphor for the intellect of the philosophers and dialectical theologians. His point is that neither the pure spirit-oil (the angelic world, malakut ) nor the niche with the glass though without lamp, oil and wick (the carnal world, mulk) can by themselves make the true Light shine forth. Man in his wholeness is needed for the ‘hidden treasure’ to appear; the entirety of the lightniche, in which the lamp is lit by the ‘fire of divine light’. But only the ‘wick’ and the ‘oil’ can really ‘tell the tale’ of this theophany ( tajalli ), when they both ‘let go their being’ ( badhl-i wujud = fa n a ’) to experience the ‘savor’ of ‘burning’. It is the wick which makes the love-play between fire and oil possible, whereby the oil exchanges its ‘non-authentic being’ for ‘true Being’ ( wujud-i haq lql = b a qa ’) and the heretofore hidden ‘fire-potential’ (;nariyat ) becomes manifest as real (Razi 1973A, pp. 120-125; 1973B, paras 55-60). 3. The praise of folly

Najm Na jm-i -i R az l’s image ima ge o f man ma n presen pre sented ted above abo ve needs nee ds furthe fur therr elabora elab oration tion.. Given the human being’ being ’s potential potential for becoming a perfect ‘knower o f God ’, less on the basis of his rational capability than due to his integration of all contradictions, it is reasonable to expect that this relative devaluation of the













Stages o f God-cog God-cognit nition ion an d the Praise Praise o f Folly. Folly.

317

za lum ) and foolish But man has born it. Indeed he has been arrogant ( zalum (jahul)” (33:72). The specific place assigned to man in his Koranic verse has always puzz pu zzle led d interpr inte rprete eters. rs. M odern ode rn religi rel igioni onists sts,, sugges sug gestin ting g that tha t the myst my steri eriou ouss ‘pledg e’ may mean life itself, itself, have paralleled the theme with a neo-Sudanese creation myth in which the creator-god Soko first asked the stones if they wanted to have children and then die, like humans. “No!”, they answered, so that thereafter they existed forever but remained sterile, in contra st to humans w ho are mortal mo rtal but procreative.2 procre ative.22 2 However, to explain why man is called ‘arrogant’ and ‘foolish’ in this context, a closer point of association could perhaps be found to start with in the myth of the prohibited tree of knowledge or cognition. Moreover, this association can be supported by an ancient exegetic tradition according to which no more time passed between man’s acceptance of the pledge and his











318

Recher Rec herche chess en spirit sp iritua ualite lite iran ienne ienn e

Razi classifies these six categories of spirits under two different general rubrics, so that we actually have two parallel waves of emanation from the second to the seventh stage. stage. U nder the first rubric, rubric, there are: 1. the spirits of the prophets, 2. those of the great mystics (awliyd ’), ’), 3. those of the believers, 4. those of the sinners sinners ( ‘asiyan), 5. 5. those o f the ‘hypocr ‘hyp ocrites’ ites’ (munajiqan ), 6. those of the unbelievers ( kafiran ). Under Un der the second: 1. the spirits o f humans collectively, 2. those of the angels, 3. those of the jinn, and 4. through 6. those of other categories of demons and devils ( shayatln, mar ada ad a and abalisa). On a lower level, the spirit of animals and plants was created from the remains of the last decoctions of demons’ and devils’ spirits, while the elements elements of the material material world were made out of the remaining murky sugar dregs. Now, Now , the funda fu ndame mental ntal idea Razi Raz i wi wishe shess to convey con vey is that tha t the darkne dar kness ss and turbidity of the sugar are generated not only in the material world. On











Stages o f God-cogn God-cogniti ition on and the Praise o f Folly.

319

Density, on the other hand, is the quality of earth, which is the fundamental substance of baser genres. Indeed the special characteristic of earth is its commonness and coarseness, whence comes the fact that animals are of grosser type and baser aims, seeking earthen, perishable fodder; for they are of the very earth. From the fire-quality stems all wrong-doing, and from the earth-quality, all ignorance. Drawn to the edge, these qualities are called za lum lu m l and ja b u ll -they paradoxically turn out to be precisely that ‘arrogance’ and ‘folly’ which together enabled man to accept the ‘burden of cognition’. Fire obviously plays a decisive role in the thought of our Iranian mystic. We already have come to know it as the divine fire of love in his interpretation o f the theme o f the ‘light niche’ niche ’ - the fire igniting the ‘spirit‘spiritoil’ in the ‘lamp’, and whose blaze is experienced by the black ‘wick’, the ‘arcane substance’ of man. In the present context, too, Razi underscores its











320

Reche Re che rches rch es en spiri sp iritua tuality lity iranien iran ienne ne

cannot be eaten raw, but must first be wrought into bread, bread, being p assed from one master-artisan (uslad) to another and dealt with appropriately. Similarly, the wheat o f religion, which Adam had eaten raw, had to be passed from one prop pr ophe hett to the next ne xt to be skillf sk illfully ully work wo rked ed,, until un til it emerg em erged ed as the perf pe rfect ected ed brea br ead d o f religi reli gion on from fro m the ‘oven o f lov lo v e’, e’ , Muham Mu ham m ad (Razi (R azi 1973A, 1973 A, pp. 147152).24 To return to the other human characteristic, the earthen heaviness of ‘folly’ (jahull) that resulted from the turbidity and increased density of the ‘sugar’, we have seen that its proper representatives within the creation are the beasts fashioned from ‘earth’. However, the particular quality of this weighty element is not only ‘commonness and coarseness’, as we have already heard. The sugar’s turbidity that leads to bodily existence, and of which the angels, being spirits of light, possess but little, is at the same time the ‘dough-base of humility and submission to a higher principle’ ( ‘ubudlyat ), ), i.e. the basic religious attitude of man towards God. The angels











Stage Stages' s' o f God-cog God-cogniti nition on and the Praise o f Folly.

321

oyster-shell in the ‘chest’ and appointed Adam’s spirit (jan-i Adam) guardian o f the the treasure. Now No w that th at w as a situa sit uatio tion n totall tot ally y uninte uni ntelli lligib gible le to the th e angels. ange ls. For Fo r them, them , Adam’s body was nothing but a piece of clay. Sly old Iblis, on the other hand, did have a notion. Seeking to pursue the matter further, he circled around Adam from all sides, so as to examine him with his ‘one-eyed eye sight’. When he saw his open mouth, he said to the angels: “Just wait, I am going to solve this problem! I am going to enter through this hole and see what is going on”. Having said this, he entered Adam and as he examined him from inside, he discovered a small world, a microcosm: a sample of everything he had seen in the outer world was present within Adam. However, when he sought to push ahead to the heart, he had to turn about. The King’s chamber was locked up tight! Thus say the Sufi masters: “Whoever has been rejected by one heart is rejected by all, and one wh o has













322

Rech Re cherc erc hes en spiri sp iritua tua lite lit e iranien iran ienne ne

Razi’s obvious disdain for the ‘dry ascetics’ and his sympathy for the ‘wild dervishes’ are more than literary pose. They are, rather, the direct expression of his mystical thought, a cast of mind that, with its open acceptance of the world, stands in a marked contrast to the radical abnegation of it in early Sufism. It is true that Sufis long before Razi had, as ‘knowers’ and ‘lovers’, distanced themselves from unmitigated ‘asceticism’ ( zuhd . hd ); ); but the main principle of this asceticism, ‘fighting the compulsive zu











Stages o f God-co God-cogni gnitio tion n and the Praise o f Folly.. Folly..

323 323

Let us interrupt Najm-i Razi for a moment at this point. We can see that he has established a striking paradox. On the one hand, the mere animal soul enjoys no subsistence whatsoever, whereas the human soul got a ‘taste’ of two kinds of subsistence. On the other hand, it is not, as one might expect, due to its relationship to the celestial spirit that the human soul owes its taste of the highest kind of subsistence, of absolute eternity, but due to the mystery of the ‘molding’ of the body with ‘God’s two hands’. In other











324

Recher Rec herche chess en s piritu pir ituali alite te iranie ira nienn nnee

she nevertheless possessed some praiseworthy qualities as well. Her two princi pri ncipal pal vices vice s are the two main ma in irration irra tional al faculti fac ulties es o f the soul sou l in the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition, the ‘covetous’ and the ‘wrathful’, which are usually rendered shahwa and ghadab in Arabic. Arabic. Instead of shahwa, however, our author prefers to call the ‘covetous’ hawa, the ‘downward puli’. This terminology is perfectly consistent with his general outlook. For the ‘downward pull’ stems from the elements water and earth, while the











Stages o f God-cogni God-cognition tion and the Praise o f Folly.

325

returns to the wrist o f the king, and the steed of the soul into the B uraq o f the spirit. Sensing the call to return, this soul-animal hurls itself like the ‘crazy’ moth with both wings, ‘folly’ and ‘arrogance’, at the candle of Unity. Thus, Razi concludes, he who knows himself in this sense as a moth, knows God as the ‘candle’ {ibid., pp. 175-186; 198-201; 405). References











326

Rech R echerc erche hess en s pirit pi ritua ualit litee iran i ranien ienne ne

NICH NI CHOL OLSO SON, N, R. A., 1921, Studies in Islamic Mysticism , Cambridge. D er K oran or an:: Komm Ko mm entar en tar und un d Konk Ko nkor orda danz nz,, Stuttgart. PARET, R., 1993, Der Al -Mur uras asal alat at bayn Sadr Sa dr al-Di al- Din n al-Q al -Q unaw un aw i wa N asir as ir alQUNAWI, 1995, Al-M Dln al-Tu al- Tusi, si, edited by G. Schubert, Beirut.

QUSHAYRI, 1379/1959, Al-R Al -Risa isala la al-Q al- Q usha us hayr yriyy iyya a, Cairo.

Landolt • Stages of God-Cognition and the Praise of Folly According to Najm-i Razi

Recommend Documents