SUBUD―THE SUFI BACKGROUND BACKGROUND J .G .Benne
Subud – The Sufi Background © The Estate of J.G. Bennett 2014
Contents
Foreword Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
Foreword This pamphlet was written in 1961 and published after the author had resigned as a Subud helper after three years of intensive service. The term “latihan” is frequently used in the text and refers to the central practice of Subud. It is not explained here
as it is assumed that readers will already have direct experience, for which no words can substitute. Anyone wishing to know more about Subud is advised to contact their local group. Ben Bennett
Part 1 Any study of Subud must start with the obvious but too much neglected fact that Subud is a product of Islam. Pak Subuh is himself a devout and well instructed Moslem; and his whole teaching, its content as well as its mode of expression, derives from Islamic sources. But this is not always easy to recognize in the West where Moslem, and especially Sufi, doctrines and practices are unfamiliar. We tend to confuse Subud with the source from which it derives and to believe that Pak Subuh is expressing a personal doctrine―a characteristically Subud point of view―when in fact he is simply behaving as a good Moslem or a good Sufi. Two examples, of no particular importance in themselves, ill serve to illustrate this point. In one of the later chapters of Concerning Subud [2nd Ed. p.169] there is an account of a German oman, apparently suffering from senile dementia, who applied to Pak Subuh for relief from distracting noises in the head. He opened her and sent her home with instructions to continue the latihan by reciting the Lord's Prayer every evening. At first sight it might seem surprising and commendably broad-minded that a Moslem should give such advice. But I think there is little doubt that what Pak Subuh really had in mind was not the Lord's Prayer as we know it, but the Moslem adaptation of the Lord's Prayer, which is traditionally used as a charm in case of sickness:If any man suffers, or a brother of his suffers, let him say: "Our Lord God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; Thy peace is in heaven and on earth; as Thy mercy is in heaven, so practise Thy mercy on earth; forgive us our faults and our sins, Thou art the Lord of the good men; send down mercy from Thy mercy, and healing from Thy healing, on this pain, that it may be healed again." [Studies in Muslim Ethics, Donaldson, p.82.] The second example is perhaps less obvious. Among the questions, which the Benedictines of St. [1] Wandrille put to Pak Subuh w as one relating to the possibility of a conflict between inward guidance received in the latihan and the injunctions of Scripture as interpreted by the Church. They received the following reply:"With regard to the Scriptures, Pak Subuh said that their content was perfect and complete: it was revelation. But man also contributed his share in respect of their outward form. A scribe might have thought that to alter this or that passage would make it more edifying. Hence one ought not to accept each word as wholly inspired. Scripture is only perfect as a Whole, since it [2] is the Whole that comes from God.” Here Pak Subuh was reflecting, though with great delicacy, the traditional Moslem view of the Gospels. On the one hand, Jesus is recognized as belonging to the line of Prophets, which began with [3] Abraham and ended with Mohammed; and it is said of him in the Koran (V:50): "And we brought him the Gospel in which is guidance and light; and (he was) verifying what was before him with respect to the Pentateuch, and was a guidance and warning to the God-fearing". On the other hand, the
Koran also indicates (IV:156) that the story of the Crucifixion is a misunderstanding or an interpolation; and the same is held to be true of other passages. From this comes the rather paradoxical situation described in Pak Subuh's answer. Whereas an appeal to the authority of the Gospels in general or as a whole is valid, an appeal to the authority of any particular passage is not necessarily so. It is only the whole or the content which is inspired: the parts may be the product of human error. Neither of these examples has been cited in a spirit of criticism. On the contrary, Pak Subuh's advice to the German woman was clearly excellent, irrespective of the precise form of prayer intended. Similarly, his reply to the Benedictines was such as most Christian exegetes would accept without [4] hesitation. My only point is that in both cases there is a background of Moslem tradition, which many Western readers would miss. To recognize its existence does not invalidate what Pak Subuh says, though it may sometimes modify the significance we attach to it. In the two examples so far given the degree of modification is slight; in other cases it may be considerable. I shall hope to show in the course of this paper that Pak Subuh's teaching, seen in its Moslem setting, often takes on an unexpected colour; but for the moment one further example must suffice. We are constantly assured that Subud has no doctrine and requires nothing but sincerity in the practice of the latihan. So far so good; but it may sometimes occur to us to wonder precisely what is meant by sincerity in this context. A man who approaches the latihan as a kind of therapy, which he hopes will rid him of some physical or nervous defect, may well be sincere. Indeed, since his aim is clear-cut, he may even be more sincere (on one understanding of the term) than a man who comes with some doubtful and hesitant idea of worship, which he could scarcely define even to himself. Or again, what of the man who genuinely believes that worship consists in having visions and other unusual experiences? Or the helper―and there are many of these―who regards himself as divinely commissioned to guide and instruct others? Both are undoubtedly sincere in the accepted meaning of the term―that is what is wrong with them. But we may also feel that they are lacking in the precise quality, whatever that may be, which Pak Subuh meant to indicate. If we then turn to the Sufi writers in search of a definition, we receive a clear answer, though not perhaps in the terms that we had expected. Let me quote the tenth century mystic Abu Sa'id Fadlu'llah of Mayhana in Khurasan. He was once asked "What is sincerity?" and replied as follows:"The Prophet has said that sincerity (ikhlas) is a divine consciousness ( sirr ) in man's heart and soul, which sirr is the object of His pure contemplation and is replenished by God's pure contemplation thereof. Whosoever declares God to be One, his belief in the divine Unity depends on that sirr . That sirr i s a substance of God's grace ( latifa)―for He is gracious (latif ) unto His servants (Koran. XLII:18)―and it is produced by the bounty and mercy of God, not by the acquisition and action of man. At first, He produces a need and longing and sorrow in man's heart; then He contemplates that need and sorrow, and in His bounty and mercy deposits in that heart a spiritual substance (latifa) which is hidden from the knowledge of angel and prophet. That substance is called sirr Allah, and that is ikhlas ... It is immortal and does not become naught, since it subsists in God's contemplation of it. It belongs to the Creator: the creatures have no part therein, and in the body it is a loan. Whoever possesses it is ‘living' ( hayy) and whoever lacks it is 'animal' (hayawan). There is a great difference between the ‘living' and the
'animal'. [Studies in Islamic Mysticism. R.A.Nicholson, p.50.] Most Subud members, I think, will gladly accept this passage as a true expression of what Pak Subuh means when he speaks of 'sincerity'. It is clear that some such belief as this must lie at the heart of Subud and that without it the practice of the Iatihan would be meaningless. Nor is there anything here to disturb a Christian. On the contrary, he will find in Abu Sa'id's sirr Allah something closely analogous to the spark, the synteresis or the divine ground of the soul, of which Christian mystics are accustomed to speak. But one further consequence follows. If we accept this belief, we must abandon the first part of the statement with which we started―namely, that Subud has no doctrine. By adopting Abu Sa'id’s definition we have in fact committed ourselves to a doctrine―a formal statement of belief―of far-reaching importance. Some of its implications will be examined below.
Part 2 With this preamble we can turn to a more detailed examination of the sources of Pak Subuh's teaching. It will be convenient to start with the ascending scheme of material, vegetable, animal and finally human souls, or essences, which provides the basis of the Subud symbol. This system, which in one aspect might be called a working psychology rather than a doctrine, is not, as some people suppose, a product of Pak Subuh's own intuition or inward experience. It is a commonplace of Islamic thought, hich constantly appears in one form or another in both Sunni and Sufi religious writings. As one authority puts it:"What is spoken of as the evolutionary philosophy of nature in Islam, which amounts to a recognition of different stages of development―from the stage of minerals to that of plants, from the stage of plants to that of animals, and from the stage of animals to that of man―is used as a background for the presentation of the struggle that man must make for moral progress. Only by proving himself in some way superior to the stage of the animals can man attain to that high type of existence for which he has potential capacity or aptitude. [Donaldson, op.cit, p.129] It might be thought from this passage that the upward progress of mankind from the material to the human was normally understood in a metaphorical sense only. But this is not so. As Sir Mohammed [5] Iqbal remarks in one of his books t he Islamic view of destiny has a biological as well as an ethical basis. As an example of this I quote the following Sufi account of the formation of the human embryo, hich is based on a thirteenth century Persian treatise:"The embryo partakes of all four elements, earth, water, air and fire; now these in the Greater World produce a triple offspring, mineral, vegetable and animal. A similar division is therefore made in the human body. The members and limbs which are first formed partake of the four elements in different proportions, and the combined result corresponds to the mineral Kingdom. The powers of attraction, absorption, digestion, rejection, growth and formation are next developed in the members and limbs, which then require nourishment. This they receive, in the shape of blood, introduced through the placenta; the chyme contained in this becoming matured is developed into the vegetative spirit, corresponding to the second division of the three Kingdoms. When the digestive and other internal organs have become fully developed, the heart attracts to itself the essence of this vegetative spirit, and having further matured it, forms the life; the essence of this again is attracted to the brain, where, after being matured, it is developed into the soul, and the remainder dispersed through the nerves into the limbs, where it becomes the source of sense and motion. This corresponds to the animal Kingdom of the Greater World. Each of these developments occupies one month, embryo, mineral, vegetative and' animal." [Oriental Mysticism. R.H.Palmer, p.63]
The same writer goes on to say that the elixir, so to call it, distilled by the brain is the Instinctive Spirit; that is to say, the natural essence or central principle of a man. But this quality is one which he shares with all animals; and though it may be regarded, in a sense, as a "true guide and lantern for his feet", yet it gives out "but a flickering and cloudy light" until it has been strengthened and purified by the true Spirit of Humanity. "When man has attained to this he necessarily becomes free from all that is evil, and is adorned instead with every good and noble quality". [Palmer, op.cit, p.63] It will be seen that the term Spirit of Humanity, used in this sense, bears a certain resemblance to Abu Sa'id's sirr Allah; but a discussion of the exact relationship between the two will have to be left to a later section. The same problem is also approached from an ethical or philosophical point of view. Here the starting-point is Aristotle's division of the soul into the vegetable the animal, and the rational, which Moslem philosophers have generally accepted, and which they have combined with the Koranic description of the three inner faculties or tendencies of the soul. The result is to produce a scheme of thought which corresponds very closely, though on a different level, with the quasi-biological scheme given above. On this point I may quote the opinions of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, the great thinker of the twelfth century, who occupies a position in Islam comparable with St. Augustine in the Christian Church: "The expression employed in the Qur'an, al-nafs al-mutma 'inna (the tranquil soul) (XXXIX:27), is explained by al-Ghazali as indicating the state of soul when reason succeeds in resisting and controlling the evil passions, when it has subdued and harmonised the animal forces, and has learned to make use of them as sources of constructive energy. "Thus if the soul seeks to help the intellect and establishes anger and indignation over desire, at the same time not permitting anger and indignation to become headstrong, and even making use of desire to keep them under restraint, thus making use of one against the other as the occasion demands, then its powers will remain justly balanced and its qualities become virtuous." This rational self, which is designated in the Qur'an as al-nafs al-mutma 'inna, is able to experience a range of freedom, for it comes to appreciate that in attaining to this stage, and in managing to continue in it, reason bas been frequently called upon to exercise the power of choice, and to this extent al-Ghazali believed that experience suggests that man is free. This freedom of rational choice, it will be observed, approximates what was meant by some writers as the function of the faculty of appropriation (al-'aql mukhtasab). In this way the soul would attain a unity and mastery within itself, which might be described as a harmony of the inner self, or as individual moral integrity. It is equally possible, however, and indeed more frequent in occurrence, for anger and desire to [6] be so instigated by the Satanic forces, al-shaitaniya, that they gain ascendancy over the soul. Reason then loses its proper mastery and becomes a slave. The soul, overwhelmed by evil and making that which the passions suggest look pleasing (Qur'an XVI:63), will then act as the instigating soul (al-nafs al-ammara). Nevertheless, al-Ghazali insists that, even when evil comes to be most frequently suggested, there is in conformity with the Qur'an (LXXV:2) a divine element that keeps struggling against the evil tendencies and that is seldom completely
subdued. This divine element expresses itself through the upbraiding soul (al-nafs allawwama), which appears to function in much the same way as a conscience." [Donaldson, op.cit, pp.148-9] I should add that when al-Ghazali speaks of 'reason' in this context, he does not mean simply the power of logical thought, but rather an inborn faculty of discrimination―a quality of true humanity―which in its highest manifestation is "a perfect gift of the superhuman 'aql fa'al , the Dispenser of Forms in the universe." In this sense his line of thought is much closer to that of Pak Subuh (or of Abu Sa'id) than might at first appear. There is also a third approach, implicit in the Persian account of the formation of the human embryo already given, which may be called the mystical or theosophical. Moslem thought considers man as a true microcosm of the universe or Greater World; and it follows that be must incorporate in his own being both the four elements of which the universe is composed and the three stages of development―the material, the vegetable and the animal―which can be marked in the visible world. It also follows that he must reflect, inversely as it were, the seven spheres of the invisible or spiritual orld, which surround the universe in an ascending series. One can, therefore, use the same terms―as indeed Pak Subuh does―to indicate either the stages of man's development or the rising spheres of the heavens; one must necessarily be a true reflection of the other. By a further extension of the same thought it is natural to regard each major prophet, of the line which culminated in Mohammed, as presiding over one of these stages or heavens, thus marking the progressive character of God's revelation to man. Each of these three elements has its place in Pak Subuh's system. It is scarcely necessary to give examples of the first two―the quasi- biological idea of a gradation of natures or essences; or the more philosophic idea of an inner harmony to be obtained when each of these forces fulfils but does not exceed its allotted rôle. All this is to be found, implicit or explicit, in any description of Subud. The third, or theosophic, element is fully expressed in the elaborate account [7] of the stages in the Subud path given by Husein Rofé summarized as follows: Rewani or Shaitani; the Material or Satanic. It is associated with the element earth and the colour yellow; it has no presiding prophet. The appropriate Islamic term for this stage is Tariqat i .e. the acceptance of a discipline or rule of life. Nabati; the Vegetable. This is associated with the element water and the colour white. The presiding prophet is Abraham and the appropriate term Hikmat i .e. Wisdom, but here used, I think, in the sense of an understanding of the mysteries of nature. Haiwani; the Animal. This is associated with the element fire and the colour red. The presiding prophet is Moses and the appropriate Mar’ifat. This is usually translated gnosis but here means, I think, esoteric knowledge rather than direct illumination. Jasmani and lnsani ; the Human in its physical and spiritual aspects respectively. It is associated with the element air and the colour black. The presiding prophet is Jesus and the appropriate term is Haqiqat i.e. the state of being or expressing the Reality; illumination.
Ruhani; the Angelic. The presiding prophet is Mohammed. (No colour is mentioned, though no doubt green would be appropriate.) The term is Shariat . This derives from Shari'a the Law, and implies, I take it, the condition of apostleship (in the Moslem sense) i.e. of being a divinely inspired law-giver. Rahmani ) Rabbani ) These two superior states have no attributes or descriptions; but it is worth remarking that their names derive from the two cardinal names of Allah: al-Rahman, the Merciful and al-Rab, the Lord. We shall see the significance of this later. The ascription of characteristic colours to the various stages or spheres is very common in Sufi ritings, though there does not seem to be any general agreement about which colour applies to hich. Of the various schemes of this sort that I have seen―a minute fraction of the total―only one resembles Pak Subuh's at all closely. This is the curious description of the five psychic organs given by a latter-day Sufi, Shaikh Muhammad Amin, who died in 1914. Professor Arberry cites it more as a curiosity than anything else; but it may fittingly conclude this section. The organs in question are: "The qalb (heart) is two fingers' breadth below the left nipple towards the side; it is shaped like a pine-cone. It is under the foot (i.e. religious control) of Adam; its light is yellow. The ruh (spirit) is two fingers' breadth below the right nipple towards the breast. It is under the foot of Noah and Abraham; its light is red. The sirr (inmost conscience) is two fingers' breadth above the left nipple towards the breast. It is under the foot of Moses. Its light is white. The khafi (hidden depth) is two fingers' breadth above the right nipple towards the breast. It is beneath the foot of Jesus. Its light is black. The akhfa (most hidden depth) is in the middle of the breast. It is under the foot of Muhammad; its light green." [Sufism. pp.131-2] It will be noticed that, apart from a reversal (perhaps accidental) of the colours of Abraham and Moses, this sequence follows Pak Subuh exactly. Yet the correspondence is more superficial than real. If we were to try to combine the two schemes, we should find ourselves associating the qalb usually regarded as the seat of the vegetable, if not the animal, essence with the material level, the sirr usually regarded as purely spiritual, with the animal level, and so on. This is a fair example, though a minor one, of the complexities which await any student of Sufism, a flexible system all the exponents of which claim, as Pak Subuh also does, to be speaking from their own direct experience.
Part 3 I must now try to deal with the other aspect of the Subud symbol; that is to say, its invisible component. "The emblem is completed by the addition of two further essences that cannot be shown by points or lines or circles or any other geometrical symbol, for they are omnipresent, pervading all [8] that exists." T hese are the two Great Life Forces, to which Pak Subuh gives the names Roh Illofi and Roh Kudus. Before we can form any conception of what he means by these terms, it is necessary [9] to turn back and consider, however briefly, some aspects of the early history of Sufism. Sufism first made its appearance as a recognizable movement in the eighth century A.D., that is to say, the second century of the Moslem era. At this stage it was primarily, if not wholly, an ascetic movement; a protest against the luxury and corruption which had inevitably followed the early conquests of Islam. Much of its inspiration came from contact with the Christian solitaries and monks of Syria; and it is probable that they also provided, though indirectly, the name of the movement. Most scholars derive 'Sufi' from the Arabic word for wool ( suf ) and find the origin of the name in the oolen cloaks which the ascetics wore, perhaps in imitation of monastic habits. But it is likely that some Buddhist influence also made itself felt even at this early stage. One of the most active Sufi areas in the second and third Moslem centuries was the Persian province of Khurasan, which had previously been a flourishing Buddhist centre. The two basic ideas or key-words of early Sufism were zuhd , abstinence or the turning away from the orld, and its positive converse tawakkul or trust in God. Both were interpreted in their most extreme and primitive form. On the former it is only necessary to quote the opinion of the early theologian, al-Hasan al-Basri, which was typical of the ascetics of this period:''For this world has neither worth nor weight with God; so slight it is. it weighs not with God so much as a pebble or a single clod of earth; as I am told, God has created nothing more hateful to Him than this world, and from the day He created it He has not looked upon it, so much He hates it." [Arberry, op.cit. p.34] The opposite concept of tawakkul was also apt to lead to certain extravagances:"The command to trust in God some of them carried out so thoroughly that they would not act on their own initiative at all, refusing, for example, to seek food or take medicine; and they scarcely exaggerate when they describe their attitude as that of a corpse in the hands of the [10] washer who prepares it for burial. This kind of devotion might sink into lip-service and hypocrisy; still, for many of them, it was no matter of rule: it was as intensely real as the terrors which inspired it. Hasan of Basra, hearing mention of a man who shall only be saved after having passed a thousand years in Hell-fire, burst into tears and exclaimed: "Oh, would that I were like that man!""
[The Idea of Personality in Sufism, R.A.Nicholson p8] But this bleak creed of denial contained within itself the elements of a true devotion. Its characteristic mode of expression was the dhikr . This word means literally 'remembrance' and is used in precisely the same sense as the Christian 'recollection' or the 'practice of the presence of God'. This method of devotion, in which it is not difficult to see the origin of the latihan, has always been the central feature of Sufi worship. It can take an almost infinite variety of forms, ranging from a private act of silent recollection―a state comparable with that of the Prayer of Quiet―to an elaborate and noisy ritual, accompanied by singing and dancing―and sometimes disfigured by the use of drugs―which [11] has as its object the production of an artificial ecstasy. I n this connection it is interesting to note that belief in the purifying effects of physical movement is very early in date. Thus when Abu Sa’id as reproved for allowing his young men to take part in the sema (ritual dance)―it being held, apparently, that such exercises were only for staid and well-established initiates, he replied:"The souls of young men are not yet purged of lust: indeed, it may be the prevailing element; and lust takes possession of all the limbs. Now if a young dervish claps his bands, the lust of his hands will be dissipated; and if he tosses his feet, the lust of his feet will be lessened ... it is better that the fire of their lust should be dissipated in the sema than in something else", [Donaldson. op.cit. p.216] By the early part of the ninth century Sufism was beginning to undergo its first important transformation; it was developing from an ascetic movement into a cult of mystical devotion:"It was not after all a difficult transition to make from saying that all else but God is nothing (which is the logical outcome of the extreme ascetic teaching that the world is worthless and only God's service is a proper preoccupation of the believer's heart), to claiming that when self as well as the world has been cast aside the mystic has passed away into God," [Arberry. op.cit p.55] We may take as typical of this new development a saying of the famous woman mystic Rabi'a of Basra, who is generally credited with having introduced into Sufism the doctrine of mahabbat or divine love. When asked for her hand in marriage, she replied:"The contract of marriage is for those who have a phenomenal existence. But in my case there is no such existence, for l have ceased to exist and have passed out of self. I exist for God and am altogether His. I live in the shadow of His command. The marriage-contract must he asked for from Him not from me." [Arberry, op.cit p.42] This brief extract will serve to indicate how much the original Sufi conceptions of zahd and tawakkul had been modified. They were now giving place―though the actual terms do not seem to have been in
general use until later―to two new conceptions, fana and baqa, which were to become the keywords of later Sufi doctrine. Fana, like all Sufi terms, is a word of many meanings. Its literal sense is 'passing away': the fading of the egotistical in the light of the divine. It can therefore be used in the sense of 'abandon', much as de Caussade uses that terms or in the more active sense of the 'annihilation of the will' as understood by Benet de Canfield and his followers. But it also has a more extreme application, which later became a source of deep controversy, both among Sufis and between them and orthodox Moslems. Fana can mean 'annihilation'; either the complete absorption of self in the contemplation of God as in the state of union―which we may suppose to be what Rabia was speaking of; or by a further extension the total absorption of the individual soul into a pantheistic One―in which ease the term becomes the equivalent of the Buddhist nirvana. The complementary term baqa has an equally wide application, since it represents the positive aspect of fana. It means literally 'subsistence' and can be used simply to indicate the displacement of one quality or psychological state by another―especially the displacement of a negative quality by a positive one. Thus the 'passing away' of ignorance implies the 'subsistence' of knowledge, and so on. But behind this lies the idea of the Reality of God as opposed to the unreality (or comparative unreality) of the phenomenal world. In its last extension, therefore, baqa comes to mean the state of 'living in God', which is the corollary of a total fana or 'dying to self'. But it will be noticed that this concept is opposed to that of fana―nirvana, since it implies a continued (though totally changed) life [12] as an individual entity. Here we come to the heart of the matter. For the first century or so of its existence Sufism had been no more than an ascetic or devotional movement within lslam. It had developed certain characteristic practices such as the dhikr , but there had been no need to develop a specialized doctrine in the theological sense. But now that the movement had adopted a mystical standpoint, properly so-called, and had begun to make use of such terms as fana and baqa the need for a new doctrine had become acute. The rigid framework of orthodox Moslem theology leaves no room for terms and conceptions such as these, its whole emphasis is on the absolute transcendence, the complete 'otherness' of Allah. The whole universe is sustained from moment to moment by His will alone. He is the only real agent in existence, who creates us and all that we do immediately and directly without any secondary cause. His relation to man is that of master and slave: "He misguides whom He pleases and leads aright hom He pleases" (Koran XVI:95). The same idea is expressed still more forcibly in the Traditions (hadith), where it is recorded that when Allah created Adam, he drew forth his posterity from his loins in two handfuls, one white as silver, the other black as coal, saying: "These are in Paradise and I care not; and those are in Hell and I care not." On this particular tradition one authority comments, not without reason:"This is the end of the whole matter, and to this must return the vision of the Muslim mystic and the ecstasy of the Muslim saint; the dreams of a lover and beloved, the groanings and travailings of creation. Whenever the devout life, with its spiritual aspirations and fervent longings, touches the scheme of Muslim theology, it must thus bend and break. For it, within Islam itself, there is no place." [The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam. D.B.Macdonald. p.301]
This is no doubt an extreme view, which only the most rigidly orthodox would fully endorse. But it illustrates very clearly the central dilemma in which the Sufis were caught. It would be outside the scope of this paper, even if I were capable, to attempt a full discussion of the various methods by hich they tried to resolve it and to accommodate the reality of their own religious experience within the framework of orthodox theology. The present purpose will be served by comparing two such attempts―one failure and one doubtful success―which between them exercised a decisive influence on the whole subsequent development of Sufi thought.
Part 4 The failure, so to call it, was that of Husayn Ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, to a Christian the most sympathetic of all Moslem saints. He was martyred at the beginning of the fourth century of the Moslem era, and thus belongs to the transitional period of which we have been speaking. It does not appear that he set out consciously to construct a mystical theology; but in the course of trying to describe and explain his own experience, he did in fact evolve such a system. Its nature is indicated in the following passage [13] from his Kitabal-Tawasin:"God looked into eternity, prior to everything, contemplated the essence of His splendour, and then desired to project outside Himself His supreme joy and Jove with the object of speaking to them. He also created an image of Himself with all His attributes and names. This image was Adam―the Huwa Huwa (He, He), whom God glorified and exalted. Glory to God who manifested His Nasut (humanity) wherein lay the brilliant light of His Lahut (divinity); then appeared to His creatures in the form of him that eats and drinks." [Quoted by Affifi. op.cit. p. 79] It will be seen that al-Hallaj’s system is a dualism, which evidently owed much to Christian teaching. It depends upon the existence of two natures, a divine and a human, which were conjoined in the original, perfect man (He, He)―that is to say, Adam before the fall. The path of the mystic is to seek this union again in his own being:“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.” [The Mystics of Islam, R.A.Nicholson. p.151] In describing this final goal, al-Hallaj expressly used the word hulul (union), which is associated in Moslem minds with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. Moreover, though he acknowledged the pre-eminence of Mohammed as the light from which all prophecy proceeds, it was in Jesus that he found the perfect type of the transfigured and essentialized man, who reveals from within himself alaqq, the Reality. Indeed the phrase 'him that eats and drinks' in the passage quoted above, is commonly held to refer to Jesus. Such a doctrine could evidently find no place in Islam and died with [14] al-Hallaj. Nevertheless, his teaching had left its mark a nd we shall soon see the reflection of many of his ideas, though in a much altered form, in the work of the second figure with whom we have to deal, Muhyi al-Din Ibn 'Arabi, who was born more than two hundred years later. Professor Arberry marks the transition from one to the other as follows:"Theosophy had seemed a dangerous game to play in Islam since al-Hallaj paid for his indiscreet enthusiasms with his life. Since the preaching of Union with God was liable to
misunderstanding and open to the charge of forbidden 'incarnationism' (hulul ), it was necessary to discover some substitute doctrine which while coming to much the same port, sailed nearer the wind of orthodoxy. We have seen how al-Hallaj surprisingly took Jesus as his example of a holy man in whom God was incarnated. Sufi theory had only to substitute Muhammad for Jesus, and to moderate the extravagance of al-Hallaj’s language, to invent a system of speculative theosophy which would beguile all but the wariest critics." [Arberry, op.cit, p.93] This is certainly true: and it is with this aspect of Ibn 'Arabi's thought―his development of what may be called a Moslem logos doctrine―that we shall be mainly concerned, since it provides a basis for Pak Subuh's theory of Life-Forces. But this was not the whole story. The substitution of Muhammad for Jesus as the exemplar of his doctrine might have saved al-Hallaj but the doctrine itself would still have been unacceptable in Islam because of its essential dualism. On this point I may quote Professor Nicholson. Speaking of the Sufi attitude towards the central Moslem doctrine of the unity of God, he says “Sufis, however, regard the Unity of God not as anything that can be apprehended by the intellect, but as a mystery that is revealed only to those whom God permits to realize it in their religious experience. We have seen that in order to love and know God the Sufi must lose himself in the love and knowledge of God. Similarly the muwahhid or unifier of God cannot fully realize that God is one except by losing himself in the Oneness of God. Unification (Tawhid ) is defined as "the absoluteness of the Divine nature realized in the passing-away of the human nature", so that "the man's last state reverts to his first state and he becomes even as he was before he existed." That a doctrine of utter transcendence should lead straight to mystical union of the human personality with the divine, was inevitable as soon as that doctrine stood opposed to a religion in which God is worshipped as the object of knowledge and love. The infinite distance between God and man God alone can annihilate; man has no power to bridge the chasm, therefore it is overleaped by a tour de force of the omnipotent Will. That idea lies behind the whole theory and practice of religious ecstasy on which the Sufis throw so much stress. How should the mystic's conscious self not be obliterated and swept away by the transcendent glory of Him who in a sudden gleam reveals himself as ineffably near? Must not the distinction of subject and object vanish altogether? For here God is all, and there is naught beside Him." [ Idea of Personality in Sufism, Nicholson p.13] The two internal quotations in this passage come from the teachings of al-Junaid, an older contemporary of al-Hallaj, who is said to have been one of his Sufi masters. But it is in Ibn 'Arabi that we find the extreme doctrinal expression of this concept of the unity of God. This extraordinary man seems to have made it his object to form a grand synthesis of all the theories current in the Islam of his day. He drew both on orthodox and Sufi theology and equally on that of the various heretical sects, such as the Hu'tusilites, Carmathians and Isma'ilis, to say nothing of the Gnostic and Neo platonist treatises, which were then (the twelfth century A.D.) circulating widely in the Moslem orld. The result was an intellectual structure of baffling complexity, expressed in a style of extreme
and probably deliberate obscurity. Nevertheless, the main outline of his thought can be discerned clearly enough. lbn 'Arabi's system is a complete and uncompromising monism. All Being is one of hich God (or what is commonly called God) and the phenomenal world are no more than two different aspects. "The Haqq (Reality) of whom transcendence is asserted is the same as the Khalq (Creation) of whom immanence is asserted, although (logically) the creator is distinguished from the created." [ Fusus al-Hikam of Ibn 'Arabi.] But even the terms 'creation' and 'created' are, in fact misnomers. The process―which has no beginning and no end―is rather to be regarded as the self-revelation of Reality to Itself by the calling into concrete existence from the state of latency, in which they eternally are, of the infinite potential aspects of Reality. But these aspects are not created; they may be said in effect to create or to realize themselves:''Ibn ul 'Arabi puts it all very boldly in an interesting passage in the Fusus, in which he says that God does not create anything; creation (tekwin) (which, according to him, means the coming into concrete manifestation of an already existing substance)―belongs to the thing itself. "It comes to being" means that it manifests itself of its own accord. The only thing that God does in the matter is to will a thing to be (concretely manifested), and God wills nothing and commands nothing the existence of which is not made necessary by the very nature and laws of things themselves. God according to him is another name for such laws. "Were it not in the nature of a thing to be at the moment of God's command, it would never be. So, nothing brings a thing into existence. i.e. makes its existence manifest, except itself."" [Affifi, op.cit, p.31] In these dizzy conceptions the dualism of al-Hallaj is totally submerged. His Lahut and Nasut ―for Ibn 'Arabi continued to use these terms―become simply 'essence' and 'form': a single essence manifesting itself in a multiplicity of forms. Indeed, Ibn 'Arabi seems to go even further than this and to regard the forms themselves as mere appearances, dependent for their (apparent) existence on the standpoint of the beholder:"The self-revelations of the One (the tajalliyat ) thus understood are as follows. When we conceive the One as apart from all possible relations and individualizations, we may say that God has revealed Himself in the State of Unity (al ahadiyyah) or is in the blindness (al ama), the state of the Essence. When we regard it in relation to the potential existence of the Phenomenal World, we say that God has revealed Himself in the 'state of the Godhead' ( al [15] martabah al ilahiyyah). This is also the state of what Ibn ul 'Arabi calls the ayan al [16] And when we regard it in relation to the actual thabita and the state of the Divine Names. manifestations of the Phenomenal World, we say that God has revealed Himself in the state of lordship (al rububiyyah). If regarded as a universal consciousness containing all intelligible
forms of actual and potential existents, we say that Reality has revealed itself in the First Intellect, and God revealed Himself in the inward or the unseen, and we call the state haqiqatul haqa'iq (Reality of Realities). But if regarded as actually manifested in the Phenomenal World we say that God has manifested Himself in forms of the external world, and we identify Him with the universal Body (al jiam al kulli). When we think of Him as the universal substance which receives all forms, we say that God revealed Himself in Prime Matter, al hayula… and so on and so on. In this way Ibn ul 'Arabi goes through the whole of Plotinus' emanations, adding to them the Four Roots of Empedocles and many other spheres wherein God is manifested. The mass of descriptions (largely borrowed from Moslem sources) which he piles on each of them is amazing. But in spite of these details, which are rather misleading, the outline of his doctrine is clear. Reality is a unity―we multiply it through the way we understand it." [Affifi, op.cit, pp.63-4] It is against this background of thought that we must understand lbn 'Arabi's logos-doctrine, the first to be introduced into Islam and also the last, since subsequent writers have done no more than copy lbn 'Arabi with minor variations. But what is this logos? In the first place, it is identified with Muhammed; not, of course, with the 'form' of Muhammed, the actual historical personage―that would be impossible on Ibn 'Arabi's system―but rather with the pre-existent Spirit or Reality of Muhammed, the haqiqat al-Muhammadiya. This in turn is identified with the First Intellect or Reality of Realities mentioned above―i.e. ‘a universal consciousness containing all intelligible forms.' It is also the Prime Matter, the universal substance which receives all forms, and even al-arsh (the Throne), a term which Ibn 'Arabi normally uses as a synonym for the Phenomenal World. Or again―and here lbn 'Arabi follows al Hallaj very closely―it is Adam, the Perfect Man, conceived as a true microcosm of the universe. In short, it is the active determining principle of everything that exists:"It starts as near as possible to Matter (something like the spiritual Matter of Plotinus). It multiplies with the multiplication of existents but does not divide (except in thought). One could say it is God or the universe, but one could also say that it is neither. From it the universe [17] proceeds as a 'particular' proceeds from a universal. I t contains the realities (ideas being identified with realities haqa’iq) of diverse objects, yet in itself it remains homogeneous. It stands in the closest relationship to God's knowledge. It is known to God through itself, i.e. it is the consciousness of God. It is not the divine Knowledge itself, but rather the content and substance of such knowledge. In it the Knower, the Known and Knowledge itself are one. Through it the universe is brought into manifestation. It is the 'store' of intelligible and archetypal ideas of the world of 'becoming'. The 'Reality of Realities' thus described is no more other than God than a potentiality, which under certain conditions becomes an actuality, can be called other than this actuality. It is God conceived as the self-revealing Principle of the universe: God as manifesting Himself in a form of universal consciousness, at no particular time or place, but as the Reality which underlies all realities and as a being whose consciousness is identical with His Essence,"
[Affifi op.cit pp.68-9] Within such a system there is, of course, no room for any form of mystical union in the accepted sense of that term. The most that can be said is that the mystic may recognize, or realize within himself, the central fact that he is one with God, that his essence is an aspect of Reality. But in one sense this is true of everything―of a stone equally with a man. The difference is that man, as a microcosm of the universe, is potentially capable of realizing or reflecting all the aspects of reality. He can also become aware that this is so―indeed the two processes are the same. But this awareness or gnosis―which Ibn 'Arabi regards as the essence of wilaya (sainthood)―does not come to him from ithout by inspiration. It is an inward realization of his ' ayn (self or essence); and its nature and extent varies with each individual. That which you were in your latency is what you are in your existence. [ Fusus al-Hikam.] Hence even the class of gnostics or illuminati whom Ibn 'Arabi calls Perfect Men, are not perfect in an absolute sense. Their perfection consists in having 'positive being' i.e. having fully realized certain aspects of reality; but this may well include ethical or other imperfections. Indeed it must do so, for Reality has infinite aspects and its full manifestation requires [18] hat we (from our limited point of view) call imperfection, as well as what we call perfection. When I referred above to Ibn 'Arabi's system as 'a dubious success', I meant that it was far from providing a complete solution to the problem of reconciling Sufi devotion with orthodox theology. Ibn 'Arabi was vehemently attacked in his own day as a heretic, and pantheist, and these attacks have continued. One modern authority goes so far as to say roundly that his system cannot be reconciled ith Islam at any price. It is not easy to dissent from these opinions. On the other hand, every authority bears witness to the extent of Ibn ‘Arabi’s influence on subsequent thought down to the present day. However much disagreement and alarm his writings may provoke, they have had their effect: nothing has ever been quite the same since. I think it is fair to say that Ibn 'Arabi marked the second great transformation of Sufism. After his day it ceased to be a devotional movement or a particular cult and became, in effect, a new religion, connected with the old Islam by the ties of a common origin, by the fact that it shared the same sacred books, and by the observance (in which some Sufis were not always very diligent) of certain outward forms. Of the essential nature of this religion Dr. Affifi has provided what seems to me an honest summary:"For a materialistic pantheist, the multiplicity of phenomena is all that matters―all that exists and all that is real. Ibn ul 'Arabi, on the other hand, worships and glorifies (in his own way) that which lies beyond the phenomena, the Reality which underlies and controls all―that which reflects, as in a mirror, its being and perfections in the Phenomenal World. It is for this reason that Ibn ul 'Arabi lays emphasis on both aspects of Reality―immanence and transcendence, although the degree of emphasis on the one or the other varies with his mood. His emphasis on the immanent aspect is at times so strong that it gives his system the appearance of materialistic pantheism, as when he identifies God with the Ash'arites' Primal Substance and all phenomena with its states and accidents. But at other times, i.e. when the religious feeling speaks within him, he lays more stress on the transcendent aspect. "For He, glory to Him" Ibn ul 'Arabi says, "has no resemblance whatever to His creation. His Essence cannot be apprehended by us, so
we cannot compare it with tangible objects, neither are His actions like ours."" [Affifi, op.cit. pp.58-9]
Part 5 After this long detour we can return to Pak Subuh's theory of Life Forces. It will already be clear that this derives from Ibn 'Arabi's logos-doctrine. But the derivation is not direct. To find Pak Subuh's theory in its complete form we must move forward another two hundred years and consider the work of 'Abd al-Karim al-Jili, who developed and formalized one aspect of Ibn ‘Arabi's doctrine in his famous treatise, al-Insan al-Kamil (The Perfect Man). This book is said to have been particularly influential in the development of Sufism in the Far East―that is to say, in Malaya and Indonesia. It is also worth noticing that al-Jili was a descendent and follower of 'Abd al-Qadir b.'Abd Allah al-Jili [19] (or Jilani), the founder of the Qadirite order of dervishes, from whom, according to Rofé Pak Subuh traces his spiritual descent. I shall not try, nor am l competent, to analyse the differences between Ibn 'Arabi's doctrine and al-Jili's. It is enough to say here that the latter adopted the former's general system entirely but gave it a more regular form and, I think one may say, a slightly more orthodox colouring. Of al-Jili's views on the particular subject under discussion, Nicholson has this to say:"In the second part of his work the author treats of the Perfect Man as the Spirit whence all things have their origin. Accordingly he devotes successive chapters to the organs and faculties which make up the psychological and intellectual constitution of the Perfect Man―spirit, heart, intelligence, reflection, etc., with the corresponding celestial beings which are said to be 'created' from them. The highest hypostases of his psychology are the Holy Spirit ( Ruhu ’lQuds) and the Spirit (al-Ruh); the latter is also described as 'the angel named al-Ruh' and, in the technical language of the Sufis, as 'the haqq by means of which the world is created' ( alhaqqu l-makhluq bihi) and 'the Idea of Mohammed' (al-Haqiqatu l-Muhammadiyya). How these two Spirits are related to each other is indicated in the following passage:"You must know that every sensible object has a created spirit which constitutes its form, and the spirit is to the form as the meaning to the word. The created spirit as a Divine spirit which constitutes it, and that Divine spirit is the Ruhu l-Quds. Those who regard the Ruhu ‘l-Quds in man deem it created, because two eternal substances cannot exist eternity belongs to God alone, whose names and attributes inhere in His essence because of the impossibility of their being detached; all else is created and originated. Man, for example, has a body, which is his form, and a spirit, which is his meaning, and a consciousness ( sirr ), which is al-Ruh, and an essential aspect ( wajh), which is denoted by the terms Ruhu l-Quds (the Holy Spirit), a l-sirru l-ilahi (the Divine Consciousness) and al-wujudu l-sari (the all-pervading Being)." The Ruhu ‘l-Quds and the Ruh are one Spirit viewed as eternal in relation to God and non-eternal in relation to Man; as the inmost essence of things or as their form of existence. The uncreated Spirit of God, sanctified above all phenomenal imperfections, is referred to in the verse. "I breathed of My Spirit into Adam" (Kor.XV:29; XXXVIII:72), and in the verse. “Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face (wajh) of Allah" (Kor.II:109), i.e., the Ruhu ‘l-Quds exists 'individualized by its perfection' in every object of sense or thought. Al-Jili adds that inasmuch as the spirit of a thing is its self (nafs) existence is constituted by the 'self’ of God; and His 'self’ is His essence. Union with the Ruhu l-Quds comes only as the crown and
consummation of the mystical life to ‘the holy one’ ( qudsi) who unceasingly contemplates the Divine Consciousness ( sirr ) which is his origin, so that its laws are made manifest to him and God becomes his ear, eye, hand and tongue; he touches the sick and they are healed, he bids a thing to be and it is, for he has been strengthened with the Holy Spirit even as Jesus was (Kor. II:81). It will now be seen that al-Jili considers the created Ruh or the archetypal Spirit of Mohammed as a mode of the uncreated Holy Divine Spirit and as a medium through which God becomes conscious of Himself in creation." [Studies in Islamic Mysticism. pp.108-10] We are now in a position to recognize that Pak Subuh's Roh Illofi and Roh Kudus are identical with al-Jili's al-Ruh and Ruhu ‘l-Quds. But before we take this matter any further, certain comments must be made on the foregoing passage in the light of what has been said before. Although his use of terms such as 'spirit' and 'angel' may sometimes suggest the contrary, al-Jili was as uncompromising a monist as Ibn 'Arabi. We must not, therefore, think of al-Ruh and the Ruhu ‘l-Quds as distinct beings, entities or even emanations; they are no more than modes or aspects of the one Reality, to which they stand in the same relation as do the bands of colour produced by a prism to the original source of light. From our point of view they may appear to be separate and distinct; from another point of view they can be seen to be the same―and so with everything else. We must also remember that al-Jili uses the words 'created’ and 'creation' in the same peculiar sense as Ibn 'Arabi. Some such terms as 'selfmanifested' and 'self-manifestation' would express his thought more clearly. On this point I may quote Nicholson again:"Pure Being, as such has neither name nor attribute; only when it gradually descends from its absoluteness and enters the realm of manifestation, do names and attributes appear imprinted on it. The sum of these attributes is the universe, which is 'phenomenal' only in the sense that it shows reality under the form of externality. Although, from this standpoint, the distinction of essence and attribute must be admitted, the two are ultimately one, like water and ice. The socalled phenomenal world―the world of attributes―is no illusion: it really exists as the selfrevelation or other self of the Absolute. In denying any real difference between essence and attribute, al-Jili makes Being identical with Thought. The world expresses God's idea of Himself, or as Ibn u’l-Arabi puts it, "we ourselves are the attributes by which we describe God; our existence is merely an objectification of His existence, God is necessary to us in order that we may exist, while we are necessary to Him in order that He may be manifested to Himself.'"' [Nicholson, op.cit. p.83] It is an inevitable consequence of these opinions that al-Jili, like Ibn 'Arabi before him, should be a thorough-going determinist. When he speaks of the Perfect Man as "the cosmic Thought assuming flesh and connecting Absolute Being with the world of Nature", he is referring to the ideal man symbolized by Adam. He does not mean that it is open, even in theory, to any individual man to achieve such a position. The most that an individual can do is to realize his own essential nature; that is to say, to manifest, according to his inborn and predetermined capacity, the particular aspect of Reality which is, to use Ibn 'Arabi's expression, his 'latency'. Those that do so can properly be called
Perfect Men, though only in this lesser and relative sense: they are logoi but not the logos. Such men are the gnostics or saints (awlaya); but this term does not imply piety or holiness, though these characteristics may be present, as it were accidentally. The essence of the condition is knowledge―an inward experience in which the individual realizes in what relationship he stands to [20] the one Reality. But here al-Jili becomes conscious of a difficulty and in meeting it goes, I think, rather further than Ibn 'Arabi. As we have seen, the function―of one may use such a term―of al-Ruh is to make all things hat they are, or rather what they should be. Its action in a man must therefore be to make him truly human; it is the medium through which he realizes his ‘latency'; and we can understand why, in a [21] passage quoted much earlier, al-Ruh w as equated with the Spirit of Humanity. But what of those exceptional beings―the major prophets and saints, the great mystics―who can truly be said to have displayed superhuman qualities? Here al-Jili falls back on a doctrine of substitution. He recognizes [22] three ascending stages in the mystical path:i.
The Illumination of the Divine Actions, in which the mystic realizes that he can do nothing of himself, since all action belongs to God; ii. The Illumination of the Divine Names, in which he is wholly absorbed in contemplation of one of the attributes of God, as it is revealed in the phenomenal world; iii. The Illumination of the Divine Attributes, in which he actually becomes one with the attribute itself―life, knowledge, power, will or whatever it may be. Of the stages (ii) and (iii) al-Jili has this to say:"When God desires to reveal Himself to a man by means of any Name or Attribute, He causes the man to pass away ( fana) and makes him naught and deprives him of his (individual) existence; and when the human light is extinguished and the creaturely spirit passes away, God puts in the man's body without incarnation (hulul ) a spiritual substance, which is of God's essence and is neither separate from God nor joined to the man, in exchange for what He deprived him of; which substance is named the Holy Spirit (ruhu ‘l-quds). And when God puts instead of the man a spirit of His own essence, the revelation is made to that spirit. God is never revealed except to Himself, but we call that Divine spirit 'a man' in respect of its being instead of the man. In reality there is neither 'slave' nor ‘Lord’, since these are correlated terms. When the 'slave' is annulled, the 'Lord' is necessarily annulled, and nothing remains but God alone." (Nicholson, op.cit, p.128.) It will be noticed that at this point al-Jili's thought comes very close to that of Abu Sa'id in the passage on sincerity, which l quoted in the first section. Indeed they use almost identical terms; where Abu Sa'id speaks of the sirr Allah, al-Jili, as we have seen, speaks of the sirr ‘l-ilahi or Divine consciousness.
But there is this difference between their two systems or their two approaches. By introducing al Ruh, the Created Spirit, which is also the idea of Mohammed and the Spirit of Humanity, al-Jili brings in, as it were, another level. We thereby have both the sirr or consciousness, which is the domain of aluh, and the sirru ‘l-ilahi―the essence of the essence―which is the domain of the Ruhu ‘l quds. A complete awareness of the former will bring a man to the condition described in an earlier quotation as that of the Spirit of Humanity, the condition in which "he is adorned with every good and noble quality". But this must be understood in a strictly relative sense, since no one can realize more of these good qualities than his innate capacity allows. To this state, if I have understood al-Jili correctly, all men may aspire; but beyond it now lies another realm, that of the true gnostics, whom God chooses to enlighten further. They achieve, or are granted, awareness of the sirru ‘l-ilahi and in doing so become the passive subjects of a substitution of the divine for the human essence, to which al-Jili refers in the passage just quoted above. But though we may speak of the difference of level―and as we shall see, it is of cardinal importance in the study of Subud―the distinction, as always in al-Jili's system, is one of appearance only. It must be repeated that al-Ruh and the Ruhu ‘l-quds are the same spirit seen under two different aspects: in the first case as temporal in relation to Man, in the second as eternal in relation to God. The apparent difference of level is thus purely subjective: that is why Nicholson speaks of these two spirits as the hypostases of al-Jili's psychology. So long as a man regards himself as a separate and discrete individual, however mindful he may be of his divine origin, as expressed in or through his sirr , he cannot escape from his temporal limitations. The divine light is only accessible to him under its 'created' form of al-Ruh, the idea of Mohammed, the Spirit of Humanity, etc. But the illuminated mystic sees the position otherwise. He realizes that he is not a discrete individual but an aspect of Reality: that he is (as he has always been) one with God. This illumination or gnosis enables him to perceive his own divine essence, al-sirru 'l-ilahi, and thus to receive the divine light directly in its form of the Ruhu ‘l-quds. But such illumination does not come by searching. No Moslem could say: "Seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." All gnosis is an action of the arbitrary Will of God, descending how it will upon whom it will.
Part 6 Whether Pak Subuh accepts the doctrine, which I have tried to outline above, in all its details, I [23] cannot say. We have Rofé's word for it that he is "acquainted with the concept of the lnsân Kâmil' and this is indeed obvious. But the general tendency in Indonesia, so far as I can discover, has been to [24] interpret Ibn Arabi and al-Jili in as orthodox a sense as possible. This can be done by emphasizing those passages in which they appear to be speaking in conventional dualistic term of Creator and created, flesh and spirit, etc, and passing more lightly over other passages in which the pantheistic or monistic basis of their thought is more clearly revealed. But the modifications thus introduced are more of form and presentation than of content. In fact, as I hope to have shown, Ibn 'Arabi's and al-Jili's system, however complex and obscure it may be, is an intellectual unity, in hich the parts cannot be separated from the whole. By glossing it in this way or that one can make it took (from the Moslem point of view) more or less orthodox, but one cannot alter its essential nature. Nor, I think, would any Sufi wish to do so, for this is the only metaphysical system so far evolved, hich offers, with even the appearance of success, to explain the nature of mystical experience in Islamic terms.
We must therefore, I think, accept this doctrine as providing the basis of Pak Subuh's thought. He may ell admit certain modifications on this or that particular point; but that will not affect his central position. If we wish to understand what Pak Subuh says, we must familiarize ourselves with the concepts described above, and must be content for the moment to think in these terms instead of in those which we should normally use. The alternative is to rely on a superficial and misleading system of translation, which seeks to render the technical terms of one theology by approximate verbal equivalents drawn from another terminology. But this can only lead to confusion. To translate Roh lofi as 'Holy Spirit', for example, has no linguistic justification and conveys a meaning, if the term is understood in its normal Christian sense, which is very different from what Pak Subuh intends. If we [25] choose some neutral English term, such as 'Angelic Power' for Roh Kudus w e are little better off. No precise meaning is conveyed; but there are inevitably certain overtones, which are themselves misleading. It is better to keep to the original terms and to try to understand them within their own intellectual and doctrinal framework. [26] I do not think that anyone who has read Pak Subuh's second address in Oslo o r the explanations [27] given in Concerning Subud will doubt that his two Great Life Forces, which open the way for all other forces, are al-Jili’s Ruh and Ruh ‘l-Quds. But it is with the former―that is to say, the spirit in its created or temporal aspect―that we are primarily concerned, for this is the active principle of the latihan. "As a matter of fact" says Pak Subuh "the force Illofi is what you receive and feel whenever you do the latihan." The spiritual process involved, in other words, is one which takes place on the first of the two levels mentioned above; it is confined within the temporal order. This is a cardinal point in Pak Suhuh's teaching and one on which he is entirely consistent. It will be noticed, for example, that the whole of his poem Susila Budhi Dharma is concerned with the gradual ascent of man to a state which we can now describe as that of the Spirit of Humanity. Unlike the other Sufi treatises, which we have been considering, it makes no reference at all to the higher states, properly
called mystical. This is not, as we shall see, because Pak Subuh denies the existence of such states, but because they are irrelevant to the practice of the latihan . The spirit of the latihan is Roh Illofi or al-Ruh; and the spirit in this aspect manifests itself only within the temporal order. There is also a second point of great importance. As we have seen already, al-Ruh is regarded as the active determining principle of everything . It is therefore present (in accordance with their respective capacities) in the material, vegetable and animal worlds, or levels of existence, no less than in the human. Now man, as a microcosm of the universe, shares in these lower natures; he has, in Pak Subuh's terminology, a material, vegetable and animal soul as well as a human one. Hence it is possible―at least in theory―that he should have direct and immediate access to, or awareness of, al-Ruh, no matter how debased or disorganized his nature. The only question is at what point or level this contact can be made. That is what Pak Subuh meant in his reply to another question put by the French Benedictines: “Where within man does the contact take place?”
"The point of contact depends on the quality of the soul experiencing it. The soul is like a series of vessels. If the higher vessel (in Indonesian, Kalbu) is open, the point of contact will be there. If only the lower part of the soul is capable of experiencing it, the point of contact will be in the [28] physical body. G enerally speaking, the point of contact is in the highest part of the soul that is capable of receiving it. If it begins by being in a lower part, it will not necessarily remain there; but the practice of the latihan will open the upper parts of the soul and the point of contact will constantly move higher.” [Op.cit, Question V/I] This is the only basis on which the Subud claim to be able to 'open' anyone, regardless of his state and without preparation, can conceivably make sense. If we abandon the conception of multiple souls or essences; if we do not accord to al-Ruh the status of a universal rational or directive principle; or if we suppose the spirit of the latihan to be something other than al-Ruh; [i.e. with other characteristics.] then the claim is nonsense. Suppose, for example, that we adopt the apparently much simpler system implied in Abu Sa'id's passage on sincerity, which was quoted above. We shall then be obliged to say that, although a divine principle is active in the human soul, no direct access to it or awareness of it, is conceivable to unregenerate man without a prolonged and arduous preparation, an ascesis. That, broadly speaking, is the position taken by Christian mystics; but if we attempt to apply it directly to Subud, we shall end in sad confusion. We shall find ourselves either denying the universal validity of the contact or saying that anyone merely by being 'opened', can leap straight into the mystical way. In the former case we shall be at odds with Pak Subuh; in the latter, we shall be making the same error in a different form as the devotees of mescalin and LSD-25. [29] The recent pamphlet Christian Mysticism and Subud falls into just this trap of failing to render Pak Subuh in his own terms. Its thesis is that the spiritual experience of the latihan is identical with mystical prayer as that was understood by, let us say, St. John of the Cross. But this is to misunderstand the whole position. In its opening phase the latihan is by definition a surrender―an abandon in de Caussade's sense―of the lower parts of the soul (the material, vegetable and animal
essences) to al-Ruh, the principle inherent in their nature. It is not mystical prayer, as that is normally understood but a particular path of ascesis, to which we may perhaps give the name of ‘bodily prayer'. When this process is complete - when these lower essences, in Pak Subuh's terminology, have been 'purified' - we reach the fourth stage, that of the truly human. A complete awareness of the soul has been achieved, so that we may now speak, for the first time, of a surrender or abandon by the man himself, as distinct from any part or parts of his nature. But it is still within the temporal order; it is a surrender to al-Ruh, the inherent principle of man's nature, to that which makes him a man as it makes a stone a stone. We must therefore still speak― in so far as any valid comparison is possible ith Christian practice―in terms of ascesis and the purgative way; we must say that man, by becoming truly human, fits himself for communion with God to the extent that the limitations of his nature allow. We now reach the ultimate aim or goal of the latihan: the fifth stage, to which Pak Subuh gives the name Rohaniah; the angelic state. This is the point at which al-Ruh modulates―if I may use such a term―into al-Ruhu ‘l-quds; it is the first point of true gnosis, the uncovering, as it were, of the sirr ul-ilahi within the sirr. Pak Subuh therefore speaks of it as the state of a Perfect Being, using that term in the same sense as Ibn Arabi or al-Jili― i.e. to mean one who 'manifests 'positive being', not one [30] ho is perfect in any absolute sense. He also uses the term sempurna (fullness or plenitude), hich recalls, and no doubt derives from, the purna of the Upanishads. This implies a state of ‘undifferentiated' being and may be appropriately used here because the spirit, manifesting itself as the Ruhu ‘l-quds, is itself undifferentiated. It is the uncreated Spirit of God, sanctified above all phenomenal imperfections.' Pak Subuh does not mean by this, of course, anything approaching the state of union, even supposing that his theology were to admit of such a conception. We can say, I think, that his state of Rohaniah stands somewhere on the borderline between al-Jili's Illumination of the Divine Actions and his Illumination of the Divine Names. Continued contemplation of the attributes of God, as they are manifested in the phenomenal world, has procured some glimpse of the true nature of Reality. It is no more than a glimpse; but that is the most―perhaps even rather more than the most―to which an ordinary man can aspire. For the very few, other states may lie beyond―but that is as God wills. On these further states no comment can be made, though it may be worthwhile to mention here another peculiarity of lbn 'Arabi's vocabulary. When he speaks of al-Rahman (the Merciful), he is not thinking in the same terms as, for example, a Buddhist who calls Gautama 'The Compassionate One'. To Ibn 'Arabi the primary and essential act of God's mercy is His self-manifestation; and he therefore uses the word 'merciful' almost as a synonym for 'creative'. l think it is probable that Pak Subuh follows him in this and that, when he speaks of the state Rahmaniah, what he has in mind is the power of creation―or rather of 'calling into manifestation'―which lbn 'Arabi ascribes to true gnostics. The example cited in one of his treatises is that of the clay pigeons which Jesus (in the apocryphal story) [31] as able to endow with life. To conclude this brief summary two further points remain to be noticed. The first concerns 'testing'. Though I agree with Rofé that this practice has attracted to itself certain extraneous geomantic elements, I have no doubt that it is finally based on an aspect of al-Jili's teaching. One of his (and lbn 'Arabi's) names for al-Ruh is the First Intellect; that is to say, the spirit considered as the rational
principle of the universe. One of the modes of the First Intellect is what al-Jili calls Universal Reason; and from this the individual intelligences of men proceed, as particulars proceed from a universal. Individual intelligences are, of course, limited and fallible, being in any case but the reflection of a reflection. But from time to time man has direct access to Universal Reason by means of his intuition. [Al-Jili distinguishes much more sharply than Ibn 'Arabi between intuition and gnosis.] He cannot learn anything in this way about the nature of God, since Universal Reason itself belongs to the temporal order; but what he does learn―i.e. about events in the phenomenal world―is [32] infallible. H ere we have the whole basis of 'testing'. It is closely associated with the latihan―naturally so, since Universal Reason is a mode of the First Intellect, which is al-Ruh; it is applicable, indeed solely applicable, to the ordinary affairs of life; and, though infallible, it should not be regarded in the light of Divine guidance. The second point concerns Pak Subuh's attitude towards other religions, which is, I think, liable to some misunderstanding. I cannot do better than end this section with two quotations from Dr. Affifi, hich describe Ibn 'Arabi's views on this subject. Such evidence as we have seems to me to suggest that Pak Subuh's views are not dissimilar: "To worship a star or a tree is to worship a god, who is but a partial manifestation of the Real God, but to worship him in all forms is to worship Allah who is the only true object of worship. All other gods are 'intelligible objects of belief’. We create them in our minds ( ilah bil jal ). Everyone is right in his belief―no matter how partial it is, but wrong in asserting that the object of his belief is (when it is not) Allah. Gnostics alone worship the true God, whose name (Allah) is the most universal of all the divine Names. They are called 'the worshippers of time' (‘ubbadu ‘l-waqf ) because they worship God at every 'moment' of time in a fresh manifestation. Their position is a peculiar one: they combine the belief of the philosopher, who asserts pure transcendence of God, with that of the polytheist who asserts pure immanence, for neither transcendence alone nor immanence alone explains the full nature of Reality. Immanence alone leads to a form of polytheism which Ibn ul 'Arabi rejects. The only religion left for him is the universal religion which includes all religions and which, peculiarly enough, he identifies with Islam ―not the monotheistic Islam of Mohammed but the idealistic monism or pantheism he calls Islam." But Ibn 'Arabi did not wish to seek converts; on the contrary, he was convinced that any attempt to proselytise was futile:''According to Ibn ul 'Arabi we are born into the world with already fixed and predetermined beliefs, which, like everything else in Ibn ul 'Arabi's universe, obey their necessary and unchangeable laws. Beliefs are eternal potentialities which some actualities in this world. They are determined by, and vary according to the nature (isti'dad: capacity) of the individual, which is itself fixed and predetermined. The monotheist and the pantheist, the gnostic and the agnostic, the theist and the atheist, the believer and the free-thinker, are so from eternity and their beliefs are determined by their own nature. This, Ibn ul 'Arabi says, is what Junayd meant by saying "the colour of water is the colour of the vessel which contains it." The part that God plays in the matter is that of an Omniscient Being who knows from eternity what every individual belief is
going to be, but even His Knowledge is determined by the nature of the beliefs and that of the people to whom they belong." [Affifi, op.cit p.150-2.] Pak Subuh would add, however, that everyone can practise the latihan and thus take the first steps―even if it is no more than that―towards realizing his own essential nature and giving full and complete expression to whatever form of belief is inherent in it.
Part 7 I think it will now be clear that the statement "Subud has no doctrine" is almost meaningless in a Western context. It is as if a Chinese scholar were to say: "There is no need for translation; the whole document is in Mandarin already." So it might be; but the average European would still have to learn a new language before he could understand it. Much the same is true of Subud. If we are to understand Pak Subuh's simplest statements about the nature and effect of the latihan, we must learn the metaphysical language in which he is speaking. In doing so, we cannot avoid absorbing, even if we do not accept, an entirely new doctrine, and one which is both complex and highly 'intellectual' in the pejorative sense in which that term is often used in Subud circles. Some Subud members will, I think, dispute this proposition. They will maintain that we can continue to practise the latihan , to accept Pak Subuh's explanations, and to interpret our progress or our difficulties in these terms, without attempting to understand the doctrinal basis on which they rest. But I do not think that this position is tenable. It might be valid, if Subud were in fact no more than a therapy. We could then say that it was unnecessary to understand it, in the same way that it is unnecessary to understand the mechanism of an ultraviolet lamp in order to benefit from it. But Subud, if it is anything, is more than a therapy. It is an aspect of the spiritual life or even a way of life in itself. Its nature, as anyone knows who has practised it for a certain time, is to bring us face to face ith the fundamental problems of belief. It cannot be otherwise, when our declared aim is to make an act of total submission to God. But submission under what aspect? That of a slave to his arbitrary Lord? That of an aspect of Reality to its source? Or that of a son to his Father? We can scarcely hope to evade such questions indefinitely. For those who enter Subud without any religious beliefs the path is straightforward. They will slip into Sufism by a gradual and almost unconscious process. They may even persuade themselves―I think that many will―that in doing so they are avoiding the doctrinal and 'intellectual' content, which they deplore so much in other religions. But for Christians the position is otherwise. They cannot continue, beyond a very early point, to accept Pak Subuh's explanations without considering how far they―or the doctrines on which they rest―are compatible with their own beliefs. That does not mean, of course, that they will necessarily reject his explanations, in so far as these bear directly on the practice of the latihan. That would be absurd, if only because no one else is in a position to offer any explanations at all. But it does mean, first, that they will wish to understand, as clearly and accurately as possible, what are the implications of Pak Subuh's various statements; and secondly, that they will not be able to receive the whole of his teaching uncritically or without some measure of reinterpretation. It is not within the scope of this paper to attempt a critical comparison between Christian doctrine and the metaphysical system described above. That there are points of close resemblance, as well as fundamental differences, will already be obvious. Indeed, one of the most curious and strongly marked features of Sufi thought is its ambivalent attitude towards Christianity. In particular, for reasons too obvious to discuss, the doctrine of the Incarnation has exercised a fascination over Sufi thinkers. They have been constantly drawn towards it as al-Hallaj was, by the nature of their own religious experience, and as constantly pulled away by the rigid intellectual requirements of Islam.
We can see this double process at work in Ibn 'Arabi. When he contrasts the 'philosophers' who assert the transcendence of God with the 'polytheists' who assert His immanence, he is stating a purely Moslem dilemma. It is not too much to say that the root of his whole elaborate system is an attempt to resolve this problem, which lay at the centre of his experience, while continuing to deny the validity of Christian doctrine. A similar comment might be made about al-Jili. As Nicholson says: “No one who reads the Insanu ‘i-Kamil can fail to discern that its author was profoundly influenced by Christian ideas." But it was as impossible for him as for Ibn 'Arabi to receive these ideas in their original form; Moslem dogma obliged him to classify Christians among the 'polytheists'. He held, in this following the Koran, that they worshipped a Trinity composed of [33] the Father, the Mother (i.e. The Blessed Virgin) and the Son. S uch a doctrine, besides being polytheistic, was evidently tinged with anthropomorphism (tajsim) and represented an error which God would certainly punish. Nevertheless, added al-Jili, it could be said of Christians that they recognized the two complementary aspects of true belief: namely that from one point of view (tanzih) God is above all likeness, while from another (tashbih) He reveals Himself in the forms of His creatures. In respect of this and of their inward sincerity, they would certainly be pardoned at the last. Indeed, al- Jili's references to Christianity were in general so mild and apologetic as to lead his Moslem editor to suppose that they must have been the work of some heretical interpolator. [Studies in Islamic Mysticism, pp. 138-41] We can notice a similar ambivalence in the Sufi attitude towards the person of Jesus. We have seen already how al-Hallaj selected Jesus rather than Mohammed as his type of the deified man. Many other, less extreme examples could be cited, though they are more apt to refer to the legendary Jesus of the apocryphal stories rather than the Jesus known to us from the Gospels. Perhaps the most curious of all is that of lbn 'Arabi. In one of his treatises he discusses the 'Seal of the Saints'. The whole argument is an example of that passion for symmetry which seems to exercise such a strong influence upon Moslem thought. Since there is a Seal of the Prophets, who is Mohammed, the bearer of the final revelation; and since logically the state of a saint or gnostic is different from that of a Prophet, it follows that there must also be a Seal of the Saints, the vehicle of the final illumination. But who is he? Here Ibn 'Arabi distinguishes. There are, he says, two such seals. The first is the Seal of the Hashimite tradition or of the Wilayatu ‘l Muhammediyyah, the Moslem saintship. This is Ibn 'Arabi himself. The second is the Seal of the Wilayatu ‘l ammah, the general or absolute saintship. This is, or rather will be, Jesus. Following a popular Moslem tradition, Ibn 'Arabi holds that Jesus will return to earth and will embrace Islam, restoring it to its original form and revealing its true laws. In that [34] capacity he will be the Seal of the Saints, the last of the line that began with Adam. It is difficult not to detect in such passages a certain unconscious longing for the person of Christ. It is as if the Sufis had recognized the keystone of their arch at the very moment of rejecting it. But here, I think, another comment must be made. This rejection is fundamental to the whole Moslem position; it is not simply a product of loyalty to the Prophet, which obliges his followers to allot him a higher place than Jesus; it goes deeper than that. Sufi mystics may allow their minds to play round the doctrine of the Incarnation; but there is no room in their system, any more than in orthodox Moslem
theology, for the central fact of the Atonement. Mohammed, while accepting the Gospels as an inspired scripture, denied the story of the crucifixion, because such consummation was inconceivable to him; and so it has remained to all his followers. In the last analysis, therefore, we are faced with a conflict between two entirely different conceptions of the nature of divine love. One can, of course, find many parallel passages in the writings of Christian and Sufi mystics. It will always remain a matter of dispute among scholars how far these should be attributed to a spontaneous sympathy of thought and how far to the direct or indirect influence of one system upon the other. That there was some interaction between them seems certain; and it is equally certain that whatever influence was exerted was not in one direction only. Thus Arberry notes, though he does not explore, the impact of certain of Ibn 'Arabi's theories on Christian mystical thought in the Middle Ages; and another scholar has examined, I do not know with what success, the extent of his influence on Dante. [35] In the same way, one can trace a distinct parallelism, if it is not more than that, between al-Jili's speculations about the nature of the Godhead and those of Jacob Boehme. If is likely that further research in the future will extend this list considerably. But these points of resemblance seem to me to lie mainly on the intellectual level; they concern what may be called 'devices of explanation'. As such they have a certain value, since man is (among other things) an intellectual being. But when this field has been thoroughly explored, when everything has been said that can be said, there still remains a difference of inward spirit. It is the same difference on which St Augustine commented after reading "certain books of the Platonists translated out of Greek into Latin":"And therein I read, not indeed the express words, but the same thing in substance, and supported by many reasons of several kinds, that "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and this same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing of all that was made. In Him is Life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." Further, that the soul of man, though it gave testimony to the light, is not yet the light, but the Word, God Himself, is the true light "which illuminateth every man coming into this world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not." But that "He came into His own, and His own received Him not, and that to whomsoever received Him, He gave power to be the sons of God, believing in His name", this is not there... Again, that the only begotten Son, co-eternal with Thee, doth remain unchangeable beyond all times, and that from this His fulness all souls do receive that they may be blessed, and that by participation of his wisdom, remaining in men, they are renewed that they may be wise, this is there. But that "in the fulness of time, He died for wicked men" and that Thou "didst not spare Thy only Son but deliveredst Him up for us all", this is not there." [Confessions, Bk VII, Chapter IX.]
[1] Questions put to Pak Subuh on his visit to Paris in November 1959 No VII/2 by monks at the Abbeye de St. Wandrille, Caudebec-en-
Caux, Normandy, France. [2] Note by JGB: I am not sure of having rendered Pak Subuh's exact meaning here. For example 'whole' might have been better translated as 'content'. [3] [sic. Presumably Bennett meant to write Adam. Ed.] [4] But Pak Subuh would not have applied the same argument to the Koran, which is held to be textually inspired throughout. [5] Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, p.129. [6] It should be remembered that for Pak Subuh the satanic and the material are, in effect, synonymous. He uses the two words interchangeably. [7] cf. Reflections on Subud . Husein Rofé, pp.56-68. I have followed Rofé's use of these terms; but it should be understood that they are used by Sufi writers in widely different senses. There seems to be no fixed terminology. [8] Concerning Su bud , J.G. Bennett 2nd Ed. p.120. [9] In the account that follows I have drawn heavily upon Professor Arberry's short history Sufism, from which one quotation has already been given. He has brought the whole story into focus in a way that I cannot hope to emulate; and I must refer interested readers to the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of his book. All I have attempted here is to pick out certain elements which seem particularly relevant to a study of Subud. But inevitably much has been left out, including much that is important and even necessary to a full understanding of the subject. [10] Pak Subuh also uses this phrase in connection with the latihan. See Rofé's The Path of Subud , p.65. [11] See Arberry, op.cit. pp.90-92 and 120-135 for a description of the dhikr as practised in Egypt in the last century and for the elaborate instructions for another form of dhikr given by a modem Sufi. [12] see Muhyid Din-Ibnul 'Arabi. A.E.Affifi, pp.137-47 for a full discussion of the various meanings given to these two words. [13] The authority on al-Hallaj’s doctrine is Louis Massignon, editor and translator of the Kitab al¬Tawasin; but a full account is given by Nicholson in The Idea of Personality in Sufism, Lecture II. [14] It may be remarked in parenthesis that, when Pat Subuh addressed an audience in Newcastle on the significance of the Cross, which be described as a symbol of the junction of spirit and matter" he was in fact reflecting al-Hallaj’s doctrine. That he should not be able to see any further significance in the C1'0&8 is, of course, inevitable in view of the ambivalent Moslem attitude towards the Gospels, to which I have referred above. See Subud Om>nicle. April 1960. [15] He also calls this state 'Allah' ―i.e. the aspect of Reality which is the object of Worship. [16] i.e. the 'fixed prototypes'―the essences of things in their state of latency. [17] In the scholastic sense, Ibn 'Arabi was a 'realist'. [18] It is not difficult to see why Muhammed Iqbal, when he tried to combine the teachings of Nietzsche with those of Sufism, drew largely on Ibn 'Arabi. [19] Reflections on Subud , Husein Rofé p. 42 [20] In the simplified and approximate account of al-Jili’s position, given in this and following paragraphs, I have relied on both Nicholson and Affifi [21] See Section II above. Aziz Ibn Muhammad Nasafi, on whose treatise this passage was based, was a minor member of Ibn Arabi’s school. [22] There is also a fourth stage, The Illumination of the Divine Essence, in which “every attribute has vanished, and the Absolute has returned into itself”. But al-Jili, following Ibn Arabi, held that this complete fana―one might say, this nirvana―was not to be attained in this life. [23] Rofé, op.cit. p. 57. [24] This is certainly true of the only Malayan text that I have seen, edited and translated by A. Johns in the Journal of the Royal siatic Society for 1955.
