Across the River: On the Poetry of Mak Dizdar (Abrahamic Dialogues) [1 ed.] 0823231682, 9780823231683

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Across the River

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Abrahamic Dialogues David B. Burrell, series editor Series Board:

Ibrahim Abu-Rabi’, Hartford Seminary Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College Donald J. Moore, S.J., Fordham University

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i>À˜ˆ˜}ÊvÀœ“Ê œÃ˜ˆ> Across the River On the
««Àœ>V…ˆ˜}Ê/À>`ˆÌˆœ˜ Poetry of Mak Dizdar

´ ´ 2USMIR-AHMUTCEHAJIC

Translated by Saba Risaluddin, /À>˜Ã>Ìi`ÊLÞÊ->L>Ê,ˆÃ>Õ``ˆ˜Ê with poetry translations>˜`ÊÀ>˜VˆÃÊ,°Êœ˜ià by Francis R. Jones

 &ORDHAM5NIVERSITY0RESS 2011 .EW9ORKÓääx

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Copyright 䉷 2011 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Previously published as Preko vode: Uz pjesmu Maka Dizdara ‘‘Modra rijeka’’ (Zagreb / Sarajevo: Antibarbarus / Buybook, 2007). Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mahmutc´ehajic´, Rusmir, 1948– [Preko vode. English] Across the river : on the poetry of Mak Dizdar / Rusmir Mahmutc´ehajic´ ; translated by Saba Risaluddin, with poetry translations by Francis R. Jones.—1st ed. p. cm.— (Abrahamic dialogues) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8232-3168-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Dizdar, Mak—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Religion in literature. I. Risaluddin, Saba. II. Jones, Francis R., 1955– III. Title. PG1618.D57Z77 2011 891.8⬘2154—dc22 2009049679 Printed in the United States of America 13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

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In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Ever Merciful

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Contents

Preface ix Part I. The Text beyond the Text: Stone Sleeper (Kameni spavacˇ) in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Prologue 3 The Poet 7 Roads 15 The Word 21 Man 29 Heaven 35 Earth 43 The City 50 The Praised 57 The House 65 Judgment 72 I and You 79 Incompleteness 86 Message 94 Epilogue 101

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viii / Contents

Part II. Across Water: A Message on Realization

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Prologue 107 Introduction 112 Nobody Knows 117 Beyond the Hills 122 From Noon to Night 128 Across the Haws 134 Beyond all Mind 140 Down There Below 146 From Depth to Depth 152 To Where the Cock-Crow Is Not Heard 158 From Good to Bad 164 Wide and Deep 171 A Hundred Winters 177 About Its Length 183 A Dark Blue River 189 We Need to Cross 194 Epilogue: The Perfect Man 200 Annexes

A. B.

The Poet 207 Coagulation 212 Notes 217 Bibliography 241 Index 247

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Preface

This is a work in two parts. The first is ‘‘The Text beyond the Text: Stone Sleeper (Kameni spavacˇ) in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy,’’ and the second is ‘‘Across Water: A Message on Realization. ’’ Part I is a much-expanded version of an essay entitled ‘‘The Text beneath the Text: The Poetry of Mak Dizdar’’ that was published in 1999 as the Afterword to a bilingual edition of Dizdar’s Stone Sleeper / Kameni spavacˇ. Part II explores another of Dizdar’s masterworks, the poem ‘‘Blue River,’’ and was originally published separately in 2007 as Preko vode: Uz pjesmu Maka Dizdara ‘‘Modra rijeka.’’ Mehmed Alija ‘‘Mak’’ Dizdar is known to many readers as the author of Kameni spavacˇ, written and revised between 1967 and 1973. It marked the beginning of a new era in not only Bosnian literature but that of the entire Slav south. The narrator of Dizdar’s poetical revelation is a Sleeper under the aegis of the Bosnian mystery. In Bosnia, a country on the dividing line between worlds, independent interpretations of the Word of Christ have survived through the centuries, attracting and repelling people both within the country and outside it. These interpretations have been described as a pestilence, a corruption, and a danger, but those who adhered to this ‘‘religion without a

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name’’ never submitted to an external religious system. This enduring independence of interpretation was perpetuated in oral literature that, to the world’s astonishment, has lasted to this day. Aspects of perennial wisdom are to be found in the fragments of this ancient insistence and living oral heritage and particularly in Dizdar’s relation of the Sleeper’s questions on roads, man, heaven, and earth. Dizdar related them at a time of communist utopianism, turning, in his post-traditional poetry, to spiritual regions of the self that ideological violence had denied and laid waste. From the very outset, Stone Sleeper was welcomed as a liberation from the ideological disciplines of communism, nationalism, and scientism. Indeed, it was seen as an anti-ideological turning point. Few, however, were able to understand or expound the traditional content of its post-traditional form. And the book has, in its life since then, remained important and challenging, both for Bosnia and further afield. The first part of this book was written as an introduction to the traditional content of Stone Sleeper. In his anti-ideological sea change, Dizdar’s Sleeper speaks out of a sequence of ‘‘death-dream-waking.’’ Man, heaven, and earth are raised to a metaphysical level, refusing the ideological dogma that sees the quantifiable world as the only one. The first readers of Stone Sleeper sensed rather than understood this, lacking as they did any comprehensive knowledge of traditional intellectuality, which had been almost entirely obscured by the ideological projects and movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The reflections in both parts of the book derive from the perspective of the perennial philosophy, because Dizdar’s poetic revelation in Stone Sleeper shows a harmonious interplay of prophetic wisdom and poetic discovery, which has also been the aim of the interpretation given here.1 As the crucial source and substance of the perennial wisdom, prophecy is higher than poetry. Wherever there is a prophetic tradition, there is poetry, and almost every form and instrument of poetry can be recognized in prophetic discourse. Poetry is frequently opposed to prophecy, as a distortion or denial of it. There are times, though, as shown in this interpretation of Stone Sleeper, when it is inseparable from prophecy and the wisdom at its heart.

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Preface / xi

A Note on the Translation

This translation was made by Saba Risaluddin. It incorporates considerable quotation of Francis Jones’s translation of Mak Dizdar’s masterwork Kameni spavacˇ/Stone Sleeper, as well as his translation of Dizdar’s poem Modra rijeka / Blue River. At the author’s request, the text was reviewed by Francis Jones, who suggested corrections. The author and Desmond Maurer have since comprehensively revised the text of the translation. While grateful for the crucial contributions made by all three translators, the author takes full responsibility for the resulting text and any infelicities within it. A number of issues of translation come up time and again through the text. Some of these are due to the nature of the relationship between Bosnian and English as languages, while others relate to specific usages preferred by the author. One particularly vexatious issue in translation of a text of this nature from Bosnian into English is that the former language uses the word cˇovjek to refer to a human being, in cases where English would traditionally have used man. This means that in Bosnian one can switch from referring to a male individual to referring to human beings in general without invoking a sexist subtext quite so obviously as one would in English. Such textual maneuvers are particularly common when discussing either the Prophet Muhammad or Jesus Christ as archetypal individuals, viz. the Perfect Man. Needless to say, any apparent privileging of one gender over the other in the text is a reflection of linguistic, rather than theological, structures. All quotations of poetry are from Mak Dizdar’s Stone Sleeper or from ‘‘Blue River,’’ the poems that are the subject of the two essays in this book. All quotations from the Qur’an are based upon the translation by Arberry but are referred to by standard numbering. The quotations have been adapted to bring them into line with the author’s own translations of the Qur’anic text into his native Bosnian. The interventions largely relate to a number of concepts or terms that the author believes have either been consistently mistranslated or have had their underlying meaning obscured as a result of semantic calcification, leading to

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misunderstanding of the Prophet’s and so the Revelation’s meaning. Among the most prominent of these are his translation of the word Qur’an itself, which he renders as the Recitation. Another is his use of the term self instead of soul. A third is his translation of Din, where instead of the standard Religion, he uses the Debt, referring to the debt we owe to God as a result of our violation of his commandment not to eat of the forbidden fruit. A fourth is his use of The Praised to refer to the Prophet Muhammad. In this case, the title is simply a translation of the prophet’s given name, but it does also refer to his cosmological role as the perfect man who receives praise from God that he might praise God in return. In similar fashion, the author refers to Jesus as the Anointed, which is simply a translation of the Christ. It should therefore be borne in mind that these and all other deviations from Arberry’s translation are intentional and reflect the author’s understanding of the original Qur’anic text.

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Across the River

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I. The Te x t be y o n d th e Text Stone Sleeper (Kameni spavacˇ) in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy

Had the truth followed their caprices, the heavens and the earth and whosoever in them is had surely corrupted. Qur’an 23:71

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Prologue

Man is will, love, and knowledge, but always in a unique, albeit constantly changing self. Though will, love, and knowledge in the self are defined by the things of the outside world, it is in the self that they have their initial source and ultimate end. That they are so split between our inner and our outer worlds begs the question: What is the source of will, love, and knowledge? Though the question has infinite answers, none ends our quest for answers. The end of the quest would mean the end of man. Moreover, all these answers lie between two extremes. The first extreme is to take all true knowledge as inherent in the self, our task being to bring it to realization. The purpose of all things on earth and in the heavens—and all that lies between them—is to remind us of that knowledge in the center of our being. The second extreme posits the external world as opposed to man, so that it and we constitute two distinct realities. Knowledge is our relationship as knowers with the world as known, and the world is known by subjugation. Our knowledge is entirely derived from sensory perception of the outside world. As a result, two sources of will, love, and knowledge seem more obscure in modern times than once they were: prophecy and poetry.

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Without those sources of will, love, and knowledge, we cannot understand the sanctity of art or science. Whenever and wherever these sources manifest themselves, there, too, are false prophecy and false poetry. But is there any sure way to tell them apart? The opposition of false prophecy and false poetry recalls how we are torn between the lowest depths and the most sublime heights. No form this split takes signifies our final condition. Whatever point we reach between the depths and the heights, we remain open to both descent and ascent. This book is a discussion of perennial questions of our potential, viewed through the lens of the relationship between prophecy and poetry. Both prophecy and poetry unfold between speaker and listener, text and reader. But beyond speech is silence. And silence is not the same as nothing. Just as all speech comes into existence out of and returns to silence, it is with silence that expression begins and ends. Our relationship with the outside world can be knowledge. It becomes speech only on an inner impulse to express that knowledge. The world, with all its horizons, is, like the self, a sort of text whose transcendent principle is speech. Silence and mystery transcend speech. Even in complete silence, a text remains vital and open to us. This is because in essence we belong to total silence and the mystery whose revelation in speech is infinite. No text is limited to just one speech-act. There is silence both above and beneath the text, as each self emerges from this silence in ways no other can repeat. Through speech and the text, we can return to silence and Spirit. But Spirit never ceases to speak through the things in the world and in us, however unconditioned by them or us, from first to last. The unconditioned nature of Spirit means that when we relate to the absolutely Unconditioned it is through freedom. When speech leads or lifts us toward the Self, the universal One, it is, so sacred tradition tells us, the Holy Spirit speaking through a prophet or poet. If we agree that prophecy has come to an end, but that the door to human perfection remains open, then poetry, as the link between the

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self and the Self, heightens both the promise of and the threats to our self-realization in perfection. This heightening hastens us and our world toward a tipping point at which the twilight will be cleft into the clarity of darkness and light, avidity and generosity, ignorance and knowledge, falsehood and truth. Dizdar’s poetic revelation came at a time when the ruling image of being was informed by ideas of quantity and power. This image took analytical reason as the only guide on the path to the ‘‘end of history.’’1 The poet reorients this image of being in the Sleeper’s discourse, away from false rational sobriety towards sleep and death as sources of knowledge. The Sleeper turns away from the ‘‘new,’’ taught knowledge which repudiated the transcendent, ahistorical hope of salvation every sacred science teaches. He turns away from the rational delusion of the ‘‘perfect’’ society toward the revelation or reality of human perfectibility. Against analytical reason and the notion that there is only one way or road, the poet erects the Sleeper’s discourse on roads. To talk of the road amongst the roads, the Sleeper addresses himself as one who asks and finds. An answer on roads requires a word on man. Man, who alone has knowledge of the road, sees in the heavens the greatest and most fearsome warning of his insignificance and lowliness. In that gap between our lowliness and the farthest heaven, one and only one road has been revealed in the self—from body to Spirit, from the self to the Self. Only under the sign of that upright path, from the depths to the heights, are the earthly traces of heaven discernible. After ‘‘Roads,’’ ‘‘A Word on Man,’’ and ‘‘A Word on Heaven,’’ the Sleeper opens ‘‘A Word on Earth.’’ He pursues the question of his own realization through every sign and symbol of the land of Bosnia and its history. In ‘‘Message,’’ the Sleeper composes himself as absolute differentiation of self, as God’s image, and the other, whom he addresses as thou and who represents all those worldly limits which can cause us to forget our essence, the treasure-house of all our words. The Sleeper reminds us of transition: from waking to sleep and beyond to death. But what are waking, sleep, and death?

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We are created weak and forgetful, but in the fairest rectitude. Weakness constantly threatens us with forgetting the truth of our creaturehood. Forgetting divorces us from the most crucial of testimonies—there is no self but the Self. The Self is ‘‘the Living, the Upright. Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep,’’2 the Living who dies not. The peaceful in all the worlds and many among men remind us of Him as Peace, the All-Knowing, the All-Loving, the Beautiful. The signs on the outer horizons and within ourselves remind us of this. It is only in slumber and sleep—as against the waking illusion in which we forget that there is no self but the Self—only with the death of forgetting that we awaken to the testimony that there is no self but the Self and that His Face is everywhere. When we die as forgetful, it is to awaken as one of whom the Living says: ‘‘When I love him, I am the hearing through which he hears, the eyesight through which he sees, the hand through which he grasps, and the feet through which he walks.’’3

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1. T h e Po e t

Mehmed Alija ‘‘Mak’’ Dizdar, the most famous Bosnian poet of his age, was born in 1917 in Stolac, a town in the heart of Hum, the southern province of Bosnia. Few of Dizdar’s readers know him as Mehmed, the first name given him by his father, Muharem, and his mother, Nezira, ne´e Babovic´. Rather, they know him by his pseudonym of Mak, or Poppy, the code name he used as a member of the antifascist movement during World War II. (Mak’s mother and his sister, Refika, were killed in 1945 in the Jasenovac concentration camp—the Nazis’ way of taking their revenge on the elusive Mak.) Although he wrote and published poetry from his early youth to his death in 1971, Dizdar is best known for the volume of poems entitled Kameni spavacˇ (Stone Sleeper), which was a milestone in twentieth-century Bosnian and southern Slav poetry. The first edition of Kameni spavacˇ appeared in 1966. Shortly before his death in 1971, the poet submitted to the Mostar-based publishing house known as the First Literary Commune a manuscript revision that still more explicitly reflects the mystery of Bosnia’s destiny.1 This edition of Kameni spavacˇ was published in 1973, two years after the poet’s death.2

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Dizdar’s Sleeper poses perennial questions of the origin, way, and purpose of our being in this world through the krstjani, the followers of the distinctive medieval Bosnian Church, who lie beneath the great tombstones known as stec´ci (sing. stec´ak), awaiting the Day of Judgment.3 In lonely isolation or grouped in cemeteries, the stec´ci continue to define the spatial, cultural, and religious image of Bosnia4 and remain central to the discords and debates that arise over the origins and future of Bosnian plurality. Kameni spavacˇ was originally received as a finished poetic work. It was welcomed with delight and amazement, as its readers found in it a treasure they had lost. Few viewed the work in the light of perennial wisdom, as traditional intellectuality and the forms of culture associated with it had been harshly rejected in the modern age. When the Sleeper was first published, its discourse was more felt than understood. Under communism, people were expected to renounce whatever could not be quantified and bow down before the promised ‘‘end of history,’’ which was within the grasp of the revolutionary elite. Indeed, not just to bow down but to sacrifice themselves and others for that earthly goal. Communist rule was established in Bosnia in 1945, when the country became part of the Yugoslav communist federation. The ruling elite imposed its own image of the world as the absolute truth. Everything contrary to this ideology was regarded as an imperfection to be either altered or eliminated. The future was presented as the earthly paradise, while whatever lay beyond the sensible boundaries of space and time was declared not to exist. Seen from the outside, Mehmed Alija Dizdar was a consummate insider in that tale of man, society, and the world. He had grown up before the second World War in a time that harshly rejected his entire collective heritage, a time of almost indescribable misery and poverty during which the communists peddled their promises of a happier future. Other ideologies were in the mix alongside communism—those of nationalism and liberalism, of Nazism and fascism, all, however, based on the premise that the drama of self-realization is played on

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the stage of society, not in the self as the focus of the visible and invisible cosmos. Almost every account of Dizdar’s life presents him, like most of his comrades, as engaged in the social reconstruction that, according to the ‘‘avant-garde of the working class,’’ would necessarily lead via revolutionary changes to the ‘‘classless society’’ and the ‘‘earthly paradise.’’ There was no apparent trace of traditional culture in either his private or his public life. He did not follow the dietary laws, nor did he advocate restraint in the face of temptation. But his Kameni spavacˇ is perhaps the most resolute of discourses—thinking and poetry set in opposition to the modern worldview. There is probably no other discourse of his day in which Truth is so convincingly revealed as in the Sleeper’s poetic utterances. Everything in them is contrary to the ideological image. In place of the unique road leading to the ‘‘end of history,’’ he offers many roads. The word on the world is spoken in witness that man, heaven, and earth are indivisible. Dizdar was both a witness to and an actor in the denial and destruction of Bosnia’s traditional heritage. As he burst the bounds of his own constrained sense-of-self, he turned from the constructions of ideology toward the oceanic self over which Spirit floats. Here, the individual will, subordinate to instrumental analytical reason, was exposed as utterly powerless. It is perhaps of the poet’s turn that the Sleeper says: (Lord Forgive me That I only arrived Back where I’d started so hopeful-hearted). ‘‘bbbb 14’’)

Dizdar’s poetic revelation is testimony that no self can of its own free will choose Truth to subjugate It. Truth chooses its own speakers, for It is invariably above the self, regardless of how far that self has plumbed the depths or scaled the heights. No human measure can be imposed on Truth, which is present in every language and every age

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and always accessible in ways that suit the condition of the constantly changing self. In the poems of Kameni spavacˇ, a voice speaks that comes from our deepest core, the voice of uncreated, indestructible Spirit within us, a voice that has been muffled in post-Renaissance centuries by the hubbub of the marketplace and the campaigns waged against the strongholds of the old world. It is the voice of humanity, the epitome of all creation, which tailors its form to suit the time and language. Through the Stone Sleeper, it appeared anew as Bosnian, both in terms of language and in the horizons of its reception. It was made known in the world after long concealment behind the signs carved on the stec´ci, signs inscribed in charters and books,5 signs that have survived, albeit scattered by the many attempts to destroy them. These surviving books and fragments are but traces of a speech that will not die out, as long as there are people who remain attached to them. Speech is the treasure-house of knowledge, the halo of light around the word that inheres in all languages, its link with the first speaker unbroken. Regardless of how one supposes that human speech branched out into the incalculable multitude of languages through time and space, all who use it remain connected by it with God as both the First and the Last. Nothing human can be so utterly lost as never to be found. Kameni spavacˇ can be read as a poetic revelation in the full sense of the word, a rediscovery of something that seemed, to the majority at least, to be lost forever. It is not a sermon: its discourse treats of the krstjani, people in search of purification and return. Their speech is revealed through Dizdar’s poetic apocalypse to be sacred, attesting to the purity of our beginning and our end. There is nothing on earth or in the heavens or in between them worth renouncing that purity for. These Bosnian people sought to follow the Anointed and/or the Praised and so to discover and realize anointment and praiseworthiness as the highest moment of their own selves, the one and only center, the cause and purpose of all existence. Earth and the heavens and all things between them suffice for this venture. Our ‘‘now’’ lacks nothing that might cause us to shirk this

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mighty war against human avidity and ignorance. The krstjan (and the muslim) road leads to purification, as the prerequisite for receiving Peace and becoming a peacemaker (eirenopoi, muslimun), and it is possible, behind the texts of their heritage, to make out that which reveals their humanity. The Bosnian Krstjani (like the Bosnian Muslims) were repeatedly accused and persecuted, and those who record history have inverted that suffering, representing the Krstjani (and the Muslims) as apostates from the true faith and as persecutors of others. Their books were confiscated and destroyed, what is left of them now dispersed around the world—in Germany, Italy, Serbia, Croatia, Russia, Bulgaria, Ireland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and the Ukraine.6 Their oral interpretation, however, survives among the people of Bosnia in their living speech, in which the uncreated Light is ever present, that Light that constantly manifests Itself in new revelations.7 After centuries in which this spirit remained hazily present in the remains of the krstjan heritage and the living current of oral poetry in impoverished Bosnia, it was once again articulated through Mak Dizdar and given voice anew through the Sleeper. The heresy hunters who launched their full power against the krstjani and the book burners who have marked many an age were not the only dark forces seeking to silence that voice. The self is always somewhere between the heavenly heights and the earthly depths. The axis joining them is but a sign of the ascending path of the self from the uttermost depths toward the sublimest heights. When we lose sight of that sublime height, the signs within the horizons of the world and within our own selves cease to be windows onto the world beyond the boundaries, becoming closed doors through which we cannot pass, blind windows we cannot see through. When we are in this state, we are our own worst enemies, for we are wholly focused on the world around us and utterly without regard for the treasure that has always been and always will be within us. It is perhaps no happenstance that Dizdar’s nom de guerre and his nom de plume was mak (poppy), the symbol of the earth, sleep, and

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death. Reversed, the word mak reads as kam, the medieval word for kamen—stone. Kameni spavacˇ was first published at a time when people were willfully deaf to sacred science and sacred art—a time whose priests thought they had left the ‘‘fallacy of the invisible’’ behind them for good and had irrefutably demonstrated that the quantifiable world was the only world in existence and therefore sufficient to fulfill all our desires and intentions. They spoke of the imminence of the earthly paradise but left unexplained the human suffering of their own time and all past millennia. Imagining a life of happiness between birth and death on a subjugated, reshaped earth, they spoke of the era of paradise and enlightenment based on the supposedly perfect society guaranteed by the revolutionaries, as the key questions of the cause and purpose of our existence became still more obscure, more muffled. Dizdar’s persistent focus on the signs carved onto the stec´ci and inscribed in the few surviving medieval Bosnian manuscripts and his purchase in the living current of the oral heritage flowing down the centuries enabled him to penetrate into the innermost depths of the language and return from its profundities with the discourse of eternity. He was able to return because this speech had never been wholly quenched; it had survived in all those who had attested in whatever age to the true nature of their being and their faith in the signs they saw in the world around them. It was so because in each of us there is a plenitude that can be discovered and made manifest everywhere and at all times; in every time and place signs are preserved that remind us of the treasure–house in the uncreated center of our innermost self. Whenever anything in the world is recognized as a sign of the Creator, it becomes a window onto another level of existence, a window looking toward our uncreated center. The books and inscriptions that comprise Bosnian heritage preserve a link with sacred tradition only in their connection with the living oral current that flows through generation after generation. Outwardly they are Bosnian, but their inner essence transcends the specific. In them the sacred becomes an attainable human goal, but through signs decipherable only in the light of sacred science—

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attainable because perfect knowledge forms the profound core of every human being. If we want that center of ours to speak through outward signs, we must acknowledge the truth of all things in existence and our creaturehood in and with plenitude. We are created for the sake of perfection and brought onto the face of this earth, with its valleys and mountains, its rivers and seas, and above us the boundless expanse of the heavens. Before us are innumerable roads—to right and left, forward and back, up and down. Wherever we turn, the signs on the outer horizons will shed their light within us, revealing themselves as our inner treasure. The eternal question of our journeying is whether we shall choose to turn toward the light within us or toward the signs in the world around us as a realm to conquer. There is no place or time in which we can evade this question. We have all we need for the journey within us, as Jesus Christ, Son of Mary, said: ‘‘The kingdom of God is within you’’;8 therefore ‘‘ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.’’9 These words of Christ speak of our arrival in this world out of plenitude and our passage through the world for the sake of that same plenitude. Each individual self contains both the question of our humanity and the answer to that question. Perfection alone can be cause and purpose of our existence in this world. It would seem that this message guided the poet’s pen infallibly over the blank pages. As it did so, the poet followed a command from a higher level of his being, rather than conjecture and passion. His speech did not come from below, from the dark matter of existence. In the act of writing, the poet became yet another witness to the primal, universal tradition, the wisdom that permeates every sacred tradition. And yet, though the sacred science and its symbols so powerfully illuminate Kameni spavacˇ, its words were written in circumstances dictated by the post-Renaissance denial of the link between poetry and the sacred. The relationship between Dizdar’s poetic voice, on the one hand, and the language and signs of sacred art and sacred science, on the other, can be discerned, so long as we allow ourselves to be guided

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by the perennial wisdom that is contingent on neither time nor place. The center of the human self is the empire of that wisdom. It is only in this relationship that we can grasp the poet’s role—as a builder of bridges between Bosnia’s past and its future, the visible and the invisible, matter and Spirit, and silence and speech.10 The perennial wisdom has neither past nor future. It is one and the same, whether concealed in the depths of the self or spoken by prophets and poets. The Sleeper’s speech is clear and transcends the dominion of greed and ignorance over the majority of the people of his time.

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2. Roads

The eternal Unity of Truth has been revealed at different times through different prophets. The heavens, the earth, and all that lies between them are Its stage. The incalculable multitude of Its facets and possibilities has been revealed throughout existence, as either descent from or the confirmation of Unity. Just as Unity is the beginning and end of all worlds, so it is the beginning and end of all human individuality. Human individuality comprehends all knowledge of the heavens, the earth, and all that lies between them. It may be forgotten or lost, but never destroyed. All the worlds are there to remind us, as are the prophets, and to show us our greatest treasure: that we have descended from and may ascend to perfection. The Unity of the world takes on incalculable appearances. The news sent down by the One through the prophets as speech and books takes many and diverse forms. These different revelations—whether called Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, or some other name— always retain their link with Truth. These sacred forms are often transformed into the structures of ideology and power. Though these structures may seem to maintain their link with the sacred, adhering to them, while disregarding their common and unique source, brings

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one no nearer Truth. Such structures and orders often lose touch with Truth and, instead of bearing witness to It, conceal and obscure It. For many centuries, different sacred traditions have met and intermingled in Bosnia. At first these traditions were based on differing interpretations of the truth of Christ, the Anointed (Ma¯sˇia, Mesija, alMası¯h, Hristos). Thanks to its geographical location, Bosnia has for two thousand years been a theatre for the discussion of and testimony to that truth. The country’s history is indelibly marked by a range of doctrines, most clearly those we know as krstjan (the Bosnian Church), Orthodox Christian, Catholic, and Muslim. These different ways of reading one and the same Essence in Its different revelations have given Bosnia a special role in shaping the world as unity in plurality. The Bosnian preoccupation with the possibility of different readings of the same epistle and the revelation of the same Essence in different epistles has left a legacy of evidence and counterevidence on the nature of Christ through which his followers have sought to locate their own responses to the questions of God, the world, and man. Alhough the name Bosnia has come to signify the diversity of sacred tradition, the various paths to Truth all attest to a single purpose: our right to salvation, to felicity in perfection. Accordingly, we can accept no debt that undermines our right to felicity in perfection. No particular condition of man can be said to realize that right. As long as we are in this world, we are traveling toward our goal, which is within us. This goal is of greater value than any merely human achievement, as our authentic value far exceeds any waystation on the road toward it. In medieval times, the teachings of two great world orders, Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, prompted the development in Bosnia of a more resolute and distinctively Bosnian approach to the message of the Anointed, a faith without a name—for, as the profoundest reality of the self, it had need of none. At some time in the early thirteenth century or later, the Bosnians (Bosˇnjani, as they were then known) established their own separate church,1 igniting the enmity of the religious and ruling structures around them. The Bosnian Church endured for several centuries. Even

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when subsumed by other traditions, it maintained its presence through perennial wisdom, which is one and the same in its different historical manifestations. The supreme pontiff of the Bosnian Church was the djed, literally the grandfather, regarded as the Vicar of Christ and heir to the Apostle Peter.2 Her members, krstjan men and women, believed themselves to be ‘‘members of the Church of Christ’’3 and of ‘‘the true apostolic faith.’’4 In the eyes of the other churches and Bosnia’s neighboring states, however, they were dangerous, heretical patarenes5 and accursed apostates, ‘‘calling themselves kr’stijane and kr’stijanice, and not bowing to the holy icons or the sacred cross.’’6 Research into the teachings of the Bosnian Church based on surviving books and inscriptions does not confirm the allegations that the Bosnian krstjani had departed from the text of the Gospel. There are, however, many indications of what in their interpretation of the Gospel text aroused the ire of their enemies. The sacrament of baptism, which the Bosnian krstjani called ‘‘baptism in Christ’’ or ‘‘baptism of the book,’’ was performed by them by the laying on of hands and of the Holy Scriptures.7 To the krstjani, christening or baptism by the book meant turning toward purity and light, the original light of the All-Praised, which was passed to each being at conception, while still protected in the purity of the Word as first manifest in the mercy of the womb. The Bosnian Muslims, who are historically and spiritually one with the Bosnian krstjani in unbroken continuity, have preserved to this day the rite of baptism by the book. In this tradition, when a bride is brought to the bridegroom’s house, as soon as she has stepped over the courtyard threshold she overturns a pitcher of water with her right foot, signifying her adherence to the Divine Revelation: ‘‘The baptism of God; and who is there that baptises fairer than God?’’8 Then the Holy Book—the Qur’an—is laid on the bride’s head. This reflects a passage from the fifth sura: ‘‘There has come to you from God a light, and a Book Manifest whereby God guides whosoever follows His good pleasure in the ways of peace, and brings them forth from the shadows into the light by His leave; and He guides them to an upright path.’’9

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This recognition of the Book as the light and glory of the Comforter led the krstjani to wage a ‘‘mighty war’’ within themselves, a war to end all wars in the world—‘‘that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God.’’10 Turning toward this inner drama, the Sleeper bears witness before those who languish in their dark adherence to the waking illusion: For you know least that in your life The one true war The hardest strife Is at your very Core ‘‘Roads’’

The krstjani, as people-of-peace, dedicated their city and their houses as symbols of their inner orientation toward Peace to awareness of what is most crucial to the self and yet least known, as the Sleeper says: For all in life who ran away From homes that got Too hot To stay ‘‘House in Mile´’’

The krstjan and the Sleeper’s insistence that knowing oneself cannot be separated from knowing God, which they believed a prerequisite for discovering our primal dignity or the covenant with God, aroused the anger and violence of others against them. Their efforts to ensure that their faith was a relationship with God as Faithful, so that no priestly or imperial I could dictate their goal, ignited the hatred of the ruling structures around them. The more the krstjani or peopleof-peace insisted on the openness of their own sense of self, the fiercer grew the enmity of their others: the Inquisition and its campaigns

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against them invaded their time and place. The krstjani or people-ofpeace were not destroyed, however. These campaigns were just some of the many manifestations of the struggle that has defined the history of Bosnia, a struggle with a vicious enemy bearing down from without upon those for whom the war within is so much greater, so that the fire and sword of foreign campaigners appear idle threats. Their selves were irreducible, so long as they bore witness to the uncreatedness and uncreatability at their core. Many have turned to the legacy of the Bosnian krstjani to find confirmation of their closed notions of the world, and in these endeavors various opposing interpretations have taken shape. In Dizdar’s poetic revelation these interpretations are presented as so many paths along which we turn toward our center, our starting point and our destination. Each self is determined by its other. There is no way of distancing from this other, except through openness, through the uncreated and uncreatable center that encompasses all, and that is the only way out of finitude into infinity and eternity. This is why the Sleeper tells his enemy: (I understand you: You’re a man in just one space and time Alive just here and now You don’t know about the boundless Space of time In which I exist Present From a distant yesterday To a distant tomorrow Thinking Of you But that’s not all.) ‘‘Roads’’

Where there is life, there is consciousness; and where there is consciousness, there is knowledge relating the conscious knower and what he knows. This relationship of knower and known posits the object of

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knowledge as its source. Most of what we know comes to us from external sources as taught or received knowledge. When these external sources of knowledge are considered decisive, our inner self is subordinated to things that for the most part are not ours. In this subordination, it is not uncommon for the knowing self to be spurned and concealed. There are external sources of knowledge all around us, contradictory and hostile to one another and all focused on the knower. The relationship of knower and known can be configured differently. The human self has knowledge of all things in its center. There is nothing in all the worlds that is not unified in the heart, Intellect, or Spirit as the uncreated center of each self. Accordingly, we realize ourselves in relation to our center. Only that center as the knowledge of all things can lead the self to Unity of being and knowledge. All that is in the worlds, all roads and all laws, all prophets and all emperors, can either remind us of this or wage war against this impregnable fortress of humanity. We are never without the possibility of discovering or realizing our inner self in that center; and this means that our perfect beginning and our perfect return always lie within us. There is no outside friendship or enmity that can be more crucial than realizing this in the center of the self; and so the I can say to every enemy: So you don’t know that you’re the least Of my legion Of Great Evils You don’t know who You’ve taken on You know nothing about this road-map of mine You don’t know that the road from you to me Isn’t the same as the road From me To you. ‘‘Roads’’

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3 . T h e Wo r d

If our center is uncreated and inviolable and has its own ‘‘road map,’’ what then is the nature of the sacred science contained in the beliefs of the krstjani and in Dizdar’s work? To answer that question, one must focus on the term sacred. What is the sacred? The sacred is the incommensurable, the transcendent, hidden within a fragile form belonging to this world; it has its own precise rules, its terrible aspects, and its merciful qualities; moreover, any violation of the sacred, even in art, has incalculable repercussions. Intrinsically the sacred is inviolable, and so much so that any attempted violation recoils on the head of the violator.1 Dizdar’s Sleeper is neither awake nor in death but has moved from the waking state toward death and so has drawn closer to Reality, for absolute certainty manifests itself to us in two things: our now and our death. Absolute certainty abolishes that duality, however. There cannot be two absolute certainties: now and death are merely two manifestations of one and the same certainty. That is why the Sleeper speaks from that bridge between illusion and Reality. His response is

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the Word, differentiated into three words between all the roads and the Message: a Word on man, a Word on heaven, and a Word on earth. The Word is the principle and first mover of all creation, word and speech, sign and interpretation, confession and absolution, damnation and glory, voice and hearing, speaking and writing. God creates Words. His Word is the principle of all things: ‘‘His command, when He desires a thing, is to say to it ‘Be,’ and it is.’’2 The Word is thus both the one speaking and that which he speaks, whereby he brings into existence. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.3 This relationship between Light and darkness, or the Intellect and the worlds, is crucial in every sacred science. Both we and the world begin and end in uncreated Unity, which is Light and Intellect. But we and the world remain ever between beginning and end. Absolute beginning is the same as absolute end, and all things in existence tell of those two names of the One. Earth and heaven are signs of these two extremes through which Unity manifests Itself. The Intellect is a key term in sacred science. Although it has acquired many and contrary interpretations in various types of knowledge and ignorance, it is only in the sacred tradition that its meaning has clarity and purity. There it designates pure intellectuality unconstrained by thought and unassociated with any specific individual. It is important to note ‘‘designated’’ and not determined. Intellect is not determinable, as it encompasses the entire manifold in its connection with Unity. All that exists, with all its particularities, is within Intellect, but neither exhausts nor encompasses it. Intellect determines all things, but nothing in existence can determine Intellect. Intellect is Unity. So long as the delusion of difference persists in the depths of each created thing, Intellect appears to have three basic

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forms. The first is Divine Intellect: pure Light and act. The second is Cosmic Intellect, for God a relay or mirror, but for us a Light. The third is Human Intellect, a mirror to the two preceding forms, but Light for the individual self. In reality, Intellect’s role is the reverse: to bring difference into the world, that the self might be one.4 Intellect was created before the heavens, earth, and man and all things else, and as first, is closest to God. But Intellect transcends individual form and can be said to be most fully imbued with the Uncreated. Above all creation, reflected in all things, and closest to Unity, whatsoever Intellect illuminates testifies to Unity. Intellect thus connects all things with the Uncreated Creator and imbues all things with Truth. These things, as signs of Unity, may become Speech, for they bear the triple seal—God, Spirit, and the Praised. Since God is manifest in Spirit through the Praised, what the Praised says as the Word the Spirit has told him. Unity appears in multiplicity, and Peace in motion. Multiplicity and motion are in Unity and Peace, and vice versa. All that is in multiplicity and motion testifies to Unity; and thus every particular within the horizons of the world or in the self partakes of the nature of a sign created with Truth. The innermost essence of every sign—that which is ‘‘beyond’’ its spatial and temporal boundaries—is its connection with Intellect in the chain of being. We, too, are signs that reflect the attributes of our Creator. It is no wonder, therefore, that the names the poet was given, clearly not of his own free will—Mehmed (Muhammad), ‘Alija (‘Alı¯), and Dizdar— inform the semiotic context of his poetry, along with the signs on the Bosnian stec´ci and in the old books. As do his father’s given name, Muharem (Muharram), and both of his mother’s names—Nezira (Nadhı¯ra) and Babovic´. We shall look at each of these names in turn. The essence that governs every sign is wholly independent of form or language. How signs appear in the outside world is accessible to us through analytical reason, but their inner plenitude only through Intellect. Analytical reason corresponds to the brain, Intellect to the Heart. Our openness to Intellect enables the signs within the world’s horizons and within the self to be ‘‘connected’’ with their archetypes

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in Unity and so translated into the fullness of Truth, where knowing and being are one and the same: for the treasure–house of all that is is in Unity, whence the worlds and all that is in them descend into existence, always in known measure.5 When the multiplicity of states of being are thus interlinked, the divine Word becomes known as a Message, which announces that all of creation praises its Creator. One with the fullness of this message is a Messenger. He is called Muhammad (or the Praised), for in and through him it is shown that: ‘‘Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being, the All-merciful, the Ever-merciful!’’ His words and deeds are transmitted as tradition, renewing and affirming our connection with Truth. The Praised is thus the boundary between two seas, one fresh, one salt, the world of ideals and the world of phenomena. To this latter, the world of analytical reason, he brings Intellect, as the Word, raising up the meaning of all the signs within its horizons and in the self to higher levels of being. That which was sent down is thus raised up again through the paragon nature of the Praised. This connection between first and last, outer and inner, is realized in the Heart. The Heart, as the link between individuality and Supraindividuality, or the created and the Uncreated, is thus the Eye with which God sees Himself. In so far as each individual thing is a sign, it can be spoken of only through other signs. The lower states in the chain of creation denote higher states; and every sign at every level of existence manifests itself through the archetype in Intellect. In consequence, all the signs on the outer horizons become intelligible only when they are reconnected through the Heart with their archetypes or with Unity as their primal treasury. In this world, the person closest to the Praised is ‘Ali (the Exalted). He is not the same as the Praised, for he is not himself the boundary between the two seas, but he knows, bears witness to, and follows the Praised. The Exalted is thus an example to people of how it is possible, by following the Praised, to ascend from matter toward Spirit, from multiplicity to Unity. He is located in relation to the City of Knowledge, as the Praised says: ‘‘I am the City of Knowledge and the

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Exalted is its gate: therefore, whoever wants knowledge, let him learn it of the Exalted.’’6 Through the Praised the real world is made sacred, for God forbids that any truth but Truth be added to or subtracted from any sign. We are thus muharram in this world—‘‘under prohibition’’ or ‘‘sacred,’’ and so ‘‘inviolable.’’ The man of knowledge, who understands that this is the truth for all the worlds, is one whose entire knowledge and being form just one answer to the question: Hast thou not seen how to God prostrate themselves all who are in the heavens and all who are in the earth, the sun and the moon, the stars and the mountains, the trees and the beasts, and many of mankind?7 Wherever he is, then, the man of knowledge understands that he is in the Temple, where he may voluntarily express humility and form a bond in peace with God as Peace. The doors of the Temple, or the City of Knowledge, are constantly under threat from wrong thinking, however, for some people deny Unity, whether by associating something from multiplicity with It or by drawing a veil over It in some way. The Perfect Man, therefore—the good, the just, or the holy—is in a constant state of war against the iniquities of the world outside the Temple, for the world was originally pure and so reminds us of our covenant with God, which forms the most profound core of every human self. Such a man is known as a dizdar, a keeper of the fortress. The mother of Mehmed ‘Alija Dizdar, son of Muharem, was Nezira, which means ‘‘promised under oath,’’ ‘‘she who portends or announces,’’ or ‘‘she who warns or cautions.’’ Her maiden name of Babovic´ derives from the Arabic noun ba¯b, meaning door or gate. Even as a patronymic, it still suggests a doorway. Taken together, her names may be understood as a warning on our entry into this world and departure from it, reminding us of the three crucial components of the sacred tradition—Unity, Prophecy, and Return. These are the contours of the sacred science that illumines Mehmed ‘Alija Muharem Dizdar’s poetry—a science that is independent of time and place and is expressible in every language.

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When man was expelled from Paradise for having violated the decree on the forbidden (haram), the sacred science was hidden from view but did not disappear. Although the inner recesses of the individual were obscured by this act, the darkness was never absolute. Once we learn to distinguish the real from the unreal, we can strip away the darkness that veils the signs in the world and the self. Those who have been ‘‘wrenched from heaven’’ can reconnect themselves (religare) with it by ascending the ladder sent down to them as the salvific rope. The salvific rope is the Word that connects God as speaker and man as hearer. Attending to that speech means turning away from the outward signs as objects that affirm our will and passing over the set boundary to direct ourselves inward, where nothing is lacking. These two options for humanity stand fully revealed: relationship with the outside world as the proper theatre for recollection and self-affirmation, on the one hand, or relationship with the essence of the self as with humanity itself, on the other. Both possibilities are always open to us, but only one can be primary. Tradition means choosing the second: to realize ourselves only within ourselves. This choice is under constant challenge and threat from the first possibility, however. If we seek to know the meaning of our being in the world, the reason we have come into it and the goal we leave it for, traditional teaching tells us we must look inside ourselves—for we will not and, indeed, cannot find it outside the self. Knowledge, as that which relates knower and Known, begins in and returns to Reality. Reality may be experienced as Being, Consciousness, and Felicity. Where Consciousness and the knower are the same, then God is Being as known. Felicity, however, is the unification of knower with the Known. The self as knower and the world’s horizons as the object of knowledge seem distinct and independent. This appearance engenders the human sense of insignificance and impotence, inciting the self to grotesque conflict with the world as the object of knowledge and domination. This distinction does not, however, exist—we and the world are but two sides of the same manifestation of Reality. The union of Being and Consciousness in Felicity is the condition of knowledge. This is not to say that the existence of the worlds depends on us and owes us

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its reality—nor the converse, for we do not owe our reality to the worlds. Both the world and we owe our existence to Necessary Being as Consciousness and Knowing. The being of the world and our own being are derived from the qualities and characteristics of the Real. All things on the outer horizons and in our inner selves are but the fingerprints of the Real, Who is always above and before those marks, which are His speech or His book. To listen to that speech and learn from that book mean to forsake the fingerprints of the Real for the sake of the One Who is above and before us. As some Sufis put it, the universe is God’s dream, and as Vedantists say, all is Maya. The question of the search for meaning then comes down to this: Can we know the meaning of the universe or of any object within it without knowing the meaning of the Real? Can we know the meaning of the dream without knowing the Dreaming Subject? Can we know our own selves anywhere else than within ourselves?8 The poet enters the burial ground, reads the signs and inscriptions on the stec´ci and in the surviving books, and writes: Various symbols—the sun, twining plants, outstretched human hands—have entered into me from the huge stone tombs. At night I have been assailed by notes scribbled in the margins of ancient books, whose lines scream question after question about the apocalypse. Then the sleeper beneath the stone comes to me. His lips open, limestone-pale, and his dumb tongue speaks again. In him I recognize myself, but I still do not know if I am on the way to unveiling his secret.9 In the silence of his inner self, the Sleeper comprises the whole of existence—the heavens, earth, and all that lies between them. His signs are in all of this and lie in two directions—from the outer horizons toward the inner self and from the self to the horizons. None of this has purpose in itself. The veil over the self is only fully stripped in the Self. Neither the heavens nor earth nor anything that lies between them has any meaning except to remind us of this unveiling and

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28 / The Text beyond the Text

self knowledge. The Sleeper speaks of the five wise men who try to decipher a strange inscription on a tombstone of which there are many possible interpretations at various levels of existence, from death, as deep sleep, to waking illusion. But only one interpretation is sound— the one that cannot be expressed. In it are united both knower and Known, both speaker and listener. This interpretation occurs in absolute awakening which is the death of forgetting. The mirror inverts the illusion and sets the world against the world, the self against the self. The signs on the outer horizons thus turn or return to the Self as the everpresent Face that never vanishes, despite the forgetfulness of waking illusion, sleep, and death: The fifth with clenched fists and trembling fingers tries to hold This mirror of clear redeeming grace But it slips To the Floor. For in it that instant he recognises His own Ancient Forgotten Face. ‘‘A Text about a Text’’

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4 . Man

Viewed formally, Mak Dizdar’s poetry is post-traditional, but as an artistic revelation it is imbued with perennial wisdom as spoken within the enduring Bosnian tradition. This is why the newly awakened sleepers’ voices cannot be understood outside of traditional wisdom. Kameni spavacˇ contains poems that relate in various ways to the waking, dreams, and death of the people associated with the stec´ci— their owners, the stonemasons who shaped them, and their scribes. However different the voices on either side of these texts, it is through them that the Poet as speaker and writer spans the centuries, establishing cold, passive stoniness as their source. All speech testifies to silence, just as the dead text reveals the living writer. Dizdar’s discourse is of his now, but remains part of the oral transmission that reaches him from the distant past. There is no denying that Dizdar is part of the powerful current of the oral tradition in his country’s and people’s oral tradition. Their approach to listening, speaking, writing, and reading is informed by recitation, of which listening and speaking are the key components.1 His text is governed by recitation, which traverses generations in the form of song.2 Dizdar acknowledged this link with folk heritage: ‘‘I do not hide the fact that

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I prefer to learn by listening to [folk poetry] than to the products of some new ‘isms.’’’3 The poet’s ‘‘listening’’ is apparently his way of connecting with the treasure-house of language. The center of the self, which is to say Intellect, Spirit, or Heart, is what gives language its indestructible order. Dizdar’s poetic revelation descends from a higher level of the self to be passed on from one generation to the next, from one waking state to another, one sleep to another, one death to another. Waking, sleep, and death enter the speech and writing of the Sleeper, who affirms: for once I was the same as ye and as I am so shall ye be.4 ‘‘A Text on a Watershed 2’’

A given happening either takes place now or we know its traces from the past. To whatever degree Dizdar was aware of the remnants of the forms of speech his poetic pronouncements were handed down to him in, it was the now that governed his listening, speaking, and writing. This sequence—listening, speaking, and writing— corresponds to death, sleep, and waking. Every instance of coming into life is a manifestation of the Living. To return to the Living is to die in all things but Him. What we ordinary mortals take to be waking, in which our will seems to our inner self to be independent and sufficient, is just the dream latent in illusion. When we fall asleep, our inner self is no longer in the illusion of the waking state; it is in the reality of sleep, without free will or delusion. We rise or awake from the false waking state of nonsleep into sleep itself, when our inner self is no longer dependent on the illusion of power and is thus free in its relationship with the Invisible. We sleep through this life and awaken when we die.5 Our ascent is thus from illusion toward Reality on our return path to Peace as our first home. This is the faith of Jesus, Son of Mary, who says: ‘‘Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go.’’6 Following this knowledge, the Sleeper says:

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I was no fisher no carpenter no splasher of water although I ate not of the limewood cross I baptised not with water My hope is a finger in a pillar of light My light lieth in that hope With this faith I keep my faith This faith which hath no name ‘‘Madderfield’’

The faith of the Bosnian krstjani was contested by all the other churches.7 Dizdar posits this opposition as the relationship between the Unsleeping Watchman, on the one hand, and the Sleeper and his dreams, on the other. Thus is the order of the manifestation of Being, in the descent from Essence and Unity toward multiplicity, affirmed or confirmed. Sleep is accorded a higher level than waking. The Sleeper’s message to the unsleeping who persist in trying to destroy the faith ‘‘that hath no name’’ is: By destroying the true shapes it takes You only confirm it Whether it Sleeps Or Whether It Wakes. ‘‘Message’’

All the Sleeper’s voices are in this return, our realization in the self. Only by the lens of sacred science can the poet’s signs be interpreted in their true light. The sun—the greatest sign on the outer horizons, for it denotes access to Intellect throughout existence—has left a deep and complex mark on Bosnian history, as on every other: He rolled up his sleeves and ploughed the earth good and deep right down to her womb right down to her heart. ‘‘Sun’’

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The principle of the sun as reflected in Bosnian heritage is the key to the relationship between Kameni spavacˇ and sacred tradition. The clearest sign of this is the Book God sent down through His prophets—one Book in eternity, but with many manifestations in time and languages. This is not a descent from outside inward, but the reverse. The Book comes into the world, its message elaborated in speech and writing, from within, from Intellect or Heart, borne into speech by the Holy Spirit. It is always in speech first and only afterward, though not necessarily, in the written record. The whiteness of the page denotes the Light of Intellect, infinite and eternal, but manifest in the letters in which it is written—not in their blackness but through the infinite halo of Light around each one of them. The Perfect Man relates to Intellect directly. He is on the axis of the world, and his existence is wholly permeated by the pillar of the sun that corresponds to the seventh heaven or the seventh ray, or the world beyond the world. In fallen humankind, that connection has been lost, but there are ways in which it can be rediscovered or reestablished. Everything that has been lost can be found again. Although the sun’s symbolic traces are at risk of being forgotten in the endless cycle of destruction and reconstruction, they are never wholly erased; but they would be, as the Sleeper says: if we weren’t still warming the whole of our soul By the heat of his long-gone golden hands. ‘‘Sun’’

This duality between the Perfect Man and fallen man manifests itself as the opposition between uprightness, the ascent toward Unity, and straying on the plain of multiplicity. The counterpart to the first is the Heart and to the second is the brain. The link between them is analogous to that between sun and moon; both are heavenly bodies that shed light, but the moon does so by receiving and reflecting the light of the sun: What is true for the Sun and Moon is also true for the heart and the brain, or better for the faculties to which these two organs

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correspond and which they symbolise: that is, the intuitive intelligence and the rational or discursive intelligence. The brain, in as much as it is the organ or instrument of reason, truly plays only the role of ‘‘transmitter’’ and, one might say, of ‘‘transformer.’’ . . . Intellectual intuition can be called supra-human, as it is a direct participation in universal intelligence which, residing in the heart, that is, at the being’s very centre, where lies his point of contact with the Divine, penetrates this being from within, and illuminates him with its radiation.8 Light is a sign of knowledge. The light of the sun represents direct knowledge, the knowledge that comes from Pure Intellect, while the light of the moon represents reflected or received knowledge, the knowledge of analytical reason, and is thus contingent and transient. The poet says of the moon: Carve his sign in the soft white of limestone so you may absorb as faithfully as can be The image of your infinite pain and hope. ‘‘Moon’’

We are always between the depths and the sublime heights, between pain and hope. Our connection with the image leads us toward the primal Light or Spirit that is at our center—that original, uncreated, and uncreatable center that is the first manifestation of Unity in Intellect and the Light of the Praised. To carve our sign in the softness of limestone represents our longing to bridge the gulf between the depths and its darkness, on the one hand, and the Heart and the world with all its horizons, that we may discover our primal perfection, to which both pain and hope direct us. The true nature of knowledge is veiled in mystery and cannot be accessed by words alone. This does not mean that manifest knowledge is incomprehensible, for it shines in the human order in accordance with strict laws. It is only in the Heart, however, that knowledge and being become one; outside that center, which is inaccessible to thought, all observation is blind to the true nature of its object.

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The softness of the limestone, which signifies the insubstantiality of human existence and analytical reason, is also the countersign of the enduring nature of Mercy and Peace. Pain is the inescapable feeling of mutability, while hope follows it as the reversal of differentiation into Unity. Reflected light, which attests to its source, signifies the supremacy of Pure Intellect over its rational reflection. Whosoever enables the reflection to be rejoined to its source or being to find its archetype is ‘‘very good,’’9 or, in other words, the Praised as Light and God’s Messenger. The Praised is the Messenger of God, and as such he is to each of us our supreme potential or primal perfection. But how can we know the Praised as the messenger of our supreme potential? God answers this question through Moses: ‘‘When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken.’’10 Jesus says of these false prophets, ‘‘Ye shall know them by their fruits.’’11 A prophet is the embodiment of the tidings given to him: what he says does indeed occur. A poet’s potential to receive tidings in the same way as a prophet is confirmed by the Praised.12 Prophecy has come to an end in this temporal cycle; but that does not mean the end of poetry or of false prophecy. The key question is how to recognize a poet who is not telling the truth. God answers this question through the Praised: ‘‘Hast thou not seen they wander in every valley and how they say that which they do not.’’13 False prophecy and poetry are an inevitable part of our being in the world. Self realization presupposes distinguishing falsehood from truth. We construe the images of our waking life, always in ways that reflect our inner state. The images of our sleep, however, are not ours to construe. These images of sleep may be false or true, but are invariably received. Truth cannot be imitated, so the Prophet in the Sleeper’s dream is what he sees. The Sleeper speaks from the reality of his dream, where his dead and his waking self touch. It is for those who hear the Sleeper to look in his poems, those reflected dreams, for the Praised as their supreme potential.

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5 . He aven

Man is like a barrier between two seas, the supraindividual world of the archetypes and the world of phenomena, or a bridge between them, and so himself has two sides. The first is not contingent on individuality or on language, while the second takes on particular individuality and a particular language. The fact that the former is not contingent on the latter does not mean that the reverse holds true. Whatsoever has form and shape is fully contingent on the Invisible. This barrier or bridge is everywhere to be seen in the multiplicity of names and forms, but never so as to betray its primal, constituent essence. Earth and heaven are the signs of this division. In the world of human individuality, their analogues are body and Spirit. Just as all things in existence, all the signs on the outer horizons, are arrayed between earth and heaven, so, too, the possibilities of the human self are ranked between body and Spirit. The realization of our humanity calls for metaphysical insight into and becoming one with all levels of Being. This inexhaustible differentiation of the One in multiplicity speaks of the cause and purpose of creation and thus of our journey, our discovery of primal perfection through the signs on the outer horizons and in the self. Whatsoever is in the heavens, is on earth, or between them is inseparable from the self, a permanent reminder of the

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primal perfection of the center of our humanity, as the origin and refuge of all roads. Whenever we cleave to any of the manifestations of this differentiation or of our position as bridge—a prophet, for instance—as if it were the One and Only, we attribute to the sign more than it is, causing a rift between outer and inner worlds. The result is that we lose our orientation from earth toward heaven or from body toward Spirit. Ignorant of Unity, we wander aimlessly in multiplicity. Even if we know of the path ‘‘that comes/From left/Or/Right’’ and leads ‘‘north/ Or/South,’’ the path ‘‘Between earth’s roots where darkness has congealed,’’ or ‘‘from measureless heights,’’ even with this knowledge, we remain ignorant of the mysterious Self, which reveals itself only after we have attained the source that abides beyond all spatial horizons. The Sleeper affirms this knowledge of the roads by which he came to where he is, and wonders: Now here I am Now here I am Without myself Bitter How can I go back To whence I sprang? ‘‘A Text about a Spring’’

This question of self-knowing finds expression at all times and in every language. The starting point is the encounter with stone, with its dead surfaces, of which the Sleeper says: We need to become not stone and eyes straight to walk unwavering through this stone city’s stone gate. ‘‘Rain’’

Stone is concentrated passivity and coldness, which receives the imprint of our feeling for the metaphysical and cosmological horizons. All that it receives draws closer to death as the other face of the human ‘‘now.’’ To become not stone and walk through the stone city’s

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stone gate is to recall or rediscover the center of the self, to return from exile. The rituals of bowing in prayer and the gyration of the round dance remind us of this discovery of the center of the self as Spirit, of our eternal homeland, and of the teachings that encompass waking, sleep, and death alike. Turning away from fear toward the Sacred Temple, the center of the mystery of the self, begins with the knowledge that every phenomenon is a round dance or revolution around the truth of creation. The southern Slav traditional kolo or round dance, which, like the whirling of the dervishes, represents the revolution of all manifest forms around their unique, extratemporal, extraspatial center, is another aspect of this. By dancing the round or by whirling, the dancer may attain various degrees in the realization of individual existence and discover Spirit as his uncreated and uncreatable center. Three degrees are crucial on this path leading toward the center: first, becoming one with the central state to which the individual being belongs in the conjunction of the formal and supraformal grounds of manifestation; second, becoming one with the center of all manifest states, formal and supraformal, where they are immersed in the Universal Being; and third, becoming one with the Absolute, where the infinity of possibilities, manifest and nonmanifest, dissolve into the Supreme Reality. The self that ascends through these three degrees first establishes its intentional connection with Peace. This connection invariably has little knowledge of the Perfect but a great love for the Known. This self must not accept any knowledge that is differentiated into knower and Known as sufficient: it desires to be what it knows and aspires to absolute union with the Beloved. The Beloved constantly reveals His beauty to the traveler in every sign, albeit never wholly and never set in stone. Spatially, this may be symbolized by the cross, with man at its center. Wherever and whenever it may be, space extends before us into infinity, and the counterpart of this expansion is the return or the gathering. This is true of the space that extends to our right and left and above and below us. These three dimensions, forward-back, right-left,

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up-down, with their six directions, converge on a single point, their intersection. This point is the principle of spatial development along these dimensions, but is itself nondimensional. Its symbolic counterpart is the sublime pen, the seventh ray, the strait gate, and remembrance. Everyone attains it in whose now past and future converge without cease. The individual center and the Center, the individual now and Eternity, are bridged by the testimony that there is no reality but Reality and hence no self but the Self. We do so to free ourselves of the illusion of duality in our response to God’s question: ‘‘Am I not your Lord?’’1 The gyrations of the kolo, the round dance, around the one and only center, as the dancer discovers the Self through movement, thus correspond to the force that leads toward interiority, the attraction of the source, at the earthly level: How long the kolo from hollow to hollow How long the sorrow from kolo to kolo Kolo to kolo from sorrow to sorrow. ‘‘Kolo of Sorrow’’

From this center, to which the suffering turn in their lowliness in the vale or the uttermost depths, a spring wells up and a vine grows. The vine and its branches signify harmonious growth and renewal, linking the world of six directions with the world that has its source in the Unity and Peace of the seventh heaven. Through the rhythmic drawing in and release of breath, the plenitude of Unity is seen in the worlds of Being and contingency. The vine is a sign that we have transcended contingency through our witness to Unity in the person of the Perfect Man, of whom the Sleeper says: Present here is He Who said in faithful writ I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman and Every branch in me That beareth not fruit I shall take away

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But that the field wax fat the fruit be sweeter the root be deeper The branch that beareth I shall purge. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you Therefore cast ye your brute Matter into this fiery flame Abide thus in me And I most surely in you As in those I abode in of old as in those whom I loved true. ‘‘the vine and its branches’’

With these words, the Anointed restored once and for all the covenant between created and Creator: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.2 Here, the Anointed’s use of I is not specific, for he is not speaking on his own account. It is a sign that links every individual with the Center, or at least the barrier between the two seas, the salt water and the fresh. It connects the manifest and unmanifest with Intellect and so with Unity. The Anointed points to the Oneness of the Center in many testimonies: ‘‘But when the Praised3 is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.’’4 The totality of existence denoted by the heavens and earth and all that lies between them is summed up in man. Once unfolded, it is

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completed by the creation of man. All that is diffused in the worlds as macrocosm is summed up within man as microcosm. There can be no macrocosm without the microcosm nor microcosm without the macrocosm. Without man, the worlds would have no purpose. But without the worlds, neither would we be reminded of the Praised as our supreme potential. Without the worlds, our perfection would not be a constant presence, an open road from the uttermost depths to the sublimest heights. The worlds and all that is manifest in them have been sent down or diffused through Intellect out of Unity. Their reassembly, or the return to Intellect and Unity, takes place within us, who are realized by the testimony that there is no self but the Self. Heaven reminds us without cease of our original sublimity and of self realization through it. The Sleeper says, from his perspective between the depths of the waking state and the heights of death: In this world three powers shine three pillars of light stand in a line Sun and Moon and the Perfect Man are the forces of the macrocosm He and the Virgin and Mind in their midst are the forces of the microcosm The kingdom of heaven is inside us so let it be known The kingdom of heaven is outside us So let it be shown. ‘‘The Garland’’

The Sun, the Moon, and the Perfect Man signify the sequence of God as Light and Illumination as His first manifestation, the reception and transmission of the Light, and the assembly and bestowal of all that is manifest through the levels of illumination from plenitude to nullity. The sun, as a worldly sign of Intellect, corresponds to ‘‘He— God, there is no God but He.’’5 Neither His heaven nor His earth embraces him, but the heart of His believing servant embraces Him.6 The moon symbolizes the perfect recipient of Illumination or the Word— that is, the Praised, as Messenger, and the Virgin, as pure recipient.

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The Holy Spirit carries the Word into their heart, and the Virgin bestows it on the world as the Anointed, while the Praised does so as the Recitation (the Qur’an). The Perfect Man is the sum of all creation diffused in the worlds, and Intellect is both the beginning before differentiation and the end after return. These three pillars of light appear within the horizons of the world and the self to make it clear that He is Truth. The whole of the Sleeper’s speech is poetry drawn from and countering the tombstones. Thus, through holy writ and all the expanses of virgin nature, it embraces the range of art from stone forms to the music of speech. The stec´ci and their shaped and molded surfaces correspond to space, and poetic utterance to time. The inscriptions on the surface of the stone link space and time through reading and listening. We strive to consolidate in space and time all that touches us with beauty and goodness, beatitude and sanctity; but all constantly elude us, so drawing us on from each state as from the lower to the higher. This is ‘‘becoming not stone,’’ passage through the gates of heaven. The Sleeper speaks his poem, and his speech announces death through sleep. It is speech out of utter stillness, but directed toward action. The rhythm and rhyme of the Sleeper’s utterances are the music of his uncreated interior. When he is aware of that music, heaven is his homeland and his domain, the house from which he departed and to which he desires to return. The music passes rapidly and insecurely through space. The Beloved is present in it, and we seek to remember Him through paintings, statues, houses, and cities as the embodiment of the music. These external forms of our embodied listening remind us as observers of experiences we have had and wish to repeat. In our rituals, we join the revolution or kolo around the Center so as to link space and time. Our bodies as we dance give it form, and our movement, as our relationship with the Center, represents number. The Center is the metaphysical nullity or non-Being that confirms Unity, as does the immeasurable multiplicity of phenomena. Our flesh is the concomitant of matter, and the life within it of energy. The revolutions of the

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round dance thus extend the Center, space epitomized in our corporeality, as time is in movements repeated in sequences sent down from the Ineffable Center. The self and all the worlds thus manifest Unity, to which both earth and heaven and all that is between them return, along with man as the sum of all things. This universal return to the One and Only, drawing in the separated actors—multiplicity with all its particulars, on the one hand, and Unity as the principle of all things, on the other—is none other than love. There is neither true prophecy nor true poetry, if they do not attest to love as the path on which all things return to the One and Only Beloved, Who manifests Himself in all things, always and everywhere, so that all things vanish, always and everywhere, on discovering His Face.

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6. E ar th

The yearning to return, the longing for realization in the primal potential of the human self that can be heard in the Sleeper’s speech, is denoted by the gate to the City of Knowledge. Our presence on the earthly level is manifested by the City, which enables us to distinguish the marketplace from the vineyard—earth from heaven; and between them is a strait gate: Here just guests we stand out still Although we should have crossed into a ring of light And passed at last through a strait gate in order to return Out of this naked body into the body eterne When I happened by this evening late Unbidden He said unto me I am that gate and at it enter into Me as I now into thee So He spoke but where is the mouth of the lock where the finger of the one true key for the gate to the burning stair? ‘‘the gate’’

This is the call to the City. The Anointed said: ‘‘I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.’’1 As for the Prophesied,

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who is the Praised and the City of Knowledge, the Anointed testified that ‘‘he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.’’2 He comes as the bearer of glad tidings and as promised by the covenant.3 The Husbandman, the One and Only eternal God, summons men to His vineyard: ‘‘the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.’’4 The unemployed workers in the marketplace are called from the break of day to sunset, from the first rays of the sun to its sinking below the horizon. Therefore ‘‘the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called but few chosen.’’5 Responding is crucial to realization and the rediscovery of what has been lost; nothing can ever justify turning a deaf ear to the call, for there is no self but the Self: So forsake your father and mother forsake your sister and brother Be loosed of this earth of ours and set ye no store by its flowers Come out of the city by the east come out of her by the west Build a city in thyself and turn thy face toward thy city For the time is at hand. ‘‘the garland’’

When we accept the call, we come to see the One in the One. The signs on the outer horizons are seen to be the same as the signs in the inner self, and time is condensed, so that the chosen are redeemed. As the beginning recedes further into the distance and the end draws ever closer, the distinction between the marketplace and the vineyard becomes deeper, and increasingly founded on the marketplace alone. Multiplicity and motion, the features of the marketplace, obscure the horizons, and Unity and Peace, the qualities of the vineyard, become ever more indistinct and remote to the people of the marketplace. The gates of heaven are ever more distant, and denial of the signs is ever more widespread. Those who are unconcerned with the bustle and events of the marketplace, who respond to the call of the Vigneron, know ever more

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Earth / 45

clearly the fate of the city that has become separated from its invisible center, from the vine stock. Our original state is to be in the Garden, and the perfection of that existence is determined by the inviolability of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the Garden, the fruit that is not to be eaten. Violating the center caused man to be cast out onto this earth, where the perfect harmony of the Garden was dispersed and veiled from sight in its many contrarieties. Man descends from his sublimest heights to his uttermost depths, and, in that new state, turns to the traces of the Garden and marks them by building a city that reminds him of his lost home. The creative word remains one, though dispersed into a multiplicity of expressions. It is the source of all things but also their point of confluence. This is how the river of the world is crossed by means of the Word, passing from multiplicity to Unity, from wrath to Mercy, from pain to Beatitude, from death to Life. With the Word, the self returns from the differentiation of this world to its Source, which is at the same time flowing toward the Confluence. Waiting for the Word to manifest itself in the world urges the self toward the new, toward the primal Brilliance that has been and will be within it for all time. The cross is the sign of Intellect made manifest in the world. In the Bosnian sacred tradition, so powerfully revealed in the Sleeper’s utterances, a multitude of examples bear witness to this. One of them is associated with the interpretation of verses 6 and 7 of ‘‘al-Fatiha,’’ ‘‘the Opening’’ (the first sura of the Qur’an): Guide us in the upright path, The path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful, nor of those who are astray. The upright path corresponds to the top upright of the cross. It is the steep path of Intellect and Spirit that leads upward from earth to heaven, from body to Spirit. It also corresponds to the pillar of the sun and the seventh ray. We ascend it toward our center and union. The goal of the journey is felicity or beatitude. The path of those against whom God is wrathful is denoted by the lower upright of the cross; it is the path from the surface of the earth down into inspissated gloom,

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toward hell, which is the condition of the burning soul pitting its illusory will against the Divine Will. The cross arms correspond to the entanglements of this world, the state of those who have lost their way and are blundering about aimlessly in their quest for the center, for the differentiation of heaven into seven heavens has been lost, the multiplicity of the levels of being obscured. The cross may also be interpreted in accordance with the Virgin’s testimony, when, silent in the face of the accusations of those who had gone astray, she pointed to her forehead, then to her right and her left shoulders, and her belly. Bosnian sacred tradition interpreted this sign as meaning: what descended from Intellect by the upright path—as attested by the angel to the right and the angel to the left— into the womb is the Divine Word and Spirit. This sign includes an echo of the words revealed by God through His angels: ‘‘Mary, God has chosen thee, and purified thee; He has chosen thee above all women. Mary, be obedient to thy Lord, prostrating and bowing before Him.’’6 We are perpetually between the uttermost depths and the sublimest heights, and thus potentially wandering through the expanses of this ‘‘in-between’’ or sinking still lower, but also potentially able to ascend, to return, to realize ourselves. This potential is within each of us, but when it is reduced to some external event or the authority associated with it, to some you in time, the reality of every now is concealed. The most famous stone cross of the Bosnian krstjani portrays a man with his right hand raised and his left lowered, a man in the jerkin worn by the poor. Is he not thus calling people, from his sleep and his death, with the voice of Jesus? Neither life nor death is mine For I’m just one in the shade of One Who confounded death’s craft Who melted into a shaft Of sun. ‘‘Sun Christ’’

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The pillar of the sun is a name for Intellect and Spirit, by which waking is transformed into sleep, and sleep into the death of all things but Him in His words: ‘‘Put thy trust in the Living God, the Undying, and proclaim His praise!’’7 The voice that embraces all that is made manifest derives from that Center, the purified heart, so as restore its connection with the Supreme Principle, as the Sleeper says: But we have heard a new word Verily we have heard a word so new That be it but whispered the heavens ring A word which telleth of God’s finger in the cross of the Sun Of a city which shall be builded in us every one Of a vineyard and a husbandman Of a noble vine with stems which twine We have heard a word which tells of priests and unfading garlands Of a gate that is strait before our weary feet We have heard the evil secrets of men in padded gowns We have heard of the bloody bed which the black trackers have spread With cross and chalice with flame and baying of hounds. ‘‘bbbb 5’’

The innumerable multitude of words returns to the Word through the Praised, the Bringer of glad tidings who was Announced in preexistence to all the prophets.8 He is a mercy to the worlds,9 a light-giving lamp,10 a mighty morality,11 and the best example.12 He is the city ‘‘which shall be builded in us every one.’’ Through him the praise in all the worlds is received and returned. He is the one of whom the Almighty said: My chastisement—I smite with it whom I will; and My mercy embraces all things, and I shall prescribe it for those who are conscious and pay the alms, and those who indeed believe in Our signs, those who follow the Messenger, the Prophet of the common folk, whom they find written down with them in the

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Torah and the Gospel, bidding them to honour, and forbidding them dishonour, making lawful for them the good things and making unlawful for them the corrupt things, and relieving them of their loads, and the fetters that were upon them. Those who believe in him and succour him and help him, and follow the light that has been sent down with him—they are the prosperers.13 Translating from the signs of praise to the Praised as Source and Confluence, the Praised speaks from this City that is the image of the Garden, the original and ultimate state of man, where we both bear witness and forget that there is no self but the Self: His speech was soft and warm like the welcome splash Of spring rain in a parched plain Through the thick black dark on the shore Of a brackish sea and in the temple On the road and on the olive hill Where till that day no golden ray No song of canny cock nor any choir. ‘‘bbbb 8’’

What he speaks with his own mouth is sent down for him to the Heart from Intellect, in total submission to Him Who is neither like nor comparable to any, but ever compassionate and near: Speaking so I told ye naught of myself That which I said was my body and bread From another I take that word which I spake Yea I spake only the word Of Him which speaketh Through me. ‘‘bbbb 10’’

All the world’s roads lead us to individual annihilation of the self, which is realization in the Self. This is the reason for our coming into and journeying through this world toward Peace as the original and

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ultimate abode of humanity. Only those who become wholly emptied of all things but the Absolute can receive It and thus know what they love and come to love what they know. The tidings brought from the journey are always a reminder of what was there at the beginning. The journey is both an arrival and a return, a descent and an ascent. We cannot travel that road, in full knowledge of the earth our place of exile from heaven and the seven heavens as the sign of ascent within ourselves, without memory as the great boon that frees us from illusion: (Walking the allotted way between the dark and the ray Walking the line of your sign Assailed by doubt And dismay I come back once more Crushed To the Core). ‘‘bbbb 12’’

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7. T h e C ity

To discover the mystery of the Bosnian Sleeper and reveal it in a discourse that transcends forgetfulness and confusion, the Sleeper reminds us of the House of Peace. Every house in this world is merely a sign of the House of Peace, toward which lead all human roads of return. The djed or grandfather, who is the spiritual elder—good, blessed, and holy—points to the House, recalling why and where it is on our road back to our primal self: Our Grandfathers’ House was built to last In our hearts its strength Was meant to stand Fast. ‘‘House in Mile´’’

The House is the place where the covenant between God and man can be renewed. Since God is everywhere, but we are always at risk of forgetting His presence, it is by remembering the heart as the House of God that any place can be made sacred. Forgetting obscures that place and renders it profane. Since renewal is the discovery of the self’s primal center and what is finest in humanity, any place on earth

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may serve. When the center in the human heart is revealed, it is confined by neither space nor time. Hence the awakened form the center of every place in which they may be. They become a door through which the heavens are opened, knowing which, they wait. They attain new life in the knowledge that dying in one state of being means being born in another, that each time they leave one state, they are entering another. This is shown by the door, the narrow passageway that leads by the upright path through the seven heavens. The House was created to show us the door to the Uncreated. Those who possess the door are themselves uncreated in it and so both new and primally perfect. Utter newness is also utter oldness. On that path from the depths to the heights, from earth to heaven, or from body to Spirit, the city is transformed into a Garden. In the end, we return to the original place that which we took at the beginning and thus restore ourselves in rectitude to our primal beauty. The House is the founding principle of the City but not of itself. Revealing the fullness of plenitude against the void, it is a spur of the center in the phenomenal world. As a result, Unity is manifest in the House through the many finite spaces and angles its walls enclose and unify. Its outward diversity is a sign of the inner, unshakable Unity by which it comes into being. The forces that govern what is in the House are temporal, but always connected to the Unalterable Center. In the visible world, these forces are the prophets, the Messengers of the Invisible. Although their principle is Unity, they appear in multiplicity; but even when they appear as material phenomena, they are under spiritual governance. And each city is shaped around the House. When the link between the center and its manifestation in multiplicity is broken, the result is decline and disorder, darkness and disruption. The loss of the link with Unity manifests itself in forgetting and extinction. The task of sacred science and sacred art is to remind us of Unity in multiplicity and restore each particular to Unity as its principle by continual renewal of the covenant between man and God. This renewal has two components: the act of distinguishing the Real from the unreal, and that of focusing on the Real. The first is open to

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us all, wherever and whenever we may be; the second is nonindividual and supraindividual, deriving wholly from Intellect and the demands of the pure heart and the knowledge of the inviolable. It is the path God reveals through His chosen one, the Praised, who is the essence of all the prophets and all good people. As the Messenger’s follower, the Exalted, who was raised up, received the teaching from the Messenger himself on this path of Unity, which is always the same whatever the form it appears to take. All human elevation is ascent by the upright path in love toward Unity. Attraction to Unity is expressed and realized only through union. Those who follow the Praised accept nothing but realization of their love in return to the Beloved. There is no state of the self dearer to the traveler than the Self of the Beloved. In his total submission to supraindividuality and in following the Praised, the Exalted is our grandfather or spiritual elder, merciful and tender, comforting and acquiescent. He is the first teacher after the Messenger, a leader in the Name of Him Who is Knowing and Wise. Teaching others, he is himself an example of absolute peacefulness, for he has nothing that is his: his freedom attests to his being a man of peace, faithful and good, and to his commitment to the now. He has passed on what he received to his successor or successors, who preserve it as a sacred pledge and irrevocable mystery on which their salvation and that of everyone else depend. The earth never lacks successors to the Perfect Man. Though they appear in the world, all that others see is their material exterior, however illuminated from within. They are in the undivided I, and their hearts are as vessels1 into which the Light of the Intellect has been poured. They are ‘‘brought closer,’’ and the Creator says of them: My servant never ceases approaching Me through voluntary works until I love him. Then, when I love him, I am the hearing through which he hears, the eyesight through which he sees, the hand through which he grasps, and the feet through which he walks.2 Wherever there is a successor to the Perfect Man, a grandfather or spiritual elder, there is a house, a hizˇa. A house without a grandfather

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The City / 53

or elder is not a hizˇa: it is merely a place to wait for a promise to come true—the promise of salvation or beatitude for the pure and suffering and pain for the impure. It is only with an elder, who is love for the supreme potential of the self, that the house becomes open to all, for seekers to find in it what has been and will be with them for all time. The elder is thus a teacher and leader through whom Spirit, the link between knowledge and being, reveals itself, for it is an act of acceptance of the Reality sent down from the world of supraindividuality into the world of individual forms and hence into the self. The traveler who finds an elder becomes his pupil, thereby joining the spiritual chain that begins with the Prophet, or the one and only Essence of all Knowledge. This is the supreme potential of every human self—its reason and its purpose. This knowledge is attested by those who possess it. The Praised is thus the primal and ultimate nature of every one of us; he is simultaneously reminder, remembrance, and remembered. We follow him on our ascending path to him as our supreme potential. The role of the elder or spiritual teacher is to convey the spiritual influence of the Praised to the world and to hand on the keys to the understanding of rituals and sacred forms, as well as to provide his pupils with the sacred bulwark of connection with Unity. The teacher is aware of the contingency of such rituals and forms but also of their importance in focusing on the Real. The teacher himself invariably belongs to one form but knows of and acknowledges other, different forms. For him, the world of multiplicity and motion is like a wavetossed sea, on the turbulent surface of which are countless reflections of one and the same sun. All these reflections are true, and the teacher knows their Source and the path that leads to It. On the calm, peaceful surface in which fear, love, and knowledge are resolved, reflection and Source become one. The relationship between multiplicity and Unity is manifested in the flux. At each new moment, the manifestation is different. The garden is made manifest in the city, and the city in the garden. One attains peace by transforming the flux into the House of Peace or the Garden of Bliss.

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54 / The Text beyond the Text

The Hizˇa u Milama, the House in Mile´, was the historical seat of the leader of the medieval Bosnian Church and thus a place of mercy and peace for all oriented toward the center. As a place name, Mile´ recalls the old linguistic root from which the Bosnian words milost (mercy) and mir (peace) both derive. The name is present in various forms in many places in Bosnia, evidence of the desire to establish the covenant of Mercy and Peace throughout the land: For welcome guests and passers-by And all whose hearts are Grand For all good people beneath the sky And all who live in Bosnia’s Land For everich warryour in this mighty warre Which is now warring On Warre On all other plagues and all Other rogues Great and Small. ‘‘House in Mile´’’

The grandfathers or elders and those linked by them in a chain to the Praised also know of the false temples—houses of the covenant of Ba’al,3 the synagogues of Sa¯’tan,4 and the false mosques. Knowledge of the Way presupposes distinguishing between false and true houses and thus linking the city and the garden: And those who have taken a mosque in opposition and unbelief, and to divide the believers, and as a place of ambush for those who fought God and His Messenger aforetime—they will swear ‘‘We desired nothing but good’’; and God testifies they are truly liars. Stand there never. A mosque that was founded upon godfearing from the first day is worthier for thee to stand in; therein are

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The City / 55

men who love to cleanse themselves; and God loves those who cleanse themselves.5 Those who love to cleanse themselves know of the message of those who say: ‘‘‘We believe in God and the Last Day’; but they do not believe.’’6 They know the Prophet’s words: ‘‘We are returning from the lesser war to a mighty war.’’ They know the question: ‘‘What is the mighty war?’’ and they know his answer: ‘‘The war against the self.’’7 Spiritual teachers know about both that great war and great peace—the peace that comes about when the heart sees the Intellect as pure Light, and not only sees it but becomes one with it. Such peace, made manifest in Light, attests to the Uncreated and is thus the indestructible center of the city; it is the first mover, the principle that is above all temporal authority—the authority of authorities, or the inactive action out of Unity and Peace in the worlds of multiplicity and motion. The grandfathers are alone, yet in the world, present in multiplicity, yet linked to Unity. The words about the house are a narrative about them: Let our Grandfathers’ Great House Stay open Still For all who do not care For old Or new Tsars For all who do not heed Lordlings or kings or Boyars For all who do not need Their wealth untold Their evil gold Their ducats And their dinars. ‘‘House in Mile´’’

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The door of the house is open to those who are pure in heart. Where there are no such hearts, there can be no hizˇa, for it withdraws from the world into occlusion, until it sees new hearts: (But unless our Grandfathers’ House be blest By welcome stranger and guest It will neither be mine nor thine Nor our Grandfathers’ House any more). ‘‘House in Mile´’’

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8. T h e Pr a i s e d

The phenomena on the outer horizons and in the self are only signs of the One, refracted through Intellect, or the Pillar of the Sun. Bearing witness to this enables the witnesser to turn to the strait gate of which the Anointed says: Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.1 The same was said by the Almighty through the Praised: ‘‘Those that cry lies to Our signs and wax proud against them the gates of heaven shall not be opened to them, nor shall they enter Paradise.’’2 In turning to the door and away from multiplicity, the seeker or traveler aspires to attain the purity of heart in which the Self is seen in the self. Knowledge then becomes the same as being, and the world is nothing but the tidings or book of the Self. To become a follower of the Messenger is to grow from the vine stock; it is the extension or disclosure of Unity, where duality is simply the manifestation and confirmation of Unity. Multiplicity fills the void so that Unity may be known to Itself. The city is thus the plenitude in which Peace manifests itself in motion.

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The image most closely resembling it is Man, who is himself created in the image of Peace. Unity as Peace thus appears through being-atpeace in existence at peace. As all existence is crowned in Man as the being with free will, it is with a double aspect, as ourselves at peace and as bringers-of-peace. Becoming aware of this duality enables us to return to Peace through being at peace. On our return journey, everything in existence and within us reminds us of Peace as the cause and purpose of our existence. But, the path of return is always wide. The traveler is expected to leave the broad path of multiplicity in favor of the steep, narrow path that ends in Unity. On this return journey of ours to Peace, contingency manifests itself in plenitude. Plenitude, though, is known only to itself in the Uncreated Heart. It is motionless and indivisible, but manifest in motion and division. Plenitude is present in every individuality through the center or principle and is accessible from every side of existence. Attempting to pass through the door without knowledge of the center and the Uncreated, the indestructible inner principle, is a denial of Spirit as the Unity of knowing and being. This may conceal, obscure, or even destroy the manifestations of the center in this world but cannot touch the center itself. Destruction thus demonstrates its own impotence in the face of Unity. We do well, in regard to the wastelands that are left as evidence of that destruction, to remember the Sleeper’s message to the unsleeping, the man who mistakes his illusion of wakefulness for being: When thy goal liketh nigh Unto its desire— Know then That even his Body Was But A Moment’s Home. ‘‘Message’’

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The Praised / 59

The Sleeper’s message is a denial of duality expressed through the testimony that there is no self but the Self and that the Praised (the man) is the Messenger of the All-Praised (God). As such, the Praised is a lamp that shines or the first manifestation of God as Light. He is also the first man of peace, for he was the first recipient of Peace. As such, the worlds have in him a lamp that also beams forth mercy. As the universal man, he is the sum of all the worlds, and hence the finest potential of every self. Nothing of all that the self is able to become in following the Praised can ever be the same as he is—the Praised always remains our higher potential. The Praised is thus dearer than anything else, including the self in each of its achievements: he is the value that outweighs all the worlds in the scales of judgment. Whatever state we may be in—and we could always be better than we are—it is impossible to say that we are wholly detached from Reality. The human principle is perfection, which means a state of purity and sinlessness. We are always, therefore, worth more than any of our achievements in this world. But as long as we are in a state of separation from Unity, we remain capable of perfection and purity. When we acknowledge our sinfulness, we orient ourselves toward our higher potential; but when we deny our sinfulness, we shut ourselves off in sin. The state of perfection and purity is realizable through the testimony of Unity and the discovery of prophecy as the primal nature of humanity. This is the return to God. With this testimony we continually orient ourselves toward perfection as the cause and objective of our being in this world. The Self as Absolute speaks to the self as contingency and as Its image. The self repeats the original sacrifice in Creation, in disorder and impossibility. The ritual or path of return from disorder to Peace is an act of reversion: that which was once a macrocosmic descent becomes, through us, a microcosmic ascent, or the passage through the strait gate. The heavens and earth, which were originally one, are again made one and whole, sublimated into Unity, through the speech of the undifferentiated, primal Unity of Being that confirms ineffable non-Being, or Essence.

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60 / The Text beyond the Text

Return and union take place in the self that goes toward the Praised as its supreme potential. We know and love the One and so follow the Praised in our expectation that the Faithful loves and knows him. The realization of this expectation will appear as the absolute testimony that there is no self but the Self. The mysterious encounter of the created and the Uncreated, the potential and the Absolute, the finite and the Infinite, the near and the Far, takes place in the self. The I, as the supreme name, thus becomes a witness and merges with the Name, which aspires to nothing beyond Itself. The act of leaving the dissolution of the contingent world and returning to the Self silences the insubordinate actors of the soul or self. Then, when all obstacles have been removed, the self moves to rediscover its true nature as the expression of Reality, and we find in ourselves the house of Spirit, our ancient, primal sanctuary and home. Fallen man seeks a response to the question of the human condition in the marketplace of apparitions, the disorder of rationality, Luciferian thinking, the wrongly directed capacities of the self, the flawed desires and the pressure of passions that have overrun our house and turned it into a fairground. Unity is in the Self. Even the cruelties of suffering and destruction attest to it, for their meaning is contingency that remains unaware: You don’t know the right of way At the cross-roads Of night And day. ‘‘Roads’’

By renewing the self in the Self as the sacred name, the house of the heart is resanctified, and the Holy Spirit or Breath of the Merciful is thereby realized or discovered as the center of humanity. It is the house of the center, the link with Reality; in it we are established in justice and rectitude, connected with Intellect and Eternity. It is given to none of us to know the future. In ‘‘Message,’’ the Sleeper’s last poem, the differentiation of Unity into I and you or self and other is determined by the relationship between the Absolute and

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The Praised / 61

the contingent. The world manifests itself as contingency but announces Eternity, and the remembrance of its primal nature sweeps away the illusion of immediacy and noncontingency. Hastening this process is simply testifying to the Hour, which never embraces the Uncreated. The extremity of error is reached in the multiplication of impurity and the rule of quantity, but Truth is not overcome. What is more, all power is experienced as impotence in opposing It. The loss of the ability to distinguish the Real from the unreal and the resulting loss, too, of the link with higher levels of Being force us down to the basest levels of the material world. This does not make the error universal, however. The macrocosm is sacred; its dependence on the Absolute must be confirmed, which is the purpose of patiently enduring in the dark. But the earth cannot sever its link with heaven. The destruction of the city does not touch the Self; quite the contrary, it confirms It with the strength of its contingency. As a sign of God, the world is surrounded by a protective rampart or, in other words, garlanded in the light of God’s mercy, and in consequence, human error is limited and always contingent. When the downward motion reaches the profoundest darkness, it turns again to begin a new cycle under the rule of Light. This is the intervention of heaven, smoothing out the roughness with which we have disfigured the face of the earth: ‘‘No city is there, but We shall destroy it before the Day of Resurrection, or We shall chastise it with a terrible chastisement; that is in the Book inscribed.’’3 The closing of the old cycle leads to the ultimate dismantling of illusion, which results in darkness, as the light of the new cycle breaks through to be received by the elect. At the very end, this reestablishes the equilibrium with the coming of the Rightly Guided or the Renewer, who unites within himself the forces of earth and heaven. In the meantime, as the Book of Revelation tells us, the cycle of time is hastening toward its end. The macrocosm is disintegrating into disorder, thoroughly decrepit and diseased, while the elect draw near to the Light of a new beginning. For this reason the Antichrist appears at the same time as the Guided and the Anointed. Just as the Praised bore

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62 / The Text beyond the Text

witness to the Anointed as closest to him, so the Anointed bears witness at the end of time to the appearance of the Praised in the person of the Guided. The call to the first is the same as the call to the second: Come! The moon is a sign of the Praised who reveals himself to each of us as our supreme potential. In the self, this potential is our primal nature—absolute light, one and undifferentiated. In the world, this Unity manifests itself in duality—Light and Illumination. The Praised is Illumination, the first, the beginning and the end, as he says: ‘‘By Him in Whose Hand is the life of the Praised, a day will come to you when you will not be able to see me, and the glimpse of my face will be dearer to you than your own family, your property and indeed everything.’’4 In announcing this departure, this inability to be seen, this setting of the moon, the Sleeper calls for its sign to be carved ‘‘in the soft white of limestone,’’ for the Praised, who is the Moon to God’s Sun, will be the measure on the day when pain and hope are finally resolved. Both pain and hope are with the Praised. Split though he is between darkness and light, the Self is with him. God announced him to Moses: ‘‘I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.’’5 The Sleeper testifies to that Promised and ever-awaited one: And now we had heard a word Like no word spoken before What a blessing And what a Woe For no-one had ever Spoken So For through him we heard The very Word. ‘‘bbbb 10’’

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The Praised / 63

This very Word speaks through him out of its silence; silence is its principle, and speech is its desire to be known. It thus triumphs over forgetfulness in the illusory waking state, sleep, and death, and as such is both outside and within them. To remember that which is encompassed neither by drowsiness, nor sleep, nor dreaming is to transcend them. In transcending them, the wedding procession passes through the worlds to cross the river and come to the bride who will remove her veil in the dark of night. The wedding procession leaves the bridegroom’s house to come to the bride’s and to return to his home with her. The departure, the return, and the unveiling of the bride are a metaphor for our realization or discovery in Unity. The Sleeper says on that journey through the illusory waking state, sleep, and death: With my death the world has died An age-old darkness Occupies My empty Eyes. ‘‘Wedding’’

Death is the deepest sleep, for it occurs in a world that endures through the recollection of the Living. Death cannot surpass life, nor wrath mercy. We are the sum of all the world, and the world of which we are the sum does not die with our death. As the Sleeper says: With my death the world has died But the world’s world Will not be pushed Aside. ‘‘Wedding’’

There is no forgetting that is more powerful than memory, nor any darkness that is absolute. Hence no death can encompass the Living. In death, as the deepest sleep, the rays of memory penetrate through the solidity and darkness. Since the Living and Merciful embraces all

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64 / The Text beyond the Text

things, no death is absolute; there is a rising or awakening from every death, for no darkness can remain without a ray of Light: Memory’s white tape Pierces the armour of darkness Between the silences Of fate. ‘‘Wedding’’

The Living is the Upright, always and everywhere. Both sleep and death are the valley from which the bridegroom ascends in memory toward the goal of the wedding procession, the dawn of the unveiled face of the Beloved, and knowledge of himself: And through that strange pane A deep new Eye is Born. And on my skyline I see the dawn Rise from Nothing Again. ‘‘Wedding’’

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9 . T h e House

In his Word on earth, the Sleeper speaks of Mile´, that Bosnian place whose name may mean milost (mercy) or mir (peace). Whenever we find ourselves facing beauty, it appears to us first as peace and mercy. In this encounter, we first relax and then tense in an impulse toward what has appeared in beauty and mercy. Both beauty and mercy continually reveal themselves to us, just as they continually vanish. We wish to return to them and to have them as our strength, but are they that nature of ours of which the things of this world are there to remind us? The Sleeper says: Our Grandfathers’ House was built to last In our hearts its strength Was meant to stand Fast. ‘‘House in Mile´’’

The house is our grandfathers’ because virtue is in the human heart. When the heart is made manifest in the whole of humanity, then the house is lit by goodness and beauty, wisdom and clemency.

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66 / The Text beyond the Text

Though we are constantly being tried by pain, we never lack the guiding light of the pillar of the sun or the Light of the Praised. This presence of the light always leaves open to us the ladder of ascent to the primal plenitude. The Praised is the guide on that ascending path but never in any world outside the entirety of the self: the ascent is within the self. Beauty and mercy in the things of this world remind us of the ascending path: Beauty has something pacifying and dilating in it, something consoling and liberating, because it communicates a substance of truth, of evidence, and of certitude, and it does so in concrete and existential mode; thus it is like a mirror of our transpersonal and eternally blissful essence. It is essentially an objective factor which we may or may not see or may or may not understand but which like all objective reality, or like truth, possesses its own intrinsic quality; thus it exists before man and independently of him.1 The meaning of the ‘‘House in Mile´’’ lies in its making Illumination known through the testimony that there is no self but the Self, through beauty and goodness. Only thus can the house be open: For welcome guests and passers-by And all whose hearts are Grand. For all good people beneath the sky And all who live in Bosnia’s land. ‘‘House in Mile´’’

As soon as our inner self ceases to testify that there is no self but the Self, it enters one of its states—and it makes no difference whether in so doing it is an outer or inner image it takes for its god—and the House is closed, and as the Sleeper says:

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It will neither be mine nor thine Nor our Grandfathers’ House any more. ‘‘House in Mile´’’

The openness of the self which reflects the testimony that there is no self but the Self turns us from the world toward the Principle. This is why all those who belong to this world hate those who see through it, as Jesus, Son of Mary, tells his disciples: These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.2 Hatred is congealed fear; and fear is the response of the whole being to the unknown. We are all unknown to each other; there is no one who is not bound to say, faced with the other: ‘‘I know myself better than you do, and my Lord knows me better than I.’’3 This means that everyone is a potential source of knowledge to every other person. If this is denied, the self becomes closed; and as it does so, it accepts that impossibility that we may be linked with Unity through a reminder in the outer horizons and in the self. The closure of the self appears as the closure of the house and of the world as a whole. The Sleeper speaks of this state of the self at the end of his narrative: (You know nothing about the town in which I dwell You’ve no idea about the house in which I eat You know nothing About the icy well From which I drink.) ‘‘Message’’

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68 / The Text beyond the Text

Knowledge is our relationship as knowers with what we know. If the object of knowledge is necessarily definable and so contingent on something that defines it and representable in number, then the knowing self is also definable and reducible to number. In such a relationship, both man and the world become finite objects whose contents are equally finite. If multiplicity is taken to be the principle of our knowledge, our father and mother become the bestowers of our life. From this perspective, our knowledge is dependent on the outside world; it is received from another as its ‘‘father.’’ Such knowledge can contradict what we originally received from God as our instruction in all the names.4 God says of the things we know from external sources: ‘‘They are naught but names yourselves have named, and your fathers.’’5 If we desire Unity, the whole world—the earth and the heavens and all that is between them—are merely Its sign, Its manifestation. Then our center is the same as that which the world announces. The Unity of the Center requires the world and man to be merely manifestations and so reminders of It. Our human desire for It is attainable only in that Unity, in the Center of the Self, not in the totality of a world that has no reality except as the manifestation of Unity. Jesus says of this, ‘‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’’6 Our realization or self-discovery is in relation to the Real, or He Who is One. It is only thus that we can discover the Real in our inner self, for He is never two; but he is the Third to every two, the Fourth to every three, the Companion of all who are alone, as He says of Himself: Hast thou not seen that God knows whatsoever is in the heavens, and whatsoever is in the earth? Three men conspire not secretly together, but He is the fourth of them, neither five men, but He is the sixth of them, neither fewer than that, neither more, but He is with them, wherever they may be.7 If the Heart, which has the same meaning as Spirit and Intellect, is the oneness of the knower with the Known, then it is also the only

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The House / 69

source of knowledge, through which all things on the outer horizons and in our inner selves are none other than signs or reminders of Unity. The totality of existence is in that house of Unity, or in the human heart. He who has discovered or found that primal nature of his is a grandfather in whom the Spirit is manifest as perfection. With him, every place becomes a house of Mile´. The grandfather testifies both by his will and by his faith—which means both by knowledge and by love—to perfection as the beauty of being and knowing, in the expression: I testify that there is no self but the Self, and I testify that the Praised is the servant and messenger of the Self. He does not bestow names on things but discovers them as a treasure he has received. When speaking of knowledge, one must affirm, without any reference to external sources or authority, that the revealed books—the Torah, the Gospel, and others—are both source and authority. The necessary and indisputable role of prophets and prophecy in human history follow from this. If there is such a role in history, it must concern human nature. The necessity of prophecy must therefore be recognizable in human nature itself without any need to import it from outside. The testimony to Unity and prophecy is thus indivisible from human nature itself. It is usually believed that prophecy as a phenomenon is necessarily linked to a certain time and place, which conditions how we can relate to it as passed down to us. Each prophet is associated with the revelation of a certain doctrine and associated ritual, which it is supposed we must adopt to belong to the community of the faithful. It is not so, however. Any prophecy that remained external to us, that is not realizable in our individual self, would be evidence that humanity is essentially void. What we attest to as prophecy is the discovery of our humanity in its connection with Unity. Every prophet testifies to the Praised as his principle, and the Praised is made manifest through all prophets, which is to say, in all languages and all peoples. For every one of us in every time, place, and language, the self remains open to the ascent toward the Praised as the finest example as authentic humanity.

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70 / The Text beyond the Text

We are all of us potential spiritual elders. As we draw closer to this condition of spiritual maturity, we realize our potential or our primal nature. The self of the elder is the manifestation of a beautiful nature, and as such, in his house, he excludes any ugliness, any rejection in isolation of Unity by its people, his household. Being beautiful and good is serving God as though He were seen, for though the servant does not see Him, He sees His servant. We are between two possibilities, the basest depths and the sublimest heights. This ‘‘are’’ differs from moment to moment. The sublimest heights are our center, and we are either drawing away from or closer to it. Wherever we are, within us is the yearning for that center, the Garden from which we came to where we are and to which we long to return. But we are in a city that seems to be ours, for we see in it the imprints and forms of our work and that of our forebears. The city seems to be our own work, though we are not ourselves the result of our own work or that of our forebears. When we want more than this, we must recognize both ourselves and our city as images or signs of the Self and the Heavenly City. What in this image has been sent down from above is worthy of praise, just as only what the self has received as praise is real. Thereby we are praised, and our discovery or return is simply ascent on the path in the footprints of the Praised. The one whose footprints we follow is our City and our Garden, bestowed on us as a gift, sent as the first of all creation and thus the end of all things. In our center, we have the uncreated Spirit to which we want to return, for the Creator breathed it into us, and we want to be one with it. We therefore follow the Praised as our perpetual higher potential on the road to the City or the Garden. The Anointed says to us: ‘‘I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.’’8 And the Anointed is both Word and Spirit. The City as the Garden is in the Word and Spirit that are in each of us. When we realize the supreme potential of our inner self, we are at the door of man. The Praised says that he is the City of Knowledge, and whoever reaches the City passes through the door of the Perfect Man.9 He also says: ‘‘I am most close to Jesus, Son of Mary, among the whole of mankind in this worldly life and the next world.’’10

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The House / 71

To speak of the Door or Gate to the City as our highest moment seems to many to direct us toward a world that does not exist, and such people call it a fairy tale and reject it. The Sleeper responds to this denial with his truth: If the gate of the word is just a dream a fairy tale Still I will not leave this door Here I want to live once more This supreme Dream. ‘‘the gate’’

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10. Judgment

Every human self spans the uttermost depths and the sublimest heights, and as long as the self is aware of itself, this split persists. No self can end up in the uttermost depths, for the uttermost depths are simply nothing. However close the self comes to nullity, it has within it an indestructible essence; but in drawing close to nullity, the self sinks into darkness. There remains the ascent into Illumination as the opposite of the descent into darkness. Whatever stage the self attains, there is darkness beneath it and Light above. Each of its states is darker than the next higher level, so one may say that there is a multitude of darknesses. But there is only ever one Light, regardless of how it manifests itself in our darkness. As long as the self remains split and on the path of return, it reveals its will both in the darkness in which it still is and in the Light to which it is directed. The concomitants of the Light are Intellect, Spirit, Truth, and Knowledge, while those of the darkness are matter, ignorance, and falsehood. Since we are given only little knowledge,1 our every action on the basis that we claim to know takes the form of violence or injustice. We are never spared this possibility; we are perpetually in the darkness of the ocean of our existence, whose shores are a clear ‘‘no’’ and a clear ‘‘yes.’’ Whenever it is

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something between these two certainties that we desire, we risk committing violence and injustice. When the poet speaks out of the Light that is within his darkness, it is a revelation, even though he is not a prophet. His speech has the power of the Truth, for the Spirit is the source of speech. But when he speaks out of the darkness, he is a deflector or repeller of the Light. Pure, absolute Light illumines, as it appears against the dark. This Light is the principle of everything that is manifested. Even when the Light shines into the uttermost depths, it is the only existence, for the darkness has no principle of its own. The same is true of the human self: whatever state or condition it is in, the depths and obscurity cannot cancel out the Pillar of Light—or Intellect—that runs through all levels of existence. Wherever we are, our knowledge is limited and insignificant. We are thus expected not to judge, for none of our knowledge is sufficient for justice. Jesus, Son of Mary, tells us: ‘‘Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’’2 Every condemnation of the other is a limited presentation of Truth. Those who condemn set limits to their selves, extolling them above what they do not know, for they come to see ignorance rather than knowledge and action as crucial for salvation. This closing of the self toward the other also excludes Him—Who, as absolute closeness and absolute distance, surpasses them both. The I-you or self-other relationship implies two viewpoints—my view of you and your view of me. Given the authenticity of every individual self and its contact with eternity, these viewpoints are different and cannot be reduced to each other. What the self knows about itself is much more than it does about any you. This allows the self to presume that what it knows about itself is also applicable to every you. In so doing, the self accepts its similarity with the you but rejects what it does not know about it. It denies this ignorance and assumes the difference to be trivial and hence negligible. Hence the you becomes lost as a source of knowledge. Such an I assumes that what it knows about the you is enough to judge it and hence act, though true

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74 / The Text beyond the Text

knowledge is lacking. Yet it is precisely in this knowledge that the liberation, the realization of the I lies. Here we are speaking of metaphysical knowledge, which remains one and the same whatever its form in time and space. Such knowledge has within itself the principle, the truth—in contrast to action, which is a constant readjustment of one’s being and so divorced from its effects. Action does not free a person from further action, because it never goes beyond the particularities of existence. Action cannot escape ignorance as the cause of finitude: when the I condemns the you, its ignorance about the you becomes its reason for action. Only knowledge can free a person from ignorance, and the knowledge that liberates is the testimony that there is no I but the ultimate I. Any activity that lacks this knowledge has no value. The I knows little about itself compared to the ever-present He, Who knows both I and you totally. Thus the I can escape its limitations only by accepting the you as complete knowledge. And this is His nearness or Spirit present in every I, as God says through the Praised: ‘‘They will question thee concerning the Spirit. Say: ‘The Spirit is of the bidding of my Lord. You have been given of knowledge nothing except a little.’’’3 When people judge another on the basis of this little knowledge, forgetting that Spirit is the You that knows everything, they try to transform their relegation to the lowest depth into elevation, giving themselves and phenomena what does not belong to either. Then, instead of submission to the Commandment, they become commanders; and instead of rising from lowliness toward the light, they sink deeper into the darkness. This is the consequence of their judging the You. But by turning toward Spirit, the You inside the self, every I can say to every you outside itself: There are roads unfolding before us That have no beaten track No almanac No departure time Or tide. ‘‘Roads’’

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Judgment / 75

To everyone we may say: ‘‘You know nothing about me,’’ and in so saying, testify that nor do we know anything about the other to whom we speak. Though each of us knows infinitely more about ourself than any other, even the knowledge we have is invariably extremely limited. If we want to increase it, the object of our knowledge is He Who encompasses all things with His Knowledge. In acknowledging and turning toward it, we recognize every sign on the outer horizons and in our inner selves as a reminder of what we want to know. No human condition is like that goal; only union with it can free us from our little knowledge. The Self thus attracts the self as it testifies to Unity; and this attraction is the love that nothing can assuage in its separation from the Beloved. Absorbed in this irresistible yearning for the Beloved, the self does not condemn, for separation is its greatest concern. To realize our love means to acknowledge to the Beloved that both life and death are His but that death cannot encompass Him. In this recognition, the self is realized in the Self or converted into the pillar of the sun. Those who are converted into the pillar of the sun are a refuge for every shadow, for the Self manifests Itself through them as Word, Intellect, and Spirit. What is manifest is sent down, that the Word, both when heard and when uttered, might be the path of ascent: I forsake my sister and brother forsake my father and mother between the beasts and the men To seek my essence my pillar of blinding incandescence How in the world must I find that word And what would be in the finding? ‘‘the gate’’

On that road of realization or discovery, there is no conceivable suffering that can be avoided. Nor is there any will that would be sufficient nor justice in which the appeal for mercy would be superfluous. Even when the self turns toward Openness, or the Virgin, it cannot evade judgment that is without Judgment or debt without Debt:

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76 / The Text beyond the Text

But he’s got no ears So there he sits as deaf as a host of posts They hacked off his ears because he’d heard Every facet of the word And he’s got no tongue to keep us from sleep The Justice in his Court of Law judged that it be ripped from his jaw But there’s justice beyond that Justice and a judgement beyond his unjust law And day will have no might Until that day when there shall be no night. ‘‘Madderfield’’

It would seem that no earthly authority can compensate for the multitude and weight of human sufferings and no earthly court can be a remedy for all those oppressed by injustice. And yet the world never lacks the Just, the Righteous Man, the Grandfather who makes his house into a sanctuary and who bears witness to the last judgment as our first and last home and thus to a world whose meaning is in the Day of Debt, when the reckoning will come for every iota of good and every iota of evil done. Hence the Sleeper’s talk of the mercy of the house and the house of mercy: For all whose only tongue was torn From their jaw When they would not forswear The word they had Sworn For all the unjustly judged who died Tied to the horses’ tails Between the twin black wails Of two black Knights So let our Grandfathers’ House Stay open Wide. ‘‘House in Mile´’’

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Judgment / 77

In establishing the openness of the Grandfathers’ House as testimony to the eternal presence of the Righteous Man, Mak Dizdar tells us that there can be no world without a pure man: Buried beneath a stec´ak near Stolac, in mediaeval Vidosˇka— exactly which tombstone, no-one knows—is a certain Righteous One, so called because he was killed in a heretic-killers’ raid. His voice flies up to heaven, and will continue to fly until his plea is granted. It can be heard, at times, but only in silence, when the noise of the rabble does not drown it out, and only by those who fight for justice in this world in thought, word and deed.4 The Sleeper speaks of the Righteous One’s voice: His body started on Its voyage through the dark But through the silence rang A voice which fell behind A voice which rang behind A voyce which hyeth yet And flyeth heavenwards A voice which flyeth yet. ‘‘The Rightwise’’

The world is full of noise, and few are those who ‘‘fight for justice in this world in thought, word and deed.’’ But though they are only a minority, each one of us has perfection at our center and is reminded of it, with greater or lesser clarity, by the urge to survive and for happiness that is present in each of us. However dense the darkness over that center of humanity, the self never lacks contact with the pillar of the sun. What is normal is that a human being should seek his center of inspiration beyond himself, beyond his sterility as a poor sinner: this will force him into making ceaseless corrections and a continuous adjustment in the face of an external norm, in short, into

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78 / The Text beyond the Text

changes which will compensate for his ignorance and lack of universality. A normal artist touches up his work, not because he is dishonest, but because he takes account of his own imperfection; a good man corrects himself wherever he can.5 The Praised says that time is a sword. But is not time merely the manifestation of the order of Unity in the order of multiplicity? For time is a fire so let it scour us so let it devour us Lo it is time to enter into this time Because it hath but a short time And time shall be no longer. ‘‘the fourth horseman’’

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11. I and You

The Stone Sleeper’s poetic discourse begins by delineating the relationship between ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘you’’ in which the former corresponds to interiority and defence, and the latter to exteriority and attack. The ‘‘I’’ resists this exterior, threatening ‘‘you,’’ as darkness and evil and as forgetting, rejection, and repulsion. This resistance of the I-self to the you-self is neither sermonizing nor a campaign by one against the other; the discourse of the I-self to the you-self is self-defence on the journey to self-discovery. The I-self does not name its faith on that journey, for it knows how pitifully limited is all its knowledge. Hence any name given it by the you-self is unacceptable to the I-self. If the self is to know itself, its constant stance is that it does not know and that it can come to know what it does not know only by loving the known. Whenever the self claims to know, it shuts itself off from the stance from which it expresses its knowledge and thus remains split into the dualities of knower/known, self/world, and man/God. Nothing in that which is oriented toward the self can be either certain or reliable. If it does not recall the human center as the House of Truth, it is a freak, which threatens but never fulfills. There can be no peace in the world if there is none within us. It is not contingent on any condition of the world. Peace either is or is not within us. Herein

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80 / The Text beyond the Text

lie all the questions and all the answers that concern us, as Jesus says: ‘‘For whosoever will save his self shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his self for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own self?’’1 We may be oriented toward the world and become aware of what is in it, build our image of it, and act in it. All this exteriority extends over many levels, which we attain through our senses—taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight. The horizons of the outside world may be near to us or distant, but they are the order bestowed on us. We may aspire to peace but can never impose our peace on the world. In taking the measure of our involvement in the world, we inevitably come to the question of our inner self as a ‘‘place’’ in which peace may be received or from which it may be given. Does our existence depend on peace in the outside world? Can we have peace despite what lies on the horizons of the outside world? In testifying to Unity, the self realizes itself, uniting Being, Consciousness, and Beatitude. One of the expressions of this testimony is that there is no self but the Self or no peace but Peace. In each of its states, the self is the image or sign of the Self. It has nothing of its own, for all that is in that image is given by the Self. If we take that image for the Self, we lose everything that has been given us. In acknowledging our debt to the Self, we deny that we have anything of our own and give everything that seems to be ours so as to testify to the Self as Reality. At the start of his discourse the Sleeper opposes the knowledge and action of others who hold rigid views. He affirms that his knowledge is but little and that he is on the path from duality to Unity, in which the knower and the Known are one. This means that he is speaking from the path on which Peace can be found, albeit only in the testimony that there is no self but the Self. Speaking from that ascending path, the Sleeper is a mendicant: no humility is sufficient in the face of Unity in which he seeks realization. But others proffer or impose on him their knowledge as certain, even though his foothold is absolutely unsure and contingent. He says about this:

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I and You / 81

You’ve decreed me not to be cost what may You surge You charge towards me With cries of grief and joy Cleansing and destroying Everything in Your way. ‘‘Roads’’

In this ‘‘you’’ the Sleeper knows his ‘‘I’’ as powerless in its isolation and solitude. It cannot be realized in anything external to it, for if his reality is not his primal nature, how is he to receive it from a perpetually changing outside world? This constant change destroys every standpoint, and the uncreated center is discovered in the self only by and through itself, which means that no standpoint ever has perennial validity. In the counterpoint of ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘you,’’ the Sleeper incessantly questions every utterance and every silence of that ‘‘I’’ that is not and cannot be the same, moment to moment. The ‘‘I’’ does not shy away from the threat, for it contains nothing that can be stript of the Real. If light is the center of the self, the onslaughts of the darkness are its corroboration. And does not the Sleeper call to that which threatens him? So Come on then. I’ve long grown used to your ravages As if to the throes Of a disease from far away. As to the icy waters swept savagely along By this night river of darkness that grows Ever more swift And strong. ‘‘Message’’

The ‘‘you’’ is the ever-present alternative possibility of the ‘‘I’’ and thus also the perpetual threat of the ‘‘I’’ sinking still further into the

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82 / The Text beyond the Text

dark. The enlightened ‘‘I’’ is constantly at risk from the ‘‘you’’ that is obscured. The illumination of the ‘‘I’’ can never be vanquished by external forces. As long as it adheres to its center, of which Spirit, Light, and the Praised are the concomitants, the ‘‘I’’ is in love with the Universal Self as its only Reality. Whatsoever seems good and beautiful to the ‘‘I’’ is really so only if the Beloved sees it so. The testimony that there is no self but the Self stands against the dark and blindness. Upright, everlasting Reality, which is Intellect manifest in Spirit, Light, and the Praised, is not merely accessible to that center of humanity—it is that center itself. The ‘‘you’’ darkened by avidity and ignorance neither sees nor senses the hierarchical structure of the cosmos that corresponds to the hierarchical order of the self. When the ‘‘I’’ stands square against every ‘‘you,’’ outside all that manifests itself as God, Unity, the Names, the Imaginal, and the sensate world, it is wholly void, wholly open to receiving the All. This is the ‘‘I’’ that is the goal; it will have nothing but Unity nor the love of any but the One Who Knows. Thus all the outside worlds and everything in them are merely a reminder of the knowledge of the Beloved and the love of the Known. To such an ‘‘I,’’ nothing on the outer horizons or in the inner self has any meaning other than as a sign on the road of return to the One Who Is at the very beginning and thus at the very end. The Sleeper says he has ‘‘only arrived /Back where I’d started so hopeful-hearted.’’ We cannot exist without thought. The perpetual question in the thinker is: What is the source of my thinking? There are two contradictory answers to this question. The first is that the source of our thinking is external to us, in the incessantly shifting, changing signs of the outer horizons, in individuals and groups, in books and structures. The second is that the only true source of thought is the self, its center, which is spoken of as inspired and so uncreated and uncreatable. In each case, it is possible to speak of witness to Unity, prophecy, and return.

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I and You / 83

If we adopt the first response, Unity will be sought in the outside world, in its multiplicity and motion; prophecy in historical figures and their interpreters; and return in some indistinct place and postponable future of the material world. The more we adhere to the outside world as proof of our testimony, the more our adherence manifests itself as feeling and passion, sermonizing and avidity. If we accept the second response, all the signs on the outer horizons will remind us of the potential within our self as the sole true source of thought. This means that every ‘‘you’’ will be seen as a threat, for there is nothing we can receive from outside, nothing that we do not already have within us. There is no ‘‘you’’ that can have any role other than to remind us of the center of our inner self—Heart, Spirit, Intellect, and Light. This is the reminder of Unity, though it invariably comes from the world of duality—joy and suffering, beauty and ugliness, beatitude and misery, life and death, mercy and wrath, light and darkness—and thus through an innumerable multitude of possibilities. Whenever ‘‘you’’ is understood in the first and not the second way, we risk reducing ourselves to that which conceals our center and thereby taking our ignorance for knowledge. In this reduction, Unity is confined in a world deserted by heaven, where prophecy is mere sermonizing, and return is attaining the greatest possible degree of power and authority over the world and other people. In these circumstances, all forms of learned knowledge are proven by the power they bring or that backs them. But true thought is wholly detached from all power; it is always based on the witness to Unity, prophecy, and return as the means of transcending all boundaries. The corollary of this testimony is confidence as our relationship with God, a relationship in which we are both faithful—we to God, and God to us. The reason for the human ‘‘I,’’ and so for any teaching that issues directly or indirectly from Intellect, is to attain perfection. But this can be achieved only in the return to God or, in other words, in the realization of the self through its testimony that there is no self but the Self. The ‘‘I’’ thus discovers itself in accordance with its primal nature as the only true ‘‘place’’ or locus of knowledge of the Beloved and love

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84 / The Text beyond the Text

of the Known. This is the path of realization of the Self in the Perfect Man as the cause and purpose of all existence. The true prophet and the true poet know the One Who Loves and love the One Who Knows without external mediation. For them, existence is with Truth, and there is nothing that can mediate Truth for the One Who Knows and Loves. Where such a thing appears to exist, it is a falsehood concealing and obscuring the truth. Both prophets and poets, though, can be false—the eternal question is how to recognize a false prophet. Both the prophet and the poet reveal their center in speech and language that others can hear. Their existence is the source and evidence of their speech. If the source of their knowledge is concealed and they speak in the name of that which conceals it, they are false prophets and false poets. What then obscures or covers is the ‘‘you’’ that threatens, that is waging war against the self on its ascending path toward the Self as the only Reality. Knowledge that comes from external sources and imitation can make no decisive contribution to our relationship with the center as the locus of unmediated realization of the cause and purpose of humanity. Knowledge is relationship with the profoundest human center. What we want to know is identical with our reality, and the way to achieve it cannot be to maintain the division between knower and Known. Knowledge is not real so long as it is determined by a standpoint adopted consciously or unconsciously by the knower. Knowledge in which a certain standpoint is adopted as unquestioned and decisive is called dogmatism or ideology. For all who partake of such knowledge, the warrant for a given standpoint is external. If we want knowledge of the Real, we can have it only in Him; and from this follows the acceptance of the Real as the Center of the Self. This acceptance is an affirmation of human nature, which does not depend on history as a whole or on any event in historical time. Our nature partakes of Intellect and thus Reality. The perfection of our primal creaturehood is not refuted by any of the states we may assume on the path of descent or ascent. We always remain perfect potential and absolute

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I and You / 85

value—a precious asset of God, inseparable from existence as a whole. God, the One and Only, is with us wherever we may be. We may be far from God in our illusion, but God is ever with us.2 Since every action based on knowledge, in which some state of ours is taken for unchallenged standard of measure and judgment, is necessarily violence, human self realization in the cosmos entails requiting evil with good and beauty. The reasons for this are in the self that testifies to Unity, not in some you-self. On our journey of ascent or realization, we are expected to harmonize our inner self with the whole of existence. God indicates to us our inseparability from the world, when He asks: ‘‘Hast thou not seen how to God bow all who are in the heavens and all who are in the earth?’’3 This harmony is a stage on the road of return to the uncreated source of both the world and man. To see the world as an object over against the self is to erect an obstacle on our path of return, which lies within the self, whose proper role is to testify that there is no self but the Self.

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12. I ncompleteness

Kameni spavacˇ was already in print when the poet wrote another, separate poem entitled ‘‘Modra rijeka’’ (Blue River), and it met with much the same reception. Indeed, many people felt that it belonged with Kameni spavacˇ and suggested that it be included in it. However, the book with its five sections already formed a whole and there was no room for additions. Its fifth and final section is the poem ‘‘Message,’’ in which the Sleeper defines himself by denying that his happiness depends on any outward condition or that he depends on any external will or power, so liberating himself from any standpoint as a fixed condition of knowing. He points to the innumerable multitude of forms and incursions such external determination of the self can take and rejects them all, turning to our primal nature instead. The message of Kameni spavacˇ, the Stone Sleeper, is intentionally incomplete, however, as attested by the poet’s indications of incompletion and by the open-ended form of ‘‘Message’’ itself. Readers often speculate about this. It would seem that this incompleteness is the poet’s rejection of the modern notion of finite man, who cuts his self to the cloth of his ideological viewpoint.

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Incompleteness / 87

There can be no path of discovery of why we are in this world that does not treat the question of heaven. We are the image by which God reveals His inner Self in the external. When we discover our essence, we speak and shape, perform rituals and journeys. In all these we are at peace, knowing, loving, and doing that which is good and beautiful; and Peace, the Known, the Beloved, the Beautiful, and the Good manifest themselves in all things to us, yet abide nowhere. They constantly surge up and sink, come and go, and our efforts to have them at all times raise us from one level of being to another. Wherever we have risen or fallen to, our goal is beyond heaven. All the signs on the outer horizons are like blossoms that grow out of eternity and infinity, constantly emerging from and returning to the frozen wastes. On the brink of the abyss of the uttermost depths, it is of the blossom we ask: Snowflakes are falling ever thicker and blacker like sins In a life that’s nearing its end. So will we still have eyes When the apple tree in the garden puts forth its first white blossom? ‘‘Apple Blossom’’

The question of the blossom, whether it is or is not in the Sleeper’s future, suggests the inescapable antitheses of non-peace and Peace, ignorance and Knowledge, hatred and Love, ugliness and evil as against Beauty and Goodness. We are constantly being tested and tempted by both: it is up to us to embrace peace, knowledge, love, beauty, and goodness as manifestations of the Principle and to see everything that is contrary to them as impossible in relation to the Principle and thus as an illusion or appearance from which we strive to liberate ourselves, as the names of nonexistent things that we or our forebears have concocted out of our imaginations. We began our journey in the perfection of the Garden with the apple tree in its midst, perpetually full of blossom and ripe fruits not to be eaten, and sank to the uttermost depths, to the bottom of the

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88 / The Text beyond the Text

desert valley, to darkness, sin, and forgetting. We need to die in the depths if we are again to rise to the Garden and find ourselves before the same blossoming apple tree and, awakened, heal our wounds. All of existence is between the purity and tenderness of the blossom and the plenitude of the fruit. Snow reminds us of that original purity of the blossom but is constantly being sullied in the world in which we act out of little knowledge. What befalls snow in the outside world is merely the image of what happens in our inner self, originally so pure but later sullied by sin. Our return to the lost Garden is in turning to the purity of the apple blossom as sign of primal, sanctuarygiving perfection. The Sleeper speaks of a life drawing to an end. He is faced with two possibilities: to return to the waking state, to the snows that become ever deeper and blacker, like sin; or to pass over into death. The Praised says: ‘‘When the time draws near a believer’s dream can hardly be false. And the truest vision will be of one who is himself the most truthful in speech, for the vision of a man of Peace is the forty-fifth part of Prophesy.’’1 Prophecy is the speech of Eternity in time, and its path to the world of phenomena is often through death and sleep; but with poetry, it is only sometimes so. In both prophecy and poetry, when they are with Truth, our return from waking, sleep, and death is announced: ‘‘Surely God’s friends—no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow. Those who believe, and are conscious—for them is good tidings in the present life and in the world to come. There is no changing the words of God; that is the mighty triumph.’’2 The Sleeper himself responds to the question of the end to which life is ever drawing nearer: The earth is sown with a deathly seed But death is no end For death indeed Is not and has no end For death is just a path To rise from the nest to the skies with the blest. ‘‘Death’’

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Incompleteness / 89

If the end is absolute, then it is the same as the beginning; and so it is with interiority: absolute interiority is the same as absolute exteriority. Only incompleteness presents a threat. If we adopt anything other than absolute plenitude, that is Unity, both beginning and end, and interiority and exteriority, we end our journey in some state or other of the self that deprives it of free will which is openness to Unity. Sleep is a station in which we are given tidings of the Other from a deeper or higher reality, when we may draw closer to the Other but may also return to the depth to which we are elevated in that station: ‘‘God takes the souls at the time of their death, and that which has not died, in its sleep; He withholds that against which He has decreed death, but looses the other till a stated term. Surely in that are signs for a people who reflect.’’3 This ‘‘taking of the soul’’ (or of the inner self) is its elevation on the path through the heavens, past waking, sleep, and death. We are perpetually on a journey through those three levels—the waking state, sleep, and death; and this ‘‘perpetually’’ is our existence in time. The inconstancy of the heavens, the earth, and all that lies between them reminds us of the perfection of Unity. Nothing in time, not even time itself, has any meaning other than to remind us. Even when we are in the uttermost depths, there is still the inviolable presence of mercy, and we are not cut off from the sublimest heights. The Living conveys us from that baseness to the remote heights as His humble servant, through all the heavens, past waking, sleep, and death. The Sleeper begins his book with a discourse on roads, and it is indeed impossible to imagine human freedom without a multitude of roads. If we establish our connection with the One freely, it is impossible to be true, that is to love the One on the basis of our little knowledge of Him, without constantly coming to crossroads and having to make decisions. The Sleeper then continues by speaking of man, for what can we know of the road, if we ignore the traveler. Human consciousness is in constant flux: everything flows into and out of it.

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90 / The Text beyond the Text

What can we know about the source and outfall of that flow, if we do not know ourselves? The Sleeper then speaks of heaven, reminding us that we must find from among that multitude of roads the one that leads from the inner self to the ultimate heaven. This reverses the usual image. The corollary in the self is the death-sleep-waking sequence and not, as it might seem, waking-sleep-death. In traditional worlds, to be situated in time and space is to be situated in a cosmology and in an eschatology respectively; time has no meaning save in relation to the perfection, and in view of the final breaking up that cast us almost without transition at the feet of God.4 Unity is both the beginning and the end of time. We are in a descent from Unity into multiplicity and baseness, whence we ascend in a return to or realization of our primal perfection. If it sometimes seems that some period or another represents the fulfillment or completion of tradition, this does not mean that tradition has been altered or corrected. The principial importance of Unity, prophecy, and return can never be altered within tradition, even though these same elements may take on different forms and expressions in doctrine and art. Each of these forms and expressions is merely the manifestation of what tradition has as its essence. The forms by which that essence makes itself known may be laid waste and forgotten, but this will never destroy their unique essence. At any time, tradition may appear amongst us through the forms and expressions of science and art, through holy people. Even when it seems to the majority that tradition has died out, when the majority are living in an untraditional way, there are still individuals and groups who remain wholly within traditional intellectuality and its way of life, even though they may be almost completely invisible to the majority. The house in Mile´ is the extended manifestation of the spiritual elder, who is witness to and transmitter, in his perfect manifestation, of what is received from Intellect. He is a witness to Unity, prophecy,

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Incompleteness / 91

and return. His perfection, which is the light of the Praised as the human center, illumines the house and all that is in it. When the light of the Praised is absent, nothing of the house retains any value. The stec´ci are often carved with the symbols and scenes of the Sleeper’s faith without a name—symbolic representations of the sun and the moon, the stars and the mountains, trees and animals, staffs and garlands, pillars and round dances, and people with arms raised and open hands. These depictions are associated with the metaphysical and mystical reality that the Sleeper represents through the beauty of his inner self. The poet is thus integrated into his spiritual heritage. He is not shaping any truth of his history but subordinating himself to a higher level of the self on which all his individuality depends. This higher self, his uncreated and uncreatable center, does not depend on any of its possible manifestations. Even if the poet did try, as he himself attests, to understand the mystery of the Sleeper’s faith and to include its symbolic language in his discourse, it would not have been possible to do so through research and rational reflection alone. What is required is humbly to listen and to be a true poet. Without this, the Sleeper’s discourse would betray his faith, which is not in the material imprints of the symbolic representations on the stone surfaces but in the one and only center of humanity that cannot ever or anywhere be irretrievably lost. Faith as our link with the Beautiful, which it constantly knows by unmediated observation and hence loves, is obscured by our conceding to its being defined and thus named. If we want the love of what we know and the knowledge of what we love, nothing in the outside world can be a warrant for the realization of that desire. The name and the named are and are not one and the same. Through names, we seek to draw closer to the deepest reality of the named. But when a name becomes embodied in one of our assumptions or representations, it separates us from God Who names all things in His creation. And His are the Most Beautiful Names. If we have faith, this means that we are connected through it with the Faithful. As soon as this relationship of faith or belief is named, the Faithful begins to be concealed or overshadowed. But the Faithful

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is Beautiful for those who are connected with Him and calms and stimulates knowledge of Him. All His Names are beautiful. He is irresistibly attractive, and union with Him is the goal and the sole acceptable relationship between the faithful and the Faithful. In every relationship between the faithful and the Faithful, love is the moving force, and knowledge is what governs it. All knowledge that we acquire from external sources is determined by something and is thus contingent. Whether accepted or rejected, knowledge enters a self that cannot be satiated by anything external, for its perfection is not of this world. It is bestowed on the self in the very act of creation, not by assembling the factors of the heavens, earth, and all that lies between them. All that is given shape and ordered so that human nakedness may be a worthy recipient of Spirit and the Word and pass them on as the finest speech and action. We are defined by Spirit; but Spirit cannot be defined by anything. Even when it manifests itself in space and time, Spirit is not confined by them. It abides with Intellect as the plenitude of meaning that bestows on every individual in multiplicity something of the meaning in the speech of Unity. Striving to be open to phenomena as signs of Unity, we make of them windows in the partition between the levels of existence, steps on the ladder of ascent in the discovery of our primal nature. None of these signs can be understood on the basis of its definition by another. When such a definition is adopted and knowledge of something is contingent on something else, we have a rigid standpoint from which we know or do not know something. This standpoint is contingent and limited and thus necessarily a veil over some level of existence. Full openness of the self entails the testimony that there is no self but the Self and that Perfection is the first and thus also the last manifestation of the Self. In traditional teachings about man, this full openness is the only goal. No knowledge that is determined by the standpoint of the knower can evade the limitations imposed by external givens. Only the standpoint of no standpoint enables us to transcend standpoints and ascend to meaning that is contingent on nothing. This meaning is in Unity,

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which is to say that it is external to any duality. This standpoint of no standpoint is the absolute Reality that manifests itself in all the multiplicity of the worlds. It is impossible to arrive at the true meaning of humanity from outside, through some knowledge in which things are deployed in dogma, theory, or science. Beyond all thought and beyond all the worlds is Intellect, in which the meanings of all things are unified. Intellect is the primal nature of man, and in it all our potential is united. It is only in and with Intellect that we may know what we are and be what we know. Earth, the heavens, and all that lies between them are the multiplicity that reminds us of the primal Unity of Intellect and of Intellect as our uncreated and uncreatable center in which the knowledge of all things lies. Beneath every discourse is its image at a lower level of existence or in the shadow of a higher level. But above it, too, is its higher potential of which it is merely the image. Speech descends or ascends through all the levels of existence. It is only when it returns us to Intellect, as our primal homeland and sanctuary of peace, that speech acquires its full meaning, needing nothing and no one to supplement it. We know the names of all things, but as a gift received from God. When we return to those sublime heights through the knowledge of those names, the names and the things named cease to be differentiated. This is our return to our Source.

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13. Message

All stec´ci known and unknown, individually and collectively throughout the land of Bosnia, those with images and epitaphs and those without—are all signs of the Stone Sleeper. In Dizdar’s poetic revelation, their cold passivity over the graves of our remote Bosˇnjan forbears is transformed into the Sleeper’s discourse on the uncreated and uncreatable Self. This discourse is a message. The Sleeper’s utterances lead the listener or reader to ‘‘Message’’—the seemingly unfinished, long final poem of Kameni spavacˇ. Although it contains the voices of many different speakers, the speaker’s ‘‘I’’ and the listener’s ‘‘you’’ are fully distinct. Addressing that ‘‘you’’ which constantly threatens him with destruction, the Sleeper says: But by a miracle I will still be dreaming here on earth. And like a wise watchman from the East Forbidding others to dream and think You’ll pour poison Into the spring From which

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I drink. And you’ll laugh you’ll roar That I am No more. ‘‘Message’’

Who is the ‘‘you’’ of the Sleeper’s message? If he knows nothing of the inner self of the speaker, does that self know itself? A message relates the one delivering it with the one he is conveying it to. Who is the deliverer and who the recipient of this message? Kameni spavacˇ becomes more comprehensible to interpretation firmly rooted in sacred science and sacred art. The specifically Bosnian form of the book must be understood in terms of an inner element, which is always one and the same, and an exterior, which exist in multiplicity and motion. Otherwise, this poetic discourse remains inarticulate and vulnerable to doubts and distortions. When received and studied with a view to bridging the gulf between the temporal and the spiritual, the earthly and the heavenly, multiplicity and Unity, a text emerges that transcends the words printed on the page and helps us orient toward the center—which otherwise becomes ever more obscure and remote. Let it be said once more that Kameni spavacˇ was a poetic revelation in the darkness of the twentieth century’s ideological and dogmatic sermonizing. But unlike ideological sermonizing, no revelation seeks confirmation in an act of social enterprise. Revelation has a reason and value regardless of any of its consequences and thus regardless of any act in which the primal human perfection is not taken into consideration. It proceeds from and for the sake of the center of the self. It is for human perfection, and only in such perfection can a true revelation be witnessed and discerned. Nothing in the worlds can overpower the sanctity and inviolability of the human center. No human achievement is of any significance by comparison with the loss of the Self. The Sleeper’s discourse is thus a testimony to the meaning of sleep as a bridge between illusion and the Mystery that manifests itself and yet remains what it is.

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96 / The Text beyond the Text

Loss and discovery are always with us. In every human breath, mercy and wrath, beauty and ugliness, good and evil are all present. Although we do not choose our destiny, we are free at every instant to choose to embrace mercy, beauty, and good over anything else, to choose the beauty of the blossom instead of the fruit we repeatedly reach out for. What are the worlds to us if we lose ourselves in making the wrong choice? ‘‘Blue River’’ is not one of the poems that make up the book Kameni spavacˇ. It was published under separate covers, but there can be no doubt that it acts as both prologue and epilogue to the book. It is like the gem on the Sleeper’s ring; and the clasp holding the gem in place is the poem ‘‘Message.’’ ‘‘Blue River’’ could thus be read as a continuation of Kameni spavacˇ. The Sleeper begins to speak with the poem ‘‘Roads’’ and ends with the unfinished poem ‘‘Message.’’ His faith has no name but it is the reality of his ‘‘I.’’ Beyond its unity with being, the Sleeper is not overly concerned what that faith may be called, for that would prefigure the possibility of the loss or obscuration of that reality. Others send an army against him, defining him in their ignorance and fear of his ‘‘faithless faith.’’ The Sleeper’s faith is thus a reality without a name, a self for which the greatest burden and concern is ignorance of itself and thus a complete lack of confidence in any knowledge conveyed to him from outside, even if transmitted to him by his close or remote ancestors. To his enemies, this self of the Sleeper’s is a counter image for the state of their own selves: their ignorance of their own faithless faith, now transmogrified into service of a name without reality, takes the form of condemning the Sleeper who will not adopt any prescribed standpoint. The Sleeper thus defines himself by saying ‘‘No!’’ as the first part of bearing witness to Unity. The final verses of ‘‘Blue River’’ are the second part of that testimony: That’s where a dark blue river flows A river that we need to cross. The Sleeper will relentlessly and uncompromisingly reject anything that is directed at him from any other self. He does not recognize

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Message / 97

his destiny in anything offered him or any threat made against him by another; his destiny is in his ‘‘I’’ alone. It is only when the crucial importance of self realization is recognized that the transition from ‘‘Message’’ to ‘‘Blue River’’ becomes comprehensible. The blue river we have to cross is none other than human nature. The second part of this book presents an interpretation of the poem ‘‘Blue River’’ in the light of the perennial philosophy that is the essence and context of Kameni spavacˇ. Ideological sermonizing, which as a rule demands affirmation in the remodeling of the world and man, has led to our confinement on one level of existence, in the quantifiable world as the only world. But consciousness transcends every boundary, and the Sleeper’s dream may be understood in the darkness of ideological violence: Born in a body barred in with veins Dreaming that seven heavens descend Barred in a heart bound into brains Dreaming the sun in dark without end Bound in your skin ground into bones Where is the bridge To heaven’s thrones? ‘‘A Word on Man: First’’

As a message relates its deliverer and the person being addressed, one could say that the deliverer and the message are one and the same. The image of the deliverer is also the message, sent to the ‘‘non-I,’’ the side of the self that incites and attracts to darkness or sin. The Sleeper introduces himself to himself with his message. There is no essential difference between the Sleeper and his sleep. The message thus denotes or delineates the Sleeper’s path and goal. In this delineation, the self opens up to its center. It shows that sacred sleep is waking and clarity within. With his profound, rapt presence, the Sleeper makes clear the peacefulness of his conceptual undertaking and the sublimity of silence. In this way, the waking-dream-death sequence, which the finite world sees as degradation, takes on the aspect of ascent. Through

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98 / The Text beyond the Text

death, we become entirely obedient and, so, receptive to dreaming and waking states that transport us from multiplicity to Unity, through all the levels of being. On each level, the eternal touches the temporal, the infinite, finitude. These encounters are manifest as miracles, as described by Frithjof Schuon: There is in reality only one miracle from which all others derive—and that is the contact between the finite and the Infinite, or the unfolding of the Infinite in the bosom of the finite.1 This contact between the finite and the Infinite, or the unfolding of the Infinite in the bosom of the finite, means recognizing that I know you know nothing about me, and in consequence, that I know nothing about myself either. This is because the knowledge you have of me is gained through your relationship with Reality which bestows reality on all existence, so that your knowledge and mine are a relationship with Reality, and nothing else. Whenever any manifestations of that relationship are taken for knowledge, you and I adopt this as a standpoint by which we want to define and thus to condemn the other, for we have thereby elevated ourselves in our imagination to a height from which we speak like judges who will not be judged. When we admit that our knowledge is little and that what we have is acquired, then we can say, with the Sleeper: Where it might flow nobody knows Not much is known but this we know. ‘‘Blue River’’

The Sleeper’s message to each of us is to discover our primal nature in the mighty war against ourselves, entrenched as we are in dogmatism and ideology. In so doing the Sleeper is not denying the multiplicity of the world as a priori without value or purpose; he is drawing our attention to its position in the unfolding of the Infinite which is one and only, and to that oneness and sameness as primacy and ultimacy, interiority and exteriority. The Sleeper thus bears witness to Unity as revealed in the worlds and in man through the trinity

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of Being, Consciousness, and Beatitude, a trinity that is also living, everlasting Unity. If we are to know what to be and to do in that unfolding of Unity, we must know what the worlds tell us, how to read the book of their signs. And if we are to know what is in the book of the world, we must know our nature and the cause and purpose of our coming into this world. If we are to know our nature and our destiny, we must know our inner self as knower. How can we know ourselves? Knowledge is the relationship between the one who knows and what he knows. Earth, the heavens, and all that lies between them offer us every individual thing and all things together as the object of knowledge; but none of this can satisfy us. In the enterprise of self knowledge, the self is both knower and known, and the purpose of everything in the outside world is to recall interiority as the locus of all knowledge. The human self is differentiated, but this is an illusion by which the one and only Reality manifests itself to the man of illusion. As long as we are in this state, all our knowledge comes out of this differentiation and is thus finite, which means that in relation to Infinity it is nullity, merely Its vanishing trace. The differentiation of the self is also a trinity: the self that leads to darkness or evil;2 the self that reproaches, distinguishing the indestructible ray of light in every darkness;3 and the self in Peace that transcends the split between knower and Known.4 The last state of the self is true knowledge, in which the differentiation into I and you, or knower and Known, is transcended. It is the Sleeper’s ‘‘I’’ that resists every ‘‘you’’ as its baser potential. Duality is manifested in Unity as Principle. The testimony to Unity and the Perfect Man as its Messenger is a condition for unifying knower and Known, self and the world, man and God. This is the only way we can see things as they truly are. We and the world alike owe our existence to Truth. There is nothing that is not indebted to It. On the basis of this debt, all things on earth, in the heavens, and between them have a claim against the man who knows; and this claim is our debt to all things, for our inner self and all that

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100 / The Text beyond the Text

is in the world are indebted to God. It is expected of us to know ourselves as indebted and to recognize the claims of all that have a claim on us and thus to do all things in accordance with God’s claim and that of His creation. The recognition and repayment of the debt include our little knowledge of the Beloved. Love, or the irresistible yearning for union with Him, transforms everything into His Face, as the great teacher Rumi says: Love is that flame which, when it blazes up, burns away everything except the Everlasting Beloved. It strikes home the sword of ‘‘no god’’ and slays everything other than the Real. Look sharp—after ‘‘no god,’’ what remains? There remains ‘‘but God,’’ all the rest has gone. Bravo, O great, idol-burning Love!5

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Epilogue

The invisible and higher appears through the earth, the heavens, and all that is in them as the visible and lower. So it is with man, whose entire inner self is split into an invisible and a visible side. Existence as a whole is our external image, while we in turn reflect the external world. Both are revelations structured so as to embrace the sequence from highest to lowest. This array is, in fact, the duality of visibleinvisible, earth-heaven, and body-Spirit. Every duality manifests Unity as its principle. We gain knowledge from external sources, from our parents and those who have spoken to us, from our teachers, and from books. This knowledge is transmitted to us, and as a result, diverse and often mutually contradictory forms and items of knowledge have come to us. Faced with their insuperable discord, we may opt for one of the images offered us by this learned knowledge or abandon ourselves to the rule of a multiplicity of knowledges with no order. There are three crucial components of knowledge in every traditional teaching—Unity, prophecy, and return. Unity is the beginning and end of the world and its governing principle. Prophets speak in their own language and time but invariably point to Unity as the primal and sanctuary-giving determination of the visible and the

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invisible. According to them, we come from and return to Unity, which alone is worthy of our service. The purpose of this service is to return to Unity and realize ourselves in perfection. There is no human condition such that these elements of tradition can be lost. They are always within us, and all the horizons of the heavens and earth, with all that is in them, merely remind us of that. The key human question is: Can we know what is crucial for our survival and happiness merely by gathering the tidings that come to us from outside? Unity is the principle of all multiplicity in the world and in man. If we are to discover and realize ourselves, we need to see all things on the outer horizons and within our own selves as the manifestation of that Unity. This is our path to the knowledge in which our testimony that there is no self but the Self will reveal itself as the Self, without differentiation into being and knowledge. Just as Unity is eternally above all multiplicity, so are its signs in all things, but arrayed in a descending and ascending order. These signs are always present on the outer horizons and in the self, but we read them differently from moment to moment. Prophets remind us of the principle of Unity and its crucial significance for us. If we accept, as God reveals to us through the Praised, that there are no more prophets, that does not mean that our relationship with Unity as the center of our inner self, is annulled or impeded. Our freedom would be meaningless if there were not always also present a revulsion against that center or Unity, whose perfect Life, Will, Power, Knowledge, Speech, Hearing, and Sight can never be annulled. A prophet does not become one by his own will or merit. Although he is on a quest, it is only with his patient endurance and acquiescence, dedication and self-abnegation that the truth manifests itself through life, will, power, knowledge, speech, hearing, and sight. His prophesying is not the result of an apprenticeship in spontaneity. What he is manifests itself as a gift or debt of which he is conscious, as he is of his responsibility for it. When it is not so, when prophecy is the result of having been tutored and of an intent of which the source is a

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Epilogue / 103

certain state of the self, it is false prophecy, usually showing itself as obscurity or madness, conjuring and trickery, sermonizing and poetry. If prophecy, as a means of reminding people from without of Spirit at their center and Intellect as the treasury of all that is on the outer horizons and within the self, has come to an end in history, it must be whole and entire in every individual self. Dizdar’s poetry would seem to suggest this. Faced with the cold and enduring passivity of the tombstones as tangible, solidified reality and the simple forms enclosed on the vertical and horizontal stone surfaces, covered as they are by the simple representations of a faith without a name, the poet launches an inconstant, unfixable discourse through the Sleeper. In so doing, he turns us toward the Face that is before every face and the beauty in which Eternity manifests Itself at every instant in time, toward the prayer in which corporeal being turns into a being of the Word, and toward the fragrance that perpetually wafts from beyond the boundaries of the world. In this relationship between the carved stone and the Sleeper’s discourse, life returns to prophecy through poetry so that those of us returning may tend their burden and enter the open House: For all who do not care For old Or new Tsars. For all who do not heed Lordlings or kings or Boyars. For all who do not need Their wealth untold Their evil gold Their ducats And their dinars. ‘‘House in Mile´’’

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The alternative to false prophecy and false poetry is the humble, guided quest, persistent and joyful, effortless and carefree. It directs the seeker toward perfection of form and expression, always in accordance with sacred exemplars that are of both heavenly and earthly inspiration. This inspiration does not rule out the inspiration of the individual; we are given a path and a passage through the order of descent and ascent. And this, more than anything, is what concerns us.

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II . Across Wa t e r A Message on Realization

And when Moses said to his page: ‘‘I will not give up until I reach the meeting of the two seas, though I go on for many years.’’ Qur’an 18:60

No self knows what comfort is laid up for them secretly, as a recompense for that they were doing. Qur’an 32:17

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Prologue

It is important for people in this day and age to know how they differ from their ancestors. To most of us, the principal difference is that we now have access to machines and computers, to travel and communications, and to skills and building techniques that were not available in the past. This change has banished neither death nor the question of the meaning of the world and of human existence within it and may well be less significant than the majority thinks it. The meaning of life and of human life in particular cannot be considered without taking the Principle into consideration. Do so and the difference between our distant ancestors and their descendants reduces to our relative degree of concern for or detachment from this question of the Principle. It does appear that people in the past were more concerned with the Principle of the world’s and our existence than with what concerns us today. For them, neither question nor answer is conceivable without reference to the Principle—which is both in the world and beyond it. The Principle can exist without anything else, but nothing else can without it. The Principle is the name of that which is prior in existence as a whole and in all individual existing things. Just as the reality of all

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things lies in this firstness, the Principle is also their finality. That which is first is also innermost and outermost, so that there is nothing more inner or more outer than it. Knowledge of things is possible, only to the extent it connects them with the Principle. The world and human being are two facets in the manifestation of the Principle. By knowing the world, we know ourselves. But neither we nor the world are the Principle. It is our reality and that of the world. All things in existence, whether in the world or within the self, stand with the Principle as their own first principle. But that which is wholly first must also be wholly last. The reality of all things is thus in their connotation or representation of the Principle. Things attain reality by connection with the Principle, participating in constantly repeated creation. If things lack connection with the Principle, they lack reality. This lack is the condition of human consciousness that has been blanked out and deformed and, as a result, detached from its original capacity to know the meaning of all things. Being both in and facing the world, we experience the horror of history and the joy of redemption through our connection with the Principle. The horror of history manifests itself in conceptions of things that are unconnected with the Principle and so have no meaning. The joy of redemption lies in discovering the many ways always present in the self and the world of ascending to the Principle, of loving It as insufficiently known but entirely knowable. In this love, all we desire is union with the Beloved. This is why the world and the self, things and deeds, are of value to us only if related with the Beloved. There is a boundary in existence accessible to sensory perception and reflection. Within it, lies the quantifiable world; beyond it, a world we can reject or accept as higher, a world of which everything is a sign. This world and its higher level, beyond the boundaries set by analogical knowledge, both proclaim Unity.1 Both the sensory and the suprasensory world speak of Unity. Every world contains speech in which we may find or discover the Speaker. All things in existence are connected with the Speaker through speech. Humankind and all things in existence are bound by the meanings accorded them by the Speaker, meanings that can be discovered

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by acknowledging the indebtedness of all things and that debt as a perpetual quest for and discovery of the Speaker. But we are shaped by the Principle and our affiliation to a people and language, a region and an age. Each of us gives and receives, though we have nothing we have not received. Everything we give is but something received passed on. Exclude the Principle and these perceptions lose all clarity. Examine this claim with regard to language and it is evident that we receive our language by means of our affiliations—our relations with our mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, neighbors and strangers. We receive it from an entire people in the age in which we live. And as participants in this conversation, we pass on what we have received to others. The language that we are part of, however, belongs to other generations too. It wells up to us from the past, from a time far more distant than the historical evidence we possess. Language is a current of which individuals form a part, as does the Self of the Principle. It is inseparable from that speech in the self and the world through which the Speaker makes Himself known. Consideration of the written remains of the Bosnian language since its first recorded appearance suggests that those early speakers of our language were more attentive to the Principle than their modern heirs. This may be amply corroborated by writings ranging from the Charter of Kulin Ban through the Gospels in Bosnian to the oral poetry recorded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Whatever the dominant questions and responses to the meaning of life, simply belonging to a people presents no obstacle to attending to the Principle. Such closeness comes from openness to the First and Last, as one ascends from one level of existence to another. Such individual ascents are to be found in accounts of individual lives or in records of their speech. Since poetry attests to both descent into nullity and ascent towards the Principle, no inquiry into this aspect of Bosnian culture can ignore Mehmed Alija Dizdar, who signed his poetry Mak Dizdar. Dizdar’s volumes of poetry, including Stone Sleeper, were written at a time when the Principle was largely disregarded in the

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110 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

search for answers to questions about the meaning of the world and our existence in it. What follows is an inquiry into possible links between Dizdar’s poetic discourse and the doctrine of the debt, and so the worldview of ancient teachings and of love. Neither the teachers nor the students of these ancient beliefs ever spoke of them as ‘‘their truths.’’ Rather, it was they who belonged to the beliefs, as we belong to language. Readers may find themselves confused by the presentation of poet as metaphysician, and vice versa. This confusion is due of certain illusions that have not been dispelled, even by witness that there is no god but God. As Gustave Thibon says: Les poe`tes sont des me´taphysiciens a` l’e´tat sauvage; le Christ n’a pas fait de me´taphysique, il a donne´ des paraboles. La philosophie ne s’accommode pas des contradictions: elle essaie de les re´soudre comme des proble`mes. La poe´sie exprime des ve´rite´s plus hautes, elle s’accommode de l’incohe´rence apparente. Le philosophe se trouve face au monde comme devant un proble`me dont les donne´es, comme celles des proble`mes mathe´matiques, sont devant lui. Le poe`te est dans le monde comme dans un myste`re, il s’y trouve engage´ tout entier, et l’on ne re´sout pas les myste`res; on en reste e´bloui.2

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Prologue / 111

Blue River

Where it might flow nobody knows Not much is known but this we know Beyond the hills beyond the ghylls Beyond the seven and the eight From noon to night from vale to height Across the dour across the sour Across the haws across the thorns Across the fires across the pliers Beyond all mind beyond all sense Beyond the nines beyond the tens Down there below beneath the earth Up there on high above the sky From depth to depth from strength to strength Beyond the quiet beyond the night To where the cock-crow is not heard To where the horn’s call is not known From good to bad from sad to mad Beyond our mind beyond our god That’s where a dark blue river flows A river that is wide and deep It is a hundred winters wide It is a thousand summers deep About its length don’t even dream The black the bleak cannot be healed That’s where a dark blue river flows That’s where a dark blue river flows A river that we need to cross.3

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1 . In t r o d u c t i o n

In 1969 Mak Dizdar1 was named Golden Laureate of the Struga Poetry Evenings, the internationally acclaimed poetry festival held annually in Struga, in Macedonia, for his ‘‘Modra rijeka’’ (Blue River).2 This poem lent its title to a volume of poetry published in 1971 and is a continuation of the poetic discourse Dizdar began so momentously with Kameni spavacˇ (Stone Sleeper) and which forms the basis of his reputation as a poet. To be a poet is to be caught between two extremes, and, as a result, talk of poets and poetry is invariably about these extremes, or inclinations toward one or the other. To delineate the range of this discourse, one might do well to begin by defining these two extremes as they are defined in the Recitation.3 The question of Man involves three essential elements—the patency of Unity as the Principle of all existence, our descent from, and our return to the Principle. All of us, poets included, find ourselves somewhere in between. Let us see, then, what God says of poets with regard to both these aspects of the self: ‘‘And the poets—the perverse follow them; hast thou not seen how they wander in every valley and how they say that which they do not?’’ 4 The Messenger said, ‘‘It is better for a man to fill the inside of his body with pus than to fill it with poetry.’’5

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Introduction / 113

This is the basest extreme of the human self in its obsession with poetry. The antithesis to such poets is ‘‘those that believe, and do righteous deeds, and remember God oft, and help themselves after being wronged.’’6 The Messenger says of their poetry that it ‘‘contains wisdom’’7 and, speaking of one of them, prays to God that He ‘‘support him with the Holy Spirit.’’8 The Faithful Spirit sent the Revelation as a dream into the Messenger’s heart.9 The Dream Revelation was then spoken, making divine speech accessible in human language. To distinguish one kind of poet from the other, one should study their poetry in the light of the Recitation and the discursive current that cleaves to its language. Poetry that belongs to this current retains its link with the Principle, as source and impetus, trajectory and outflow. Poetry of this kind bears witness to Unity and maps the upward path from our descent to the depths back to our supreme potentiality, closeness to the Principle. ‘‘Blue River’’ is a poem but also indissolubly part of the ‘‘eternal wisdom’’ of ‘‘the standing debt’’ (sophia perennis and al-din al-qayyim).10 Eternal wisdom illuminates, as already observed in the first part of this work.11 It is therefore the poem itself which makes possible the conjugation of the metaphysical, cosmological, anthropological, and psychological content of the discourse of Stone Sleeper with the traditional point of view. It will hardly be disputed, after our study of Stone Sleeper, that Dizdar’s poetry belongs to the second type, the poetry of wisdom. Here, we will attempt to link the perspective of Stone Sleeper with that of ‘‘Blue River.’’ It should be noted at the very outset that the sleeper in Stone Sleeper is closer to reality than a person who is physically awake, as sensory experience is of a lower order than dreams, and death leads into the deepest of sleep. A dream experience may speak of Truth, but also of that which diverts from Truth. The diverter from Truth, however, cannot assume the person or the discourse of the Messenger Muhammad, the Praised,12 who realized in his own being the ascent to Unity, after Unity Itself had first descended upon him. All speech

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about sleep is thus on the scales of the Praised, by whom truth and falsehood are held in the balance. In ‘‘Blue River,’’ the narrator is ‘‘we’’—humanity, man as such. The tale of the blue river begins with the line ‘‘Where it might flow nobody knows,’’ and culminates in the exclamation ‘‘A river that we need to cross.’’ With these two lines and the poem they enclose, the poet created something one might describe as a discourse on Unity, as descent from and return to Unity. The poet’s name and his time are known; but his speech transcends both. Its origin and end are both in Sophia, so that his poetry enters into form from an essence that is above and beyond individuality, revealing the common center of humanity all must seek and find. This is the interpretation put forward in this note on a poem that found a poet to be spoken through. The viewpoint we adopt is itself one in which Sophia manifests itself. Such discourse should transcend individuality and accompany the ‘‘standing debt.’’ It is the speaker’s responsibility and shortcoming when the debt of faith is not observed in any attempt to interpret a discourse for another. The intended recipient of this interpretation is any individual who has resolved to respond to the call sent to us all from the shared center of the world, humanity, and the Book.13 God created people and what we do.14 He did so by bestowing upon us the fairest stature,15 and shaping us well, with Truth.16 We are thus created, shaped, wrought in symmetry, and composed in the form the Creator willed.17 When we do something perfect, something true and fine, our deed is a manifestation of our Creator. Realized individuals do not see their perfect deeds as their own, for they bear witness that there is no self but the Self. Thus all that is true and fine is a manifestation of the one and only True and Beautiful. This is why those who take part in a sacred act rarely put their name to a deed that others see as theirs: they are not the authors of the act, because beauty, wisdom, and knowledge are the manifestation of their perfect Creator. The need to claim a deed as one’s own almost invariably stems from the aggrandizement of a self that does not recognize Unity. The name of

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Introduction / 115

the executor may be added to a perfect work, but it attests to the humility and generosity of the one who bears it, who is the recipient of perfection and regards it as a debt owed to the Giver. In Bosnian, Blue River (Modra rijeka) is of the feminine gender. It is remote; but the absolute remoteness of which human beings speak is also absolute proximity, for it is simply every revelation of the Essence, and so all the worlds. The poem consists of twenty-seven lines. If one considers that the number 3 corresponds to the heavens and that the poem is narrated from the perspective of Man—number 4 in the sacred doctrine of numbers—it is significant that, while the poem has twenty-seven lines—three times three times three, all but four of these lines have eight syllables; the others—the nineteenth, twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, and twenty-seventh—have nine each. The poem is in three parts. The first, consisting of twelve couplets, corresponds to the number of months in the year or departure from and return to each of the six spatial dimensions. This section of twelve couplets is separated by a single line from the third part, the concluding couplet. This line is compartmental in nature. Having traversed the twelve months or all twelve emergences and returns, the narration comes up against the barrier. It stands at the end of the road just traveled and the beginning of a higher order of the will of the speaking ‘‘we’’ of its Sleeper—in a deep, stony sleep. This deepest of sleeps, which is none other than death, is an awakening, as the Messenger says: ‘‘People are asleep, and when they die they awake.’’18 From beginning to end, the poetic discourse unfolds in a rhythm of two and two, two and two, in which utterances alternate with silences, echoed in rhymes that appear and disappear. It is not hard to recognize in this rhythm the footfalls of the traveler from the periphery to the center or from contingency to the absolute. The heart, too, features in this quest, as it beats, contracting and expanding. This lays a whiteness, a silence, behind the entire discourse; a silence manifested by the narration as both beginning and end, both inwardness and outwardness. The rhythm of speech leads from one level of sleep, the semblance of reality, to another, which leaves the former without ever

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116 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

reaching its goal, which is nonetheless in the traveler’s trajectory toward nonduality. Each step leads into a deeper sleep, liberating the ‘‘sleeper’’ from the shallows left behind. The rhythm reveals the duality of giver and receiver, intimate and remote, similar and different. With these the world of duality is turned toward nonduality as its principle. The poet sees the Blue River as an appropriate name for this principle. It is a name that he perceives as complying with the order: ‘‘Call upon God, or call upon the Merciful; whichsoever you call upon, to Him belong the Names Most Beautiful.’’19 Though this ‘‘blue river’’ is present in all things, it is ever remote from everything. Its discovery or revelation lies in the recognition of multiplicity as Unity and Unity as multiplicity—which is the recognition of our return to Unity through multiplicity, our discovery of ourselves as God’s revelation of Himself in creating the world and humankind.

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2. Nobody Knows

Where it might flow nobody knows Not much is known but this we know

Absolute obscurity is such that it cannot even be known to itself—for if it were, it would not be absolute. But if it is absolute, can it be what it is without disclosing itself to itself? The absolute invariably demands both obscurity and disclosure, dissimilarity and similarity; it cannot be limited by its obscurity nor disallowed by its disclosure. When the poet says, ‘‘Where it might flow nobody knows,’’ he is saying that obscurity is absolute and that ‘‘there is naught’’ like the Being that substantiates this.1 And with the words, ‘‘not much is known but this we know,’’ the poet is asserting that this Being is ‘‘the All-hearing, the All-seeing.’’2 He is thus both like and unlike and can never be reduced to one or the other, to similarity or dissimilarity: ‘‘Glory be to thy Lord, the Lord of Glory, above that they describe! And peace be upon the Envoys; and praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being.’’3 Obscurity is thus a name and, as such, a relationship between things manifest and God, in Whom all names are comprised: ‘‘I was

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118 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

a Treasure but was not known. So I loved to be known, and I created the creatures and made Myself known to them. Then they came to know Me.’’4 This saying of the Messenger’s is sometimes given in the present tense but more often in the past. ‘‘God is, and there is no god but He,’’ so He is past, present, and future; He is what He is, and was, and shall be: ‘‘All that dwells upon the earth is perishing, yet still abides the Face of thy Lord’’;5 ‘‘Like Him there is naught’’;6 He is near.7 But who is He? It is a human question. If one were to know oneself when asking the question, one would know Him, too. To ask what He is is thus to ask what we are ourselves, and vice versa; in asking what we are, we are asking what He is. Only God wholly knows Himself; we know ourselves only to the extent that we know God.8 He can say: I am what I know, but we cannot say that we know what we are. If we were to say what we should not, we would be making the same claim as Abu Yazid: ‘‘I am God.’’9 For this to be said, the eye of revelation must find God in all things and God alone, for there is nothing else to be found. Both the ability to reason and the impenetrability of habits and nature then cease to be, for there is no self but the Self: the Unity of those who love one another has been attained. And when one says it, there is no I, no self, for I am not; only He is. Thus everything returns to the Essence as the One and Only. But if, for all that, we say what we should not, our god is equivalent to what we know and what we are. Since we know so little, and what we know is constantly changing, our god is also ever different. We can never say that our knowledge encompasses all things: but God says this.10 We can thus be directed out of our confined knowledge only by bearing witness that there is no god but He. He is indeed God. He is known, because He discloses himself in the world, in humankind, and in the Book. He discloses himself to us through the world that He creates and the Revelation that He has sent down to us as His word in our language. In this Revelation, which reaches us in every language, He gives us His name—and that name is God. But the name and the named are one, and yet are not one. They are one, for there are no names if there is no named; and yet

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Nobody Knows / 119

they are not, for the named is always more than what the appellant knows of him. As a Name, God comes as a sound from the silence, the obscurity; and when It takes Its Slavic manifestation, Bog, the Name parts lips that were closed. The sound fills the space between tongue and palate, and then expands into the world outside the lips—between heaven and earth—before returning again to the depths of the throat, to the internal phoneme g. When He is called by this name, in Its vocative form Bozˇe, the lips part once more, and from between tongue and palate a sound emerges from nonexistence. Then the tongue is raised, to fall prone in the utterance of the final e of the call. Thus the human self is connected to the Divine Self. He says: ‘‘Verily I am God, there is no god but I.’’11 What we can say, with our self, is: ‘‘We don’t know much but this is known.’’ The totality of creation—the heavens and the earth and all that is between them—and of humanity—flesh and Spirit and all that is between them—and of all the revealed Books—the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel, the Qur’an—gives us knowledge that is but little. But all speak of God, for He is what He knows and He knows what He is. Neither the world nor humankind, which are equal in different ways, can encompass with any of their knowledge that name of His, which is the sum of His most beautiful names. But He says: ‘‘My earth and My heaven embrace Me not, but the heart of My believing servant does embrace Me.’’12 Patently, only God encompasses Himself. Is He the ‘‘heart of the believing servant’’ and the creation that bears witness that there is no self but the Self? The cosmos, humankind, and the Book have been sent down from the Treasure. Behind this lies the single, perfect will and the corresponding power of the One Who knows all things. Thus we, like all of creation, are with the Truth; we can find nothing but the Truth. Our lives are a quest; a quest directed toward, connected with, and on a journey toward Unity. ‘‘God is in the direction of him who performs the prayer,’’ said the Messenger.13

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Every human orientation toward that Unity is out of and with multiplicity. Wherever we look, there is an innumerable multitude of things manifest. Hearing and seeing them shows us that they are also within us. We hear and see them, we know their names, and we are thus intimate with them. In this intimacy, they speak to us of God Who is One, and they are thus Unity made manifest in multiplicity. As soon as we focus on them as multiplicity and on their individualities, which are He, and in so doing disregard or dismiss His Unity and dissimilarity, the world and all that is manifest in it become concealed, and we become the concealers. And whenever we disregard or deny multiplicity and nearness, Unity and dissimilarity become finite and thereby concealed. Unity is in multiplicity and multiplicity in Unity; dissimilarity is in similarity and similarity in dissimilarity; remoteness is in nearness and nearness in remoteness. However little our knowledge, it always connects us with God— there is no god but He!—and shows us the direction to Him from every point. God creates with the Word: ‘‘His command, when He desires a thing, is to say to it ‘Be!,’ and it is.’’14 All of creation is thus in the Word. The names of things manifest are words, and their root is thus in the Word. To know the names of things means to be connected with the Creator: ‘‘And He taught Adam the names, all of them.’’15 God embraces all things in mercy and knowledge.16 Creation is His knowledge: He knows it. His knowledge and His being are one; but in humankind, the two are distinguished. To be what we are and to know what we are, we seek Him Who knows us; and He Who knows discloses Himself in creation, for He is Merciful. He discloses Himself in creation as Merciful, saying: ‘‘My mercy embraces all things.’’17 Knowledge and mercy are at the origin of all of creation. Our longing to know what we are and to be what we know manifests itself as a journey, as an ascent toward Him Who knows all things and Whose mercy embraces all things. We want everything but know little, so our ascent is our yearning to return to the Absolute—and this is love. In love are knowledge and mercy, which are our source and our outfall, our departure and our return. United within a being, knowledge and

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Nobody Knows / 121

love are faith; and faith is our relationship with God as between faithful and Faithful. All that exists in the inner and outer realms is with the Truth; and as such, all things manifest offer both knowledge and mercy. The paucity of that knowledge points to Knowledge. However ugly or evil a thing may seem, mercy is still its principle, for God says: ‘‘My mercy overpowers My anger.’’18 Our journey to the Principle is a return, an ascent along the upward path. The fact that the truth is in all things manifest means that they are of one and the same essence and that their existence in good or evil is a perspective of human differentiation into knowledge and being. When this differentiation is transcended, ‘‘God will change their evil deeds into good deeds.’’19 Our realization through His most beautiful names is what makes this change possible. Everything in existence discloses one of these names; and all of them belong to God. ‘‘Where it might flow nobody knows,’’ writes the poet, so differentiating all of us from the river itself. Where It might flow nobody knows; but does It know about us? If It does, then ‘‘nobody knows’’ may be altered through Its bestowal and our reception. If It is Light, which is one of the Divine Names,20 no wonder nobody knows where It flows. There is a tradition to this effect: when asked if he had seen his Lord, the Messenger answered: ‘‘He is a Light; how could I see Him?’’21 Only the Absolute may know the Absolute; and there is no absolute but the Absolute. In saying ‘‘not much is known but this we know,’’ the poet is referring to the revelation to the world and to humankind, the revelation of the One of Which nobody knows where It might flow. Its Self-revelation makes It both known and unseen. The totality of existence is sent to those who do not know so that a little knowledge may be bestowed on them—not much, but enough to direct us to That Which is in and beyond all things manifest.

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3 . Be y o n d th e H ills

Beyond the hills beyond the ghylls Beyond the seven and the eight

All that exists, both as a whole and in all its individual diversity, comes into being in a great movement out of nonexistence—a movement brought about by God’s will. And since God is Truth, all that exists is with Truth. Everything in the inner and outer realms of the self manifests Truth. Without that movement, things manifest would have remained in Peace, in nonexistence. Peace is absolute mercy, and hence love calls for movement or existence to make itself known, as the Messenger said when he uttered the words of God: ‘‘I am a Treasure, and I love to be known.’’1 All things in existence are generated by love; without love, everything would remain in eternal Peace, in nonexistence. The world came into existence out of Peace or nonexistence in a grand differentiation of Being into Its various degrees. This is descent as a movement from Peace to the lowest degree, descent motivated by love. Existence, too, in which all knowledge prompts the desire to use

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Beyond the Hills / 123

it to ascend to the primal Unity of Being and knowledge, is evidence of this. The human self is in this world in a state of uncertainty, able either to focus or to dissipate itself, to rise or to fall, to remember or to forget. This uncertainty discloses itself to us in the outside world as the span from earth to heaven and in the inner world of the self as that between flesh and Spirit. The self is perpetually between extremes: utter depth and soaring height. But how do we ascend to our primal selves after falling to the lowest degree? We were originally created in the fairest stature, perfect. This perfection is the fullness of God’s manifestation to himself as Light; in its pristine state, that Light is Illumination and is thus both Praiser and Praised. It is the root of all existence. God taught Adam all the names and placed him in a Garden, where all was permitted him but for one tree.2 In this original covenant, the human self was the pure image of the Divine Self. He was a void, wholly subservient, open to receive the Absolute and ready for the role of vicegerent, and as such his will was the same as the Will of God. All the Divine Names were comprised within him, and every individual creature in the Garden was a record of one of those Names. As the Perfect Man, Adam knew this, for in him all the Names were fully disclosed. To Adam, the Names corresponded to all multiplicity; they were his link with God through the signs in the universe and in his inner self, and all manifested the Unity of God. He saw this Unity in all things, for only Unity may be found. For him, Unity and multiplicity, first and last, remoteness and nearness, height and depth were indivisible. Adam, the Perfect Man, bore witness that there is no self but the Self and thus knew the Names as revelation: ‘‘Verily I am God, there is no god but I.’’ Man was then at the pinnacle of existence above all seven heavens.3 Humanity was in and with Peace; as it was in the human soul, so it was in the universe: the soul was in Peace, and thus it was in the universe. Adam lived as would later be expressed in ritual prayer: ‘‘O

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124 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

Lord, Thou art Peace and Peace is from Thee. Blessed art Thou. Verily Thou art full of praise and majesty.’’4 Adam’s naked human body was the sum of the universe as the manifestation of God’s revelation to Himself. God was disclosed to Adam, and Adam to himself. This original human condition, life in the Garden, corresponds to the Height, the High Place. There are many paths leading from the Garden, or descending from the Height, toward the multitude of levels of being. All these levels and all these paths are comprised in the perfect person, the person of fairest stature. All seven worlds manifest Him to the perfect person. The culmination of this is the abode of the self in Peace. But when Adam reached for the fruit of the forbidden tree, when the human self detached itself from the Divine Self, the Garden distanced itself from him. The Creator had decreed that one tree be inviolable, that Adam keep his distance from it, so that Unity might be close to him in every tree and its fruit. God said to Adam: ‘‘And eat thereof easefully where you desire; but draw not nigh this tree.’’5 But Adam desired Unity without all of multiplicity and nearness without any remoteness. And thus Adam fell from the Unity of the Height down the precipitous slopes of all downhill paths, reaching the depths of the Vale. The original human condition was reversed; from the Height, multiplicity appeared to Adam as a descent to a lower degree and Unity as the warrant of the proximity of Peace, but on reaching the depths of the Vale, multiplicity manifested itself to him as the path that ascends toward the primal Unity. Reaching the depths of the Vale also disclosed to him the potentiality of his soul. There, in the depths to which his fall had brought him, he saw himself behind all of existence. He had been at the peak of existence and had fallen to its depths. He comprised in himself the experience of the fall, the passage through all the days, from the first to the seventh, from Unity in multiplicity and knowledge in being in their state of dissociation. Though originally one, for him heaven and earth had become separate.

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Beyond the Hills / 125

In his fall, he was filled with regret for the self taken without the Self and the exercise of will without Will. Recollection returned him to the covenant with God: he turned to Him and confessed his sin. God pardoned him, and gave him some of His words6 so that in the Vale, this new human condition, he might be worthy of the covenant between God and man and that nothing in it might be disordered. The new condition offered the face of the earth as the starting point for the ascent to the Height or the Garden. God was now disclosed to humankind in the most beautiful names, thought, and sensory perception. We are now called upon to return to Him through these revelations, through the good example,7 which is a light-giving lamp,8 a mighty morality,9 and mercy unto all beings.10 The good example is the Messenger, foremost of creation and an entity in the relationship of person of peace–being at peace–Peace. He is the Light of praiseworthiness, with the potential to manifest himself as the totality of creation and humanity, a man who eats and who walks the streets. This return begins with the eighth day, with the decision to venture onto the return path, ascending the heavens through which he fell, as new or eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth heavens, to his original heights, or the self in Peace.11 The doctrine of this day is in the message from God: ‘‘We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in themselves, till it is clear to them that it is Truth.’’12 With these words, God transformed the seven days and the heavens, which the first man had as the world beneath him, so long as he was the utterly loyal servant in the Abode of Peace,13 into signs and the ritual of ascent: the House in the Vale of Tears; the journey toward it along the paths on the slopes of the Vale; the seven circumambulations of the Abode and the seven progressions between the male bestowing principle and the female receiving principle, no longer united but destroyed ‘‘by his own will,’’ an act by which he had concealed his fairest stature. He was given two signs for this ascent from the Vale of Tears to the seventh heaven and beyond—the Holy Mosque in the Vale and the Farther Mosque on the Height. The former corresponds to the furthest

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depths to which humanity had fallen, and the latter to the fairest heights where humanity had been and to which we may return. We have in the Messenger the finest precursor for such an ascent, as God says: ‘‘Glory be to Him, who carried His servant by night from the Holy Mosque to the Further Mosque.’’14 The transition through and beyond all the signs in the outside world and the inner realm of the human self is in this ascent. But it is possible only if all the signs are acknowledged before being traversed and left behind for the sake of Him Who manifested them as His revelation. As the final creation, Adam contained in his inner self all that exists. But when it seemed to him that this entailed independence from God, his will led him into conflict with the Will of God, and he fell to the lowest degree of existence. Everything that had been beneath him now disclosed itself to him in reverse order. His fall traced the ascending path, the path of return, of revelation, of discovery within him. But this can be achieved only by bearing witness that there is no self but the Self and hence no will but the Will. We discern meaning in this testimony as the link between signs and the Signified and between discovery and the Discovered, between knowing and the Known. Our sensory perception will take us to the boundary, to the seventh heaven, and existence will manifest itself to us in the duality of this world, the lower, and the next or higher world. To cross this boundary is to ascend from one level of existence to another in the return to Unity or the Supra-formal Essence. But this does not mean that forms are independent of Essence: it is always with them. They are an extension of It or are signs on the path that leads to It. All words come into existence out of Silence and to Silence they return. Silence invariably accompanies spoken words, but words are never entirely Silence. The return to Silence is from, through, and beyond words. The very fact that words can be spoken, signs recognized and traversed, is evidence of their meaning in relation to Him Who is beyond all boundaries and is manifest in all forms through His Breath. Not one form limits Essence, though all disclose It. As soon as meaning

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Beyond the Hills / 127 .

reaches the contingent self, it, too, expires; for Essence15 discloses Itself ever anew in the innumerable multitude of forms, never disclosing Itself twice in the same manner. The self that attests to the Self thus passes through all forms and lays waste all gods. The only way in which it may return to its fairest stature is by bearing witness that there is no god but God and that all things are merely the signs of Unity. Unity is none other than Essence itself, and Essence is none other than Its most beautiful Names, manifesting themselves in all things with their perpetual through-flow.

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4. Fr o m No o n t o Ni g h t

From noon to night from vale to height Across the dour across the sour

Our ascent begins at the lowest level, the level to which the fall reduced humankind when we lost the sublime height on which we were created. As a result, we experienced separation and severance as suffering and death, pain and bitterness. We were reduced to this final state by the fall caused by the desire to have Unity without multiplicity. This is why Adam was expelled, banished through all of multiplicity to the lowest place of prostration, where he was alone, beyond all things. The desire to have Unity without multiplicity was disclosed to him as equating the self with nullity; but the original purpose of the self was to be a ‘‘locus’’ in which the Self discloses Itself. The injury to Adam was inflicted by his own inner self, which wanted to be indebted to no one except himself. But we are indebted to God for all of our existence. The covenant between God and humankind is the awareness of that debt. However we might turn to the outside world or inward to ourselves, we find nothing other than Truth

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From Noon to Night / 129

with them. Everything is thus indebted to God. In discovering what we owe to God, we find the direction and the path to God: ‘‘To Him belongs all that is in the heavens and earth; His is the debt forever.’’1 Becoming aware of and acknowledging that debt constitutes wisdom. The injured Adam reached the depths of the Vale, where he built the House. In the doctrine of the return or the debt, this House is the place of annihilation of the injury. Its counterpart is the Further Place of Annihilation, on the sublime height that Adam lost and to which we desire to return. The return is an uphill path, and to make it a reality, we must become aware, we must attain our limit, we must know our fall and come to the house of the renewed covenant: And when We settled for Abraham the place of the House: ‘‘Thou shall not associate with Me anything. And do thou purify My House for those that shall go about it and those that stand, for those that bow and prostrate themselves; and proclaim among men the Pilgrimage, and they shall come unto thee on foot and upon every lean beast, they shall come from every deep ravine that they may witness things profitable to them and mention God’s Name on days well-known over such beasts of the flocks as He has provided them: ‘So eat thereof, and feed the wretched poor.’ Let them then finish with their self-neglect and let them fulfil their vows, and go about the Ancient House.’’’2 We come to the House for the sake of our ascent. Only those who have acknowledged the sin in their own selves may begin the ascent. On the way back, they must assume the reality of all things manifest, for it was not enough for us to know all the Names. The differentiation of the outside world indicated by the two signs of the Vale and the Height, with the Vale corresponding to the depths and the Height to the Sublime, is mirrored in the human self. The dark side, the deep ravine of the self is the side inclined to evil, which is on the other side of the high place that is in peace. The entire universe and all that is within it point to this differentiation in the self. One human condition, but not all, was lost with the fall. God will not betray his covenant with humankind; everywhere and at all times we are

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left with the memory of our primal perfection and the possibility of returning to it. The experience of the fall has to be endured once again in the return to Peace. The fall was the consequence of Adam’s opposition to the will of God; we make the ascent of our own will and with God’s consent. What was lost through human will may be regained through it. God helps us in this: ‘‘Whithersoever you turn, there is the Face of God’’;3 ‘‘Call upon Me and I will answer you’’;4 ‘‘So remember Me, and I will remember you.’’5 The return is an ascent, and as such is longer and harder than the descent; in it, we must experience the journey ‘‘across the dour across the sour.’’ Wherever we are, we are on one path or another—ascending, descending, or level. It is true of all of us that ‘‘we don’t know much but this is known.’’ This little knowledge is enough for us to differentiate the irreal from the real. We can never be sure, however, that the direction we take, of which we are aware through our little knowledge, is in fact leading us toward God—for we can never have anything except that little knowledge. The counterpart to this uncertainty is God’s knowledge and mercy, which is all-encompassing. He is ever with us, wherever we are. Only God knows Himself; our wish is to recognize and maintain our orientation toward Him out of our meager knowledge. But only perfect individuals, who find God in the outside world, themselves, and the Book, are able to do this, for there is nothing else to be found. Hardest of all is to find that path, the dourest and sourest of all possibilities. Those traveling this path find and leave behind every achievement, for there is no god but God. They see His Face in all things but do not sculpt it either in matter or in the mind. There is no state of the self that is able to resolve our yearning to return to our primal perfection or Unity. The journey ends nowhere but in Him. Perfect individuals accept no absolute alterity other than the Essence of the Real—Being in Itself. The counterpart to absolute Essence is none other than absolute nullity.6 This is the meaning of the

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From Noon to Night / 131

testimony that there is no god but God. On their journey, perfect individuals recall their Creator in every sign in the outside world upon which the sun sheds its light, and see these same signs in their inner selves with their inner eye: signs that are everywhere, around them and within them, and are none other than the signs of absolute Essence. When the darkness of night falls on them, whether the dark of a moonlit or starlit night or the dark of a starless, moonless sky, then, too, they recognize the signs of Essence in every sound that reaches their ears from the outside world or from the inner ear within themselves. These sounds are signs of Him, for wherever we turn, there is the Face of God. But no one knows the Essence of the Real apart from the Real. Hence there is no beacon, be it in the universe, or within us, or in the Book, to guide every traveler, regardless of where we have come to, when and how at each instant of our existence. Every self, and hence its position in the world, is contingent; and the same is true of its knowledge. Absolute knowledge is the province of Essence alone. At each stage, the self is directed still farther and still higher ‘‘across the dour across the sour.’’ And yet in each of these states determined by little knowledge, the Absolute is disclosed to us. Thus the knowledge of that time and place corresponds to this manifestation, which is transient and unrepeatable. The disclosure of Essence in every place and time is the river, the flow. We are in a state of bewilderment in this perpetual contingency of revelation of the Absolute at every instant and in every direction. But bewilderment is the condition of those who are close to Essence. Absolute Essence surrenders Itself as such to no one but Itself. This means that everything that is not God is merely the outside world and the self, in and with which It discloses Itself through Its signs—signs that possess reality only with the Signified. The totality of existence is open downward and upward but not equally. Downward lies the ruination of the self; upward is its ascent. Although the former may appear the simpler, the truth of it is different. The path of decline and fall leads to nullity, which is powerless, a mere delusion in which the Real is forgotten. But the Real is merciful and compassionate and wishes all things manifest to return to It

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132 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

along the upward path. As a result, all things are signs, windows in the boundary of one level of existence, facing a higher level. A vertical ray bursts from this boundary of existence where the ascent begins, radiating out in all directions within this boundary. The earth, the ground beneath our feet, has no windows facing a lower level. It is merely a boundary where nullity seems to be more powerful than in the heavens. As Schuon explains, we need both inspiration and orthodoxy to take this ascending path. We can liken the particular mode of inspiration and orthodoxy that is esotericism to the rain falling vertically from the sky, whereas the river—the common tradition—flows horizontally in a continuous current; in other words, the tradition springs from a source, it goes back to a given founder of a religion, whereas esotericism refers in addition and even a priori to an invisible filiation, one that in the Bible is represented by Melchizedek, Solomon, and Elijah and that Sufism associates with al-Khidr, the mysterious immortal.7 But all these—Melchizedek,8 Solomon,9 Elijah,10 and al-Khidr11— were alone in the world, guests and strangers there. Everything they experienced in their encounters encouraged them to cut their visit short, to abandon and break all their habits and accustomed ways and set off ‘‘from noon to night from vale to height.’’ However arduous the journey in which they were perpetual strangers and guests, they desired only to return, only to ascend, ‘‘across the dour across the sour’’ though it may have been. For what guests and strangers expect beyond all the worlds is that every stretch of the road once traveled will appear left to a lower level, and every stretch to come will seem to lead upward. Nothing is sufficient for them in that ascent; everything is nullity other than the Face they seek behind all Its veils. So they become ever more solitary and ever more desirous of the Solitary. Every level of existence and all that lies within it and through which they pass appear to them as an illusion denoting the higher level to which they are journeying. They are perpetually on a crossing spanning a river, a crossing of stepping

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From Noon to Night / 133

stones laid in the riverbed. Those who make the crossing are wholly focused on the stones that barely emerge from the rushing waters, each stone just large enough for a single foot. They are thus at ease as their foot lands on the stone but find it hard as they pause in preparation for making the step onto the next stone; and so on incessantly, from ease to hardship and from hardship to new ease, with nowhere to pause and no home. We cannot escape the constant fluctuations and permutations of the world and our inner selves. The reality of the Hour shatters our every shelter, be it in the outside world or within us—for the Real is with all things everywhere, and all things are transient except the Real. We are thus perpetually on the other side of the boundary beyond which lies our homeland to which we return as the beloved country. Drawing closer to the lost and promised land of Peace makes us forever less than what we are growing toward. In drawing closer, we ascend and yet still remain at a lower level than our potential selves, selves that have wholly achieved the return to the Self. The self recognizes itself in its growth and ascent as destitute and as a stranger; and this, being a destitute stranger, reveals to us with great clarity how much higher is the degree to which we have risen. The world is foreign to us, a world we find ourselves in but which we wish to leave. The more united we are in memory with our homeland beyond the boundaries, the more remote we are from everything that contributes to shaping language, the crueler and harsher this alien world seems to us. It offers us death. We give it what belongs to it, so that we may gain what is ours. As destitute strangers, we come before alterity as guests and beggars. Only in this alterity can our languages be translated into their original nature. When we are total strangers, we agree to nothing but the return to ourselves. And when we are destitute, nothing can satisfy us but to receive everything.

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5. Across t he Haw s

Across the haws across the thorns Across the fires across the pliers

How is the human self shaped in which so little is known? Jesus, the Anointed, Son of Mary, said: ‘‘Thou knowest it, knowing what is within my self, and I know not what is within Thy Self.’’1 In so saying, he was acknowledging that he knew God only in part, that God was ‘‘little known’’ to him. Jesus is thus with God and is God’s Word and His Spirit,2 even though he was a man. So it was, too, with Muhammad, the Praised. After Muhammad was transported from the Inviolable to the Further Place of Annihilation, only some of His signs were shown to him.3 His strong moral sense is to be seen in his constant appeal for God’s forgiveness: ‘‘By God! I ask for God’s forgiveness and turn to Him in repentance more than seventy times a day.’’4 The Messenger prays thus because he is the foremost of creation and praiseful light. His primal and ultimate nearness to the Light reveals him as the conscious recipient of everything by which God discloses Himself. The experience of the Messenger thus encompasses

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Across the Haws / 135

all human potential, but ever with Truth of creation Whose mercy embraces all things. But all human knowledge is ‘‘through a glass, darkly.’’ To dispel the darkness, we must fall deeply asleep so as to awaken face to Face, when we shall know fully and directly: ‘‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’’5 One of the Companions of the Messenger said: Then the people would be summoned along with their gods whom they worshipped, one after another. Then our Lord would come to us and say, ‘‘Whom are you waiting for?’’ They would say: ‘‘We are waiting for our Lord.’’ He would say: ‘‘I am your Lord!’’ They would say: ‘‘We are not sure till we gaze at Thee.’’ And He would manifest Himself to them smilingly.6 We discover our knowledge in relation to the world: we and the world are both separate and conjoined. Every contact with the world, be it sensory or in thought, becomes part of our treasury of knowledge. But since there is no creator but the Creator, Who creates both us and what we make,7 our existence in relation to the world is the discovery of His treasury within us; this we do by prevailing over the differentiation of our inner self, of which the concomitant is the disjunction of the world. The return to God is the discovery or revelation of all that the world is. When the barrier that maintained the Unity of human and Divine will in the Garden was broken down, it meant that we could no longer enjoy freely available fruit, shade, and ease. The fullness of bliss was lost in concealment. The path leading to the lost, by which we may find it, is ‘‘across the haws across the thorns.’’ It is a journey from one memory to another, but a journey that takes us ‘‘across the fires across the pliers.’’ There are signs in all things along that path of return: signs that are perpetual opposites, pain and pleasure, darkness and light, suffering and bliss, death and redemption. This is the human condition after the fall, after the boundary has been breached:

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136 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

For Sheba also there was a sign in their dwelling-place—two gardens, one on the right and one on the left: ‘‘Eat of your Lord’s provision, and give thanks to Him; a good land, and a Lord All-forgiving.’’ But they turned away; so We loosed on them the Flood of Arim, and We gave them, in exchange for their two gardens, two gardens bearing bitter produce and tamarisk-bushes, and here and there a few lote-trees.8 The rigors of the world after the boundary had been breached and humankind had sunk to the very depths of the self did not destroy the sweet taste of the Garden. There remained at the bottom of the Vale of Tears, in the self that incites to evil, a spark of Intellect, a scrap of what the Pen had recorded. In this wasteland, overgrown with haws, thorns, and tamarisk, in this wilderness ravaged by fire and torn by pliers, there remains the occasional lote-tree to remind us, amid the harshness, of the seventh heaven where the Lote-Tree of the Boundary grows, where the sublimest of sights is to be seen: ‘‘Indeed, he saw him another time by the Lote-Tree of the Boundary night which is the Garden of the Refuge.’’9 We are separated from heaven with these signs in the depths of the desolate, barren Vale. The remoteness of the heavenly horizons is evidence of the divisions within us. The flesh feels deeply fallen and abandoned; Spirit seems unattainable. The distance between earth and heaven, between flesh and Spirit, seems unbridgeable. As the poet writes: Born in a body barred in with veins Dreaming that seven heavens descend Barred in a heart bound into brains Dreaming the sun in dark without end. ‘‘A Word on Man: First’’

Our dreaming is a surrender to Truth that It may speak to us and thereby restore to us what we have lost. Our wish is for the heavens to descend upon us, to multiply, and to show us the upward path by which we shall ascend to Truth.

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Across the Haws / 137

The entire world is the manifestation of God as Truth and thus of Truth that is with it. Ultimately, the world is Truth, for there is no truth but Truth. The world as the revelation of Truth reunites opposites— small and large, low and high, dark and light—and so on ad infinitum. This synchrony and coextension of opposites is the cause of our bewilderment, in which the world appears as both concealment and disclosure. Everything we discover immediately manifests itself as veiled, as yielding to further disclosure, in an infinite regression— everything that is veiled manifests itself as disclosed: ‘‘The seven heavens and the earth, and whosoever in them is, extol Him; nothing is, that does not proclaim His praise, but you do not understand their extolling.’’10 All proclaim His praise, and ‘‘all’’ is thus the Praiser. Praise or extolling is the relationship between the Praiser and Him as Praised. It is thus because all things return to Him,11 because there is no refuge but God. But all things, the whole of existence is from God, and hence the Praiser as the extoller or bestower of praise is as it is because it has received His praise. He is first and foremost the Praised, for all is from God. And as all thing return to God, whatever the Praised received, he returns to God as the Praiser. The seven heavens and the earth and whosoever is in them are the Praiser, for they have received His praise, which is made manifest in them. Praise is the link between all of existence as praised and God as Praiser. But existence has nothing that it has not received from God, and what is received may be given. Thus the seven heavens and the earth and whosoever is in them are both Praised and Praiser. When we realize our inner self as Praised and Praiser, we are endowed with mighty morality, becoming a light-giving lamp and a good example. This is the perfect person, the self in which all things are contained. In such a self, God discloses Himself through the synchrony and coextension of opposites. The seven heavens and the earth and all that is between them are the individual of full and mighty morality, and such an individual contains all the world of existence, before and beyond all things.

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The entire outside world praises God as its inward aspect, and we human beings are no exception. We, too, outwardly praise the Holy Spirit that descends upon our hearts. Here, too, is an apparent opposition between the inner and the outer—apparent, because what the inner praises as the outer is none other than one and the same—inner and outer are one. The Praised and the Praiser, like the Praise they bestow and receive, are one but manifest themselves in opposites. Multiplicity and Unity are opposites; Unity discloses Itself in multiplicity as a whole and in all its infinite variations. No sooner is It disclosed than It is concealed. Wherever we turn, It will disclose itself to us as an increase of knowledge but will simultaneously propose Itself as a journey ‘‘across the haws across the thorns.’’ Though the world manifests His beauty and tenderness, his mercy and nearness, their opposites, ‘‘fires and pliers,’’ also manifest Him. But His mercy surpasses His wrath. As long as Unity is made known in multiplicity, mercy and wrath, beauty and magnitude, tenderness and rigor also manifest themselves; the self does violence to itself in its longing to achieve the return to the Merciful. Both haws and thorns, both fires and pliers manifest themselves as violence against the self, because its flight is to the Self or liberation from wrath. The flight to the Self may be achieved through Spirit or Intellect, ratio. The Spirit blows where it will, and Intellect bestows meaning on every form while remaining as free as the Spirit. Wherever we are, our analytical reason enables us to wrangle with the multitude of forms but not to master them. Analytical reason, cannot take the self through and beyond the boundaries. It strikes fear into us with the boundaries, depicting them as insurmountable, as unendurable effort—as haw and thorn, fire and plier. But Intellect transcends all boundaries, passing through and beyond all barriers. It is free, independent of any limitation. Intellect bestows meaning on every sign; the sign depends on Intellect, but not vice versa. Intellect is dependent on nothing but God, just as the Pen does not depend on the words inscribed on the page. In passing across the haws and across the thorns, across the fires and across the pliers, neither the distant horizons nor our affiliation

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Across the Haws / 139

to community and language elude us. With every new step, our little knowledge is altered but still remains little. We have our image of God in each of these new small additions to our knowledge—but we do not want an image; only the Maker of the image will satisfy us. Trudging through haws and thorns, through fires and pliers brings us new images, one after another. Everything we gain and dismiss can be expressed in language, which connects us with other people, all of whom have their own, invariably different image of God. All who constantly reject them hail themselves and others, each in their own language and in all languages: ‘‘Your God is One God; there is no god but He, the All-merciful, the Ever-Merciful. ’’12

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6 . Be y o n d A ll Mind

Beyond all mind beyond all sense Beyond the nines beyond the tens

We cannot be in a state of certainty on our return journey to our primal perfection, the path of discovery of our undivided selves, now hidden from us by the fall. Our every state is contingent. The covenant with God is the relationship between the faithful and the Faithful. But we are finite beings: our self is never the same as the Self, and however close we may be to God, this difference can never be surmounted. We are thus, in every state of the self, between darkness and Light, evil and Good, errancy and Peace. This in-between existence also includes presentiments and doubt. The self is never certain but rather is in a state of duality and constant self-reproach.1 It is thus perpetually between its own void and the self at Peace2 and the self that incites to evil.3 A self at Peace is possible and can be attained by bearing witness that there is no self but the Self. This is achieved by passing from one shadow to another with the Light as guide and witness on the journey.

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Beyond all Mind / 141

But the self that incites to evil cannot attain Ultimacy, for such ultimacy has no reality; it is merely a distancing from God, and there, on the path leading away from the Real, God’s anger awaits it. But there is no god but God, and so even when we with whom He is angry set off down that path, we are not deprived of His mercy, for He says: ‘‘My mercy overpowers my anger.’’ When we repeat the name of God, the Unique, the corresponding number of which is nineteen4 —‘‘beyond the nines beyond the tens’’— then, too, the Name and the Named are both differentiated and united. Both reflect the Recitation: for something to be differentiated, it must first be united, and vice versa: to unite something, it must first be differentiated. All of existence is differentiation, and as such is indebted to perfect union; to unify all that exists is to repay the debt to Unity. But this is not a transition from one quantifiable instant to another or from some identifiable place to another. Differentiation and unification, or coming and returning, take place at every instant. They are thus the manifestation of the Word that becomes the World, Flesh, and the Book. The world is the manifestation of the Word: ‘‘His command, when He desires a thing, is to say to it ‘Be!,’ and it is.’’5 ‘‘Every day He is upon some labour.’’6 The World is His labor made manifest. This creative Word of His, dispersed into the innumerable multitude of things, is manifested in the flesh: ‘‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’’7 Thus he who is His Word, like the entire universe, becomes a pathway toward Him. He sends down His Word into the heart of His messenger, and His Word is revealed in human language. When the Word is made World, Flesh, and Book, both differentiation and unification are its contents. Through them, He discloses himself at all times as both near and remote. Wherever we are, we are in differentiation and unification, in nearness and remoteness. We are in doubt in each of these states, for full unification constantly eludes us, like the horizon where earth and sky meet. But the intimation of unification in every differentiation, drawing ever closer, is always with us. We are in the depths to which we have fallen but sense within ourselves the discovery of the transition through all things to the Lord

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142 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

Most High. In the extremity of his fall, Adam received a promise: ‘‘Thereafter Adam received certain words from his Lord, and He turned towards him; truly He turns, and is Ever-Merciful.’’8 And God then said to humankind: ‘‘Get you down out of it, all together; yet there shall come to you guidance from Me, and whosoever follows My guidance, no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow.’’9 These words that God makes manifest as World, Flesh, and Book are a guidance toward the Unique, toward Him in all His manifestations and beyond that, too—beyond the nines beyond the tens. It is a guidance through and beyond all things—whence came the word, and the world, and humankind. Only there, whence we came, can we find our way and our guide—only that, nothing else. We cannot therefore carry with us any manifestation of the world, the word, and the book, but must leave it and cross over to another and thus through and beyond all things. Did not Jesus, His Word made Flesh, say to his disciples: I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak; and he will shew you things to come.10 There are doubts and presentiments in every human condition: doubts, because no human knowledge is complete, and presentiments, because every condition speaks to us of what is to come beyond every individuality and all of existence, That to Which the Holy Spirit leads. It is so because all things made manifest in this world are nothing more than signs through which God discloses His hiddenness. These are both the reason and the purpose of all existence. The world and humankind are not the same as their Creator but they have no reality without Him. It is impossible to look at the world and the human self without presentiment, and it is through presentiment that we come to bear witness. It is our little knowledge that connects us with Him Who knows all things. Through this connection, presentiment becomes knowledge, which is sufficient for the Known,

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Beyond all Mind / 143

and a yearning for union with Him; while doubt becomes conviction in which knowledge and love are two sides of the same human relationship; we love the One Who knows and know the One Whom we love. We are constantly drawing nearer to Him in our longing for union with Him, and we know more about Him at every instant—but no knowledge satisfies us but His. When it is achieved, the Beloved sees with our eyes and hears with our ears, grips with our hands and walks with our legs. Our ascent through the worlds from lower to higher takes us closer to the Treasury; and the closer we are, the clearer the signs. Thus God says: ‘‘This present life is naught but a diversion and a sport; surely the Last Abode is Life, did they but know.’’11 We are in sensory contact with the world as a whole and with all things manifest in it, seeing and hearing these things at every instant. Together and separately, these things flow through our sensory perception, but sensory perception does not encompass them—in each there remains the coronal of their intangible bond with that which is beyond the level of their existence, which reaches their sight and hearing. This ‘‘beyond’’ all things manifest gives them their image at a higher level, their governance and their creation. It is through these levels that all things are connected with Essence, to which nothing is necessary; but Essence is necessary to all that is created. The doubts and presentiments of all that exists can be extinguished only in Essence. This is true of all things in this world; everything needs the name bestowed upon it by Essence, by which it is connected with Essence. All things and all names are comprised in the name God, in which they are hidden potential, but also the reality of revelation. The Divine Names are necessary to the world as its causes. This necessity is actualized in two ways. In the first, a thing made manifest needs a cause similar to it through which it receives its existence and nature; in the second, it is Essence, without which nothing in existence is possible. God is Essence; He is the Living, the Willing, the Strong, the Knowing, the Speaking, the Seeing, and the Hearer, and much more: ‘‘His are the Names most beautiful.’’ He disclosed Himself in time and place in each of the first ways through one or more

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of His Names. Every revelation is different from the Revealer in His Essence. Thus certainty, transcending doubt and presentiment, can be achieved by drawing closer to Essence through all the levels of Its manifestation. Everything can give what it received from Essence, which is why all things manifest are but a ‘‘locus’’ where Essence discloses itself. The manifestation of Essence is creation, by which It brings things into being out of nothingness. Three degrees can be perceived here: Unity, Will, and Command. But these three degrees have two facets— one active, the other receptive. God says of this: ‘‘The only words We say to a thing, when We desire it, is that We say to it ‘Be,’ and it is.’’12 Here Unity expresses Itself as ‘‘We,’’ so denoting nothingness as the potentiality or treasury of all things. This Unity has Its own will, expressed in Its command. But a thing that is ever primal and unrepeatable also has its own will: its coming into existence is the will to receive the Will and the command to receive the Command. All things in existence are recipients of Unity, Will, and Command. As such, they are at a lower degree than Unity, Will, and Command and strive to return to Them. In this return, all that they possess is a presentiment of that which they make a reality in their return; and hence all things in existence manifest themselves to them as a sign of what they are returning to. The discovery of Unity, Will, and Command is a direct ascent, as the Greatest Shaikh has said: The wonder of all wonders is that man (and consequently, everything) is in a perpetual state of ascending. And yet (ordinarily) he is not aware of this because of the extreme thinness and fineness of the veil or because of the extreme similarity between (the successive forms).13 In consequence, we are perpetually between doubt and presentiment, both of which determine our existence. If we are to traverse part of the way from doubt toward that with which presentiment guides us, we must follow in the footsteps of those who have traveled the path before us, as God says: ‘‘So, if thou art in doubt regarding what We have sent down to thee, ask those who recite the Book before thee.’’14

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Beyond all Mind / 145

Our path to the Unique passes through both presentiment and doubt. But His revelation is differentiated into nine and ten. If nine is the totality of the heavens, they are thereby conveyed ‘‘beyond the tens.’’ We speak of all this through presentiment and doubt. When the difference is transcended, no speech is possible. The Self then knows Itself—unification has been achieved, and both presentiment and doubt have vanished. But we are perpetually accompanied by presentiment and doubt, for we are travelers on the road leading to and beyond Unity.

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7. D own T h e r e Be l o w

Down there below beneath the earth Up there on high above the sky

The signs in the outer realms speak of God; they are the gates of heaven. When we reject them, heaven closes against us: ‘‘Those that cry lies to Our signs and wax proud against them the gates of heaven shall not be opened to them.’’1 The unattainability of the heights of heaven, manifested in the azure, spins us around toward the depths. The heavenly entirety is denoted by light; the plenitude of light, being only itself, illumines that which it is not. Whatever receives the light becomes illumined and gives off what it has received. After the fall, we are at the end of everything we can receive. So as to ascend, we seek to sink to the furthest depths of our fallen state; this is our admission and repentance. Our question, too, is therefore directed at what is beneath us, which is dark matter, for there is nothing that has not been created with Truth. We must experience in the Absolute what we wanted when we reached for the forbidden fruit if

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Down There Below / 147

we are to discover the reality of our primal perfection as against our postlapsarian state. The experience of all being in the obscurity enables us once again to comprehend the Praiseful Light as the Principle of all of existence. The corruption of the world and of all things manifest has its foundation in the obscurity of the human self. We are perpetually at some level of existence in which there is both the All and nothingness. We can raise ourselves up from this level and thus discover or find ourselves, and in so doing we discover our knowledge of all the Names and draw nearer to the All. But we can also sink to a lower level. In reaching for the forbidden fruit, in setting our will against the Divine Light of Heaven, which is preserved, here faint, there bright, at every level of existence, we dim in every descent. Our self is then closer to nothingness, to obscurity; we draw closer to utter ruin but never fully reach it. We are thus ever more deeply imprisoned in this earthly world and our senses and hence perpetually between Light and darkness, Spirit and matter, Recollection and forgetting. There is a third position we may be in: to remain on the same level. In this case, it appears to us that horizontality is the same as existence. Our captivity on one level transforms the upward path, the ray between Absolute Light and impenetrable darkness that passes through all levels of existence, into a trajectory or purpose that we ourselves have formulated in the flat monotony of existence on one level. But this is merely errancy in which the goal is dissipated into the multitude of its apparitions: everything and nothing are the goal. The heavens elude us when we are trapped on one level of existence, no longer manifesting themselves to us in their multiplicity. Thus captive in the travails of this earth, flesh and bones seem to us to be our prison, the agony of being. And yet the vertical axis that passes through the depths and heights of our captivity offers itself as a return, as the descent of heaven, that is, as its manifestation on six levels, with Peace as the seventh. We are earthbound; we were made of earth and we live upon it. With our death, we return to the earth all that we took from it. Our

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experience of earth and obscurity, however many times we may surrender ourselves to it, cannot rupture our bond with the ray of Light. Yet the heavens are offered to us incessantly as a sign of Paradise. The fall occurred in Paradise; Adam fell, but the heavens remained and call to us: ‘‘Thou seest not in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection. Return thy gaze; seest thou any fissure? Then return thy gaze again, and again, and thy gaze comes back to thee dazzled, aweary.’’2 The magnitude and calm dignity of the heavens manifest the Word of our Lord, with which He revealed His mercy to Adam after the fall: ‘‘Hast thou not seen how to God bow all who are in the heavens and all who are in the earth, the sun and the moon, the stars and the mountains, the trees and the beasts, and many of mankind?’’3 Through the signs in the outer and inner realms, this sequence from the heavens to the earth—from the sun, the moon, and the stars to the mountain peaks, and from them to trees and animals and to humankind—discloses the chain of existence by means of which we should discover or find the sublime heights veiled or lost through the fall. When we turn heavenwards, we recognize the magnitude of the sun, which has its own light and possessing it, bestows it. The day is light separated from its bestower; light that is given and received. But the sun did not give itself its own light. For all its brilliance, it has received everything. And the sun, too, is but a sign of the One from Whom it received its existence; it is merely a sign of Him, a beacon. Of all the signs in the heavens, the moon is the most visible recipient of the light of the sun; and what it receives, it gives to the earth when it is veiled by the dark of night. Although this bestowal is not from the moon itself, which is merely passing on what it has received, the moon, too, as the locus of manifestation of light, is Light Itself. Both the sun and the moon are signs: ‘‘And of His signs are the night and the day, the sun and the moon. Prostrate not yourselves to the sun and moon, but prostrate yourselves to God who created them, if Him you serve.’’4 God’s command to us not to prostrate ourselves to anyone but Him can be understood as disclosing the two faces of creation: we are

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Down There Below / 149

greater than all things in existence but insignificant by comparison with God. By acknowledging our insignificance, our utter destitution, we can receive everything. In this potentiality we are the image of God, in which all His Names are comprised. This potentiality is the primal nature of each of us, although it does not mean that it is present in all that we realize. The Treasure is the heart of the human self; and with its love to be known, it discloses the unseen. There is nothing in the outer or inner realms that is not a sign of the Treasure, and thus all things manifest translate from one level to another. Translation is an ascent along the levels of existence, or the worlds. Each of these levels reflects the Treasure: the closer the level is to the Treasure, the clearer the signs. His Most Beautiful Names are the link between the levels of existence and all things in them; but neither the levels nor the Names are ever lacking their connection with the Treasure or the Name that is the sum of all things. If the Treasure were not the Garden of gardens, there would be no gardens on earth; if the Treasure were not the River of rivers, there would be no rivers on earth. When God speaks in the Recitation of the bliss of return, He does so through the signs on earth and in the heavens. Heaven is the abundant clarity of the signs seen in the earthly horizons, and more: ‘‘No soul knows what comfort is laid up for them secretly, as a recompense for that they were doing.’’5 And all this has some of the beauty and flavor of the lower levels through which the self passes: ‘‘Give thou good tidings to those who believe and do deeds of righteousness, that for them await gardens underneath which rivers flow; whensoever they are provided with fruits therefrom they shall say, ‘This is that wherewithal we were provided before’; that they shall be given in perfect semblance.’’6 Every human condition is attained from either a lower or a higher level of existence. To follow the guidance sent by God to humankind means to ascend from one level to another in the return to God or the discovery of Him in all things: ‘‘Surely unto God all things come home.’’7 All that the levels are is returned to the Treasure from which it came; and God is the Treasure, and thus the Inheritor8 of all things. The return to Him, the discovery of Him is the human endeavor,

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150 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

which is perpetually in time and in eternity but also outside them. There is no achievement that can rightly be said to be neither with one nor with the other, neither with nearness nor with remoteness. However we materialize our earthly nature, we remain far from nothing; and however near we ascend, we remain far from Essence. The ascent between two levels of existence spans the distance from insignificance to Essence, from the earth through all seven heavens, leading us along this upward path to Essence in which and from which are all things. The differentiation between the levels of existence from the one below, beneath the earth, to the one on high, above the sky, comprises the signs of the incomparably greater differentiation in that which lies ‘‘beyond.’’ This differentiation from down below, beneath the earth, to up on high, above the sky, mirrors the differentiation within the self, from its inclination to evil to its acquiescence—a human differentiation that is also immeasurably greater in the next world: ‘‘Behold, how We prefer some of them over others! And surely the world to come is greater in ranks, greater in preferment.’’9 The Messenger said: ‘‘The inmates of Paradise will look to the upper apartment of Paradise as you see the shining planets in the eastern and western horizon.’’10 The Messenger said that the inmates of Paradise will observe; and in our primal nature, we are all inmates of Paradise, all with the potential to become a perfect human being. The Messenger indicates the attainment, disclosure, or realization of this potential by speaking in the plural. We are all travelers, all on the descent or the ascent, the former taking us further from the Principle and the latter returning us to It. Only we human beings, of all creatures, embody all the Names of God, and as such we look, in a mysterious way, upon all the Names of God assembled in their original Unity. But we are all different, and thus this observation is different in each of us. Only those who are fully aware look upon their Creator as He is. With the fall, we descended through every level of existence, our faces toward nothingness. Our original form, our fairest stature became ever more restricted, ever more benighted as we fell deeper toward earth, farther from heaven. When we reached the lowest level,

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Down There Below / 151

‘‘down there below beneath the earth,’’ all that was left to us was to turn to face ‘‘on high above the sky.’’ In so turning, we discovered our original core as the unification of all His names, all the way to pure consciousness or purity of the self that looks upon or manifests God. As long as Adam accepted the inviolability of the tree in Paradise, he saw the Creator there. But when he forgot Him, he could no longer see anything either in Paradise or in its tree but the world confined within its bounds. He sought to overcome this potentiality by speculating on depth and height, with which the bounds of the next world were revealed.

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8 . From De p t h t o De p t h

From depth to depth from strength to strength Beyond the quiet beyond the night

Our view of things is a view from the earth. No matter how high we climb to breach the vault of the heavens, all that remains to us is the mountain heights. It is only along their steep slopes that we can leave the valley behind and ascend to the summit. But our bodies resist the ascent, resist reaching the summit; they want to descend into the vale from which the higher levels of the self would flee. Our struggle against the standard that defines us at each level generates tension, which inhibits us from relaxing and collecting ourselves. The only way we can ascend to the summit is by being rational and openminded where we are. This is why God says to us: ‘‘And walk not in the earth exultantly; certainly thou wilt never tear the earth open, nor attain the mountains in height.’’1 It is only in our gaze that we can turn to and beyond the heights; but our gaze comes back to us again and again, dazzled and weary.2 This is the source of both hope and despair.

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From Depth to Depth / 153

In the hope that we may regain the lost intimacy with our Lord, we persist in turning our gaze, with the feeling that we must cross over the boundary between ourselves and the world and see our earth and our heavens with the clarity with which they manifest themselves to us in the outside world. In the despair caused by our inability to ascend to the heavens, we return to our errancy over the surface of the earth. But when there, too, we fail to find anything that fulfills our need to acquiesce, we turn to everything that is beyond the superficial and the impenetrable, beyond the quiet and the night. By day and night we are called upon in our turning. By day we are called to recognize Unity in multiplicity in the manifest differentiation of all things on earth, in the heavens, and all that lies between. By night we are called to recognize multiplicity in Unity in the gathering of all things in the dark. As a result, we are perpetually accompanied by incomparability and similarity, remoteness and intimacy, Unity and multiplicity. None of this by itself is possible for us. Multiplicity manifests Unity and an incalculable depth residing in all things, for there is nothing to be made manifest other than Unity. And to whatever depths we plunge, Unity will disclose itself to us still more powerfully in both its incomparability and its similarity. It is the interiority of every interiority. The closer we come to it, the more decisively will words translate themselves into silence, but not even there can Unity be attained, for It is the silence of all silences. This is Unity, the first and last, the inner and the outer. But when all sounds and all things manifest vanish, when night veils all the horizons, then, too, the unattainable blue appears in the depths and on the heights. In the manifestation of all the Names by day and night, we are constantly between concentration, where all are encompassed, and dispersal, where they elude us. As a result, whatever our condition, the call comes to us from full concentration and encompassment: ‘‘Call upon God, or call upon the Merciful; whichsoever you call upon, to Him belong the Names Most Beautiful.’’3 Wherever we are, in the depths or on the heights, in silence or in obscurity, God is Light,4 and He creates in threefold shadows.5

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154 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

Our ascent through the innumerable multitude of levels of existence always appears in the form of duality—the earth and the heavens in the outside world mirrored by body and Soul in the self. The goal of the ascent is openness, subservience, or nearness to God. But wherever we come to in that ascent, we are left with both the nearness and the remoteness of the Absolute. God calls upon us incessantly to prostrate ourselves and to draw nearer to Him.6 This call reveals both subservience and intimacy as the means by which we ascend; in them we find our openness and can then bear witness: ‘‘There is no power and no strength save in God, the All-high, the Tremendous!’’7 Nothing can eliminate the duality of our attunement to God’s call, however. However great our intimacy, the duality remains; and so it is with our arrival in Paradise. Here, too, we are split between two paradises so as to satisfy both levels of humanity—the corporeal and the spiritual.8 The whole of the ‘‘Blue River’’ poem is about this duality. Each line has two parts; these bipartite lines are then linked into twelve couplets. These are followed by a single line, and then by another two. These three sections speak of the two paradises, then of a third, and again of three paradises and a fourth. In the Recitation, God speaks about two and two paradises,9 one above the other. The fourth and highest may be described as none other than the Treasure or the Paradise of Essence.10 The ascent to these levels of existence, and thence through them to Essence itself, begins in the world of multiplicity. The link between this starting point and Essence is a ladder, the upward path. We may ascend it, but it is only Essence that can guide us along it. Wherever we turn, we find dualities. We have to choose between them if we are to climb the ladder, to ascend the upward path, rather than fall still farther or lose our way. Everything in the outer and inner realms discloses itself to us as shadows in which the Light is eternally one and the same but in different manifestations. To ascend from any of our states, from any shadow or any silence, is to discover the self as the Treasure that is the sum of all that exists. In this ascent, this discovery, we draw closer to the Light; multiplicity

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From Depth to Depth / 155

increasingly manifests itself to us as Unity, and we form a bond with it. This bond does not mean remaining at any of the levels we may have reached in our ascent; none of these levels is our goal, they are merely way stations on our journey toward Essence. God, speaking through the Messenger, says of this ascent: I will declare war against him who shows hostility to a pious worshipper of Mine. And the most beloved things with which My slave comes nearer to me, is what I have enjoined upon him; and My slave keeps on coming closer to Me through performing supererogatory deeds till I love him, so I become his sense of hearing with which he hears, and his sense of sight with which he sees, and his hand with which he grips, and his leg with which he walks; and if he asks Me, I will give him, and if he asks my protection I will protect him; and I do not hesitate to do anything as I hesitate to take the soul of the believer, for he hates death, and I hate to disappoint him.11 At every instant, the journey, the drawing nearer, are guided by the knowledge or manifestation of Essence. Each level of existence marks a rung on the ladder, a way station on the upward path. The degrees are the knowledge of the essence of our inner self as travelers; our knowledge of who and what we are; the knowledge of our connection with Essence; our knowledge that we both are and are not Essence; the knowledge that we are the ‘‘world,’’ ‘‘other’’ and ‘‘different’’ from Essence. All this renders us, all of us, eternally on some level or other of knowledge; some are at a higher degree than we are, and others at a lower. Wherever we are—this is true of us all—the knowledge in question is the relationship with Essence as the way the self comes to know or knows all things. The subject of knowledge and the knower are linked by knowledge; and knowledge is disclosed as the world, or the path toward the Goal. Essence discloses Itself in the name of God, the sum of all names, and through this one name in His Most Beautiful Names. All things in existence have their corresponding name, which has been and will be for all eternity in the Treasure.

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156 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

At the first degree of knowledge, only the world as multiplicity exists, composed of an innumerable multitude of things with their own definitions and forms. At this level, the knower sees the world, and nothing beyond it. Hazrat ‘Ali says of such people that they are blind.12 At the second degree of knowledge, there is the testimony that the self finds Unity in multiplicity. The knower of this degree sees through the world13 and disregards it. At the third degree of knowledge, the knower attests to both the world and Essence as two expressions that are One. At the fourth degree of knowledge are those who attest to both the expressions and the connections—‘‘one’’ in Essence, ‘‘all’’ in the Names. These are God’s people, who have real knowledge of Him. If some people attest only to Essence, losing sight of the created world, they have been mastered by ‘‘their extinction of their own self’’ and ‘‘unification.’’ But those who attest to Essence in the created world and to the created world in Essence are described as those who have acquired the right insight into the state of the ‘‘persistence of the self’’—after the ‘‘extinction of the self’’—and the perspective of ‘‘diffusion’’—after ‘‘unification.’’ These human potentialities reveal themselves as the human condition—the condition of all of us together and each of us individually. Collectively, they delineate the innumerable multitude of degrees from the lowest of the low to the fairest stature. In every state of lowliness, there is the possibility of still deeper and still more powerful lowliness. Whatever state of mute inarticulacy we may be in, however the world may have coagulated into its own obscurity, it is always possible for us to penetrate beyond the quiet beyond the dark. We are pulled in two different directions: along the vertical axis and on the surface; along the vertical axis that runs from the lowest of the low to the sublime heights, and on the surface, out from every point and back again. Our fall is along the vertical axis, down toward the depths and the shadows. The farther the fall, the more impenetrable the darkness; but in not one of its potentialities can the darkness

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From Depth to Depth / 157

conquer the Light. The ray of Light as Principle descends through the totality of existence. Beauty and tenderness invariably accompany magnitude and strength, just as there is Light in every darkness, Speech in every silence. But we are perpetually at some level in which existence manifests itself in strength or depth. The clearer they are, the more resolutely we yearn in our inner self for tenderness and height. No human condition can evade either knowledge or mercy. The potentiation of this in the human self requires us to pass through duality, but in such a way that we are guided by the mercy that overpowers anger, the light that the darkness cannot encompass, and the knowledge that is our link with the Absolute.

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9. To Wh e r e T h e Co c k-Cr o w Is Not Heard

To where the cock-crow is not heard To where the horn’s call is not known

No matter how deeply we penetrate into them or ascend the ladder of their meanings through the levels of existence, neither form nor sign can satisfy us. We may see an angel in every cock crow, for as the Messenger said: ‘‘When you hear the crowing of cocks, ask for God’s Blessings for it has seen an angel. And when you hear the braying of donkeys, seek Refuge with God from Satan for their braying indicates that they have seen a devil.’’1 We may look with the eye of a cockerel at that being of light; but this is not enough for us to discover or find ourselves on the lost heights. Nothing that we attain from our discovery of the heavens and the earth as the image of our inner self, in which everything is arrayed between Spirit and flesh, is sufficient for us to discover that there is no self but the Self. We may be decisive on the Day: ‘‘Surely the Day of Decision is an appointed time, the day the Trumpet is blown, and you shall come in troops, and heaven is opened, and become gates,

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and the mountains are set in motion, and become a vapour.’’2 Then the Angel will blow upon the horn of which the Messenger said: ‘‘It is a horn of light that Seraphiel has put to his mouth.’’3 Angels, too, are of light; and hence the sounding of the horn emerges from the light that is shed, wakening us from the haziness of the waking state, somewhat less hazy sleep and still less hazy death. In this awakening, our human selves receive life from the Living in such a way that we can neither reject nor forget the gift. With the call of the horn, we rise on a day where it is entirely clear who is indebted and to Whom. It is a day in which the indebtedness that is the relationship between ourselves and our Lord is in the full light of His Face. On that day, nothing can escape into either obscurity or oblivion. And when everything has been extinguished so that the original meaning may be restored to all things and all may be justly weighed and differentiated into Heaven and Hell, new images will replace the old ones. All the gods will then deny that they could have any reality but the Reality. Each of us will be shown that they were names that we gave to mere things without regard for their subservience in the Kingdom of God, for there is nothing that is not the servant of God.4 There is not one image of God worthy of anything other than the Fire in which both the image and the place where it is preserved shall be destroyed. Beyond all languages and all that can be expressed within them, there is always Unity, one and the same, both near and far. All words are therefore waiting to be liberated, beyond all things, beyond all dualities, from meanings allotted to them without regard for their link with the Treasure. On the Day of Judgment every word will shake itself free of all the false meanings given to it by people who have allowed an image of God to be taken in His stead. They will reveal themselves as the names given by God to humankind so that they might be the debt owed by the indebted to Him to Whom it is due. Cockerels crow as long as there is disclosure of the Unseen, for His angels are with all things in existence; they are the executors of His will with which He discloses Himself to Himself: ‘‘With Him are the keys of the Unseen; none knows them but He. He knows what is

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160 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

in land and sea; not a leaf falls, but He knows it. Not a grain in the earth’s shadows, not a thing, fresh or withered, but it is in a Book Manifest.’’5 And since all things are created with Truth, His angels are with all things, for each thing manifest has something of life in it. Cockerels proclaim this at the first sign of light in the darkness or of the angel created from that light. This is what is meant by God’s command to us: ‘‘Say: ‘I take refuge with the Lord of the Daybreak from the evil of what He has created, from the evil of darkness when it gathers, from the evil of the women who blow on knots, from the evil of an envier when he envies.’’’6 God is Light. The shining of His light is His eternal and original revelation. Since its shining praises Him, it, too, is His servant, and His messenger, and His praised one. It is the highest level of existence and the supreme nearness and has always been known as the light of the Praised. It provides all things with their link with their Creator. The sun and the moon, the stars and the mountains, the trees and the beasts all point to it. It is the supreme human potential; without it, we fall to the lowest of the low. The shining of the light has nothing that it has not received from the Light. Whenever it sees itself as distinct from Him Who bestows it, all things in it are distorted. Words lose their connection with that which originally gave them to us—and this is the gift that raised us up above the angels. Even when creation, be it in its entirety or singly, understands itself without Truth that is with it, without the light of the Praised as the foremost and first existence, it does not lose its connection with its Lord—the connection was broken within us, for our inner self has become a veil over the light of creation. Even then the self does not become independent; it is only in the illusion that our will is sufficient that the self lapsed into the inspissated darkness, over which daybreak will triumph even then. The self then inflicts injury on itself and incites itself to evil. It is for the higher self, the higher levels within the self, to wage war against the baser self. Regardless of how far the self has sunk into darkness, the dark remains a space, a world with a ray of light it will always receive, so that cockerels will see angels and crow to announce the dawn. Even

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in the most impenetrable depths of darkness there remains in all things, even in the soul that incites to evil, the potential to receive, for not even the densest darkness can evade the light. But the recipient, the soul that incites to evil, which can always fall farther toward nothingness, may take the light that descends for knowledge, through which it strives to govern the entanglements of opposites, and not as a ladder to ascend to the dawn and the kingdom of light. Whatever these ever deeper levels of darkness in the gloom, cockerels will sound, for not even the most inspissated darkness can extinguish the dawn. There will always be differences between things and between our individual selves in our distance from the ultimate or absolute darkness as the total absence of potentiality or our proximity to the light as the reality. The self is perpetually faced with a choice: whether to ascend or to descend by the ray of light. There is also a third possibility: the self may remain on a single level of existence, moving along the innumerable multitude of its paths while still remaining a prisoner within a world with no gate to its heaven. Whenever the soul resolves to ascend and chooses the light, it is accompanied by an angel who guides it toward its and the angel’s Principle; but whenever it chooses the downward path, it has opted for the adversary, the diverter from Truth, Satan, the opposite of the Principle. When evaluating the various levels of the self, existence on a given level may be equated with its light. The self then puts its own light in the place of higher levels. This is envy; and the envier takes the locus of manifestation of the Light instead of the Light Itself, seeking to block and deny it. The soul of the envier thus in fact denies the Principle and so denies itself. Cockerels crow out of the darkness, recognizing the Renewer from the east. When it becomes visible as the dawn, it is known as the Renewer or the return of the light. Behind it comes the host of angels in their uncountable numbers to fight the great battle against the self that incites to evil. When the standard of this army of Light is raised and its trumpets sound all around, the donkeys will bray, for the world

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162 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

comes into being and vanishes at every instant, turning away from Essence toward the innumerable multitude of its manifestations in the forms of things. But the diverter from Truth incessantly offers a place and time where Essence is disclosed instead of Essence itself, so diverting us from bearing witness that there is no god but God. This is why both Christ, the Anointed, and Muhammad, the Praised, ride donkeys when they address the world. Both are the word made flesh, and their natures were shaped by what God sent down into their hearts. God as Cause is a necessity to the world as a whole and all things manifest in it. But when some things need others as their cause, the chain of cause and effect cannot stop at any one thing. God alone is the cause of everything and thus of all things. This is confirmed by the affirmation that there is no god but God. This is so because all things in existence manifest Him and can thus have no reality apart from Him. Their reality is what makes them inseparable from one or more of His names. What cockerels and donkeys see is that all is spread along the upward path through every horizon, through every level at which His names are disclosed in things manifest. Within the self, this vertical axis includes will, love, and knowledge, which are attributes of God. Although they are expressions of Essence and thus of Unity, these attributes are differentiated into levels of existence. Will is lower than knowledge, because will begins to operate after the self knows something. Will is at a higher level than power; it precedes it but also covers a wider area than power. In general terms, the number of Names of God is equal to the number of things in existence and thus is an infinite multitude; but it must be reiterated that all point toward Essence. Essence is behind every depth and every height. Nothing is similar to It, nothing is comparable with It. But everything other than Essence has different degrees on the ladder of existence. Every individual thing that exists can be said to be at a higher level than some other and at a lower level than a third. To encompass these comparisons is to comprehend the river of existence: everything that exists is in its depths and its heights. But Essence is eternally beyond existence. As the Shaikh al-Akbar said:

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To Where the Cock-Crow Is Not Heard / 163

The Transcendent in itself is that which possesses the perfection in which are engulfed all existent things as well as non-existent relations in such a way that there can absolutely be no property that is not found therein, whether it be something which is considered ‘‘good’’ according to convention, Reason, and the Divine Law, or something to be judged ‘‘bad’’ by the same standards. And this is a state of affairs which is observable exclusively in what is designated by the name God.7 Wherever we are, there subsists at the centre of our inner self the call to pass beyond every boundary. This effort appears to us as a barrier erected so that we may open up the path. We are perpetually waging a campaign against the walls preventing us from entering the kingdom of Heaven. The entire world seems to us to be a vast battleground across which we are trying to reach the gates of Heaven and become close to the One Who is eternally behind and yet with all things.

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10. Fr o m G o o d t o Ba d

From good to bad from sad to mad Beyond our mind beyond our god

There is a tradition that the Messenger said: ‘‘God first created Intellect.’’1 Another is that he said: ‘‘The first thing God created was the Pen. Then He said, ‘Write what will be until the Day of Resurrection.’’’2 These two traditions or sayings appear to differ, but it is only in our badness and madness that we see them in this way. Whenever we assume that the god we know is God, our inner self adopts it as supreme, above all else that is; and thus we conceal the Self from ourselves. However, in this we are fettered and more: in our every condition, we are merely a sign written by the Pen. Intellect is the hobble3 with which the Infinite confines us within the boundaries from the Height to the depths of the Vale, from the fairest stature to the lowest of the low, from the most extreme proximity to nullity. It manifests itself at every level of existence, always unchanging. Intellect is thus the link between every thing manifest and its Creator. This is the

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From Good to Bad / 165

same as the Pen, with which God bestows existence on all things. All that is in existence came into being from Intellect or the Pen, which is their link with the Creator. The duality of Intellect and Pen is manifested by illumination. God is Light, and hence the light He sheds is always pristine in all His creation. The light that shines both is and is not the Light; it is the Light because there is nothing in existence that escapes the light shining upon it, and it is not the Light because the Light is eternally the one and the same, a hidden Light. Although there is nothing to be seen but the Light, it remains concealed from all sight. Intellect is thus the entirety of awareness and knowledge bestowed by the shining of the light on all things at all times. Both the instant and the thing are a record made by the Pen. The Light makes itself known through them by comparison with the darkness. The Light is eternally absolute, but there can never be absolute darkness. Every record therefore suggests a shadow and so is an indication of the nullity with which existence envisions itself when the Light is forgotten or concealed in it. Intellect or the Pen is thus the manifestation of God as Treasure, and hence all the signs of the Treasure and all the words are in Intellect. In Intellect or the Pen they are both Unity and differentiation: Unity because Intellect or the Pen is nearest to God, and differentiation because Intellect or the Pen is not God. This is why God is the Name that is the sum of all names, the sum of all that Intellect or the Pen has as givenness and receivedness. Intellect or the Pen receives everything from God. Since it both is and is not He, God the One, Intellect or the Pen reveals in differentiation His signs in the outer and inner realms. The Word, as the undifferentiated Intellect, becomes differentiated in all the words or all the names. The Unity of Intellect or the Word at the outset becomes manifestation by creation in multiplicity; and finally, all this is summed up in humankind: ‘‘And He taught Adam the names, all of them.’’4 Our knowledge of all the names also comprises the subtle differentiation between Intellect and Analytical Reason. Intellect is Analytical Reason; but the reverse is not true: Analytical Reason is not Intellect.

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166 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

The manifestation of our situation within the boundary between heaven and earth discloses itself at the human level as Mind. This means that we are able through Analytical Reason to attest to the finitude of that level of existence. If this level, in its perpetually changing nature, is named river, it is rational to admit that our finest potentiality lies across the river. In this way, existence acknowledges its array in this world and the other, in the seven heavens, and in the manifestation of Intellect, as always the same, through which God discloses Himself in an innumerable multitude of manifestations. Both Intellect and Spirit are creations by which God discloses Himself in shedding His light. This illumination is pristine and thus is the treasury of all things that have distinct existence; that is, are distinguished by Intellect, as it reveals itself in phenomena, and the Pen, which gives them form. And all that exists is summed up in the Perfect Man. Both the worlds and humankind praise God; and hence the light of the Praised is the origin and root of all existence and the center of every human being. Intellect or the Pen, which has revealed its intimate bond with Unity through all things in the outer and inner realms, remains the link of all things with God as the Treasure, the fetter that hobbles them to Him. Intellect is undifferentiated in its supreme nearness, where it is both One and Only. It is affirmed by differentiation through descent, which reaches both human extremes, the fairest stature of our original creation and the depths of our descent to the lowest of mythical creations. Just as the Light is within our grasp, even in the shadows, so is Intellect, seen there as Analytical Reason. Mind thus enables us to know the world as the scene of the innumerable multitude of dualities. To the known world, then, duality is what it manifests as sent down, its higher level beyond all its boundaries. Thus, too, God knows Himself in the different levels of existence. The ascent from one level to another provides new discoveries, new knowledge. Each level of existence corresponds to Analytical Reason and is thus an image of God. But we desire union with God, which means that no single mode of understanding, no single image of God can satisfy us.

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From Good to Bad / 167

But God is a Name: God there is no god but He, the Living, the Everlasting. Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep; to Him belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth. Who is there that shall intercede with Him save by his leave? He knows what lies before them and what is after them, and they comprehend not anything of His knowledge save such as He wills. His Throne comprises the heavens and earth; the preserving of them oppresses Him not; He is the All-high, the All-glorious.5 He is God, One, God, the Flow, who has not begotten, and has not been begotten, and equal to Him is not any one.6 Like Him there is naught; He is the All-hearing, the All-seeing.7 The eyes attain Him not, but He attains the eyes; He is the Allsubtle, the All-aware.8 He disclosed Himself in creation, humankind, and the Book, but in so doing did not betray His unseenness. His Essence discloses the name God, which is the sum of all His Most Beautiful Names: He is God; there is no god but He. He is the knower of the Unseen and the Visible; He is the All-merciful, the All-compassionate. He is God; there is no god but He. He is the King, the All-holy, the All-peaceable, the All-faithful, the All-preserver, the All-mighty, the All-compeller, the All-sublime. Glory be to God, above that they associate! He is God, the Creator, the Maker, the Shaper. To Him belong the Names Most Beautiful. All that is in the heavens and the earth magnifies Him; He is the All-mighty, the All-wise.9 Essence confirms itself in God the One and Only, God the Flow. And God is the Merciful, the Compassionate, which means that He bestows existence on everything and gives it guidance. His Name corresponds to all this, in the incessant flow of bestowing existence and guidance; and there is one of His Names for each individual thing

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made manifest. Thus He appears to all things as their Lord. They turn to God, Lord of all the worlds, through their servitude to the Lord, Who discloses Himself as one of His Names. As Lord of all the worlds, He discloses Himself as Creator and Ruler of all things. It is not wrong to say that He is Lord of all lords if His individual Names are taken as the way in which He bestows createdness on and rules all things. The world as a whole and the Perfect Man are the sum of those Names, which are realized in the discovery in all things that there is no god but God. For them, God is before and beyond each and every god. We each have the potential as human beings to become perfect, but as long as we have not realized our potential, as long as the Perfect Man is yet to be found, the Lord rules the self through certain of His Names, whether more or fewer of them, but the unrealized self does not experience God as Unity and God as the Flux or Flow as one and the same. With each of His Names forming a link with Him, the ascent means to discover or reveal new names, and so on up to God, than Whom there is no other god. When all things in the sensory world shall be connected with their level beyond the heavens in thoughts and reflections that are in the reality of sleep, and when both are known as the signs and revelations of His Most Beautiful Names, when both things manifest and their models and the Most Beautiful Names are summed up in Intellect, and when the created treasure of the Hidden Treasure becomes our link with the Name that is the sum of all names, then Essence or the Substance of all things is simply what it is. The name God as the sum of all, and Intellect, and all God’s Most Beautiful Names, and all the worlds and all people, and all worship and all recollections, are but foam on the River of the manifestation of Essence, are but the reflection of Its Face: God is Light; His I is that Light. How can the human self see that Light? It cannot, for there is no self but the Self, but the I that is God.10 Absolute Essence is unknowable, and so It remains. But in relation to Himself, God is absolute Essence. Nothing may be directed toward absolute Essence, but toward God it may. The Shaikh al-Akbar said:

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From Good to Bad / 169

The Divine Essence cannot be understood by the rational faculty, since there is nothing ‘‘other’’ than It. But the Divinity and the Lordship can be understood by this faculty, since the ‘‘others’’ in relation to them are the divine thrall and the vassal.11 God is both first and last, both inner and outer. He is near and yet remote. His Unity discloses Itself in this eternal, omnipresent nearness and remoteness, similarity and dissimilarity; but not one of these manifestations in the outer and inner realms is sustainable as His enduring image. He discloses Himself in all things but remains hidden. Whenever anything in which He discloses Himself is taken in His place, it becomes a god instead of God. God says of those who take these images as gods instead of Him: ‘‘And [they] have said: ‘Do not leave your gods, and do not leave Wadd, nor Suwa’, Yaghuth, Ya’uq, neither Nasr.’ And they have led many astray.’’12 Whenever any nearness is taken without its indivisibility from remoteness or remoteness without its indivisibility from nearness, things become gods, on whom various names may be bestowed. And yet there is no god but God. We may draw infinitely near to Him, but He always remains both near and far. The world may appear to be independent, but it is not so; it is merely an innumerable multitude of shadows. Its heights and depths manifest themselves as the azure. Yet nothing that is in these shadows is ever the same; in its incessant flow, the world manifests the Independent of Whom it is the shadow. All things existent are the Breath of the Compassionate. Whenever the shadow or the breath regards itself as independent of the Independent, they and all that is in them become illusion. The shadows are from Unity but extend toward multiplicity; from nearness but extend toward remoteness. The human self is within them, and hence our understanding of God is constantly changing. No two selves can ever understand God in the same way, nor can any one self understand Him in the same way at two different instants in time. The Shaikh al-Akbar persistently refers to these different representations of the one and only God.13

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170 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

In this interpretation, God will disclose Himself on the Day of Resurrection in a variety of forms and by alternating between one and another. He will be recognized in some forms but not in others; but however He discloses Himself, He will eternally remain Himself, the One and Only. His Essence remains one and the same but discloses itself in an inexhaustible multiplicity of forms. Never is it possible to see an image that would encompass that Multiplicity in which Unity discloses itself. All things return to God; and only in that return are all differences resolved. Every level of existence also provides a rational link with God; but the return translates us beyond every level of existence, which is to say beyond every image of God that we receive as God. Hence our return, or the realization of our love for God in the knowledge of Him, is beyond Intellect and beyond God.

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11. Wi d e an d D eep

That’s where a dark blue river flows A river that is wide and deep

Speech, too, is foam on the River of Essence; to talk of It is to confirm of Its ineffability. Essence confirms and discloses God as the One and Only. ‘‘God warns you that you beware of Him.’’1 Elaborating on this warning, the Shaikh al-Akbar said: In respect of Itself the Essence has no name, since It is not the locus of effects, nor is It known by anyone. There is no name to denote It without relationship, nor with any assurance. For names act to make known and to distinguish, but this door [to knowledge of the Essence] is forbidden to anyone other than God, since ‘‘None knows God but God.’’ So the names exist through us and for us. They revolve around us and become manifest within us. Their properties are with us, their goals are toward us, their expressions are of us, and their beginnings are from us.

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If not for them, We would not be. If not for us, they would not be.2 Essence is Unity. All that is said of It must be denied if speech is to have any meaning. ‘‘Reflect upon all things, but reflect not upon God’s Essence,’’3 said the Messenger. The poet says ‘‘ima jedna modra Rijeka,’’ translated here freely as ‘‘That’s where a dark blue river flows.’’ As he is speaking of the Essence, the Bosnian words should be studied with that sense of fear that is the source of wisdom. Ima—A key phrase in Bosnian sacred discourse, ima comes from the verb imati or to have. In this construction, it is normally translated as ‘‘There is . . .’’ or ‘‘That’s where.’’ In Bosnian no one ever says that God exists—for only that which has existed and will cease to exist can be said to exist. And God has never existed, nor will He cease to exist; ‘‘He has not begotten, and has not been begotten.’’ ‘‘God is’’— ‘‘Ima Bog!’’—is the expression used in the purest profundities of the Bosnian language. The similarity in the sounds of the word ima, ‘‘there is,’’ and the noun ime, meaning ‘‘name,’’ is not without broad significance for this discussion. That of which ‘‘ima’’ is said cannot be without a name: there is (ima) something which has its own name (ime). Divine Beauty is manifest within us through our knowledge of the names. That all the names are within us is what makes us worthy of the angels’ prostration.4 Jedna means both ‘‘a’’ and ‘‘one.’’ One is a number; but the more important question now is whether it is just a number like all the rest. If nullity is confirmed by Unity, infinite multiplicity remains a knotty problem for it. Is it possible to point to anything in the world of existence that is one, without duality? God says that He is the One and Only and that all things in existence are in dualities.5 If nothingness is an indeterminable substance for which speech can provide only pallid, impotent intimations, it is known only to Unity which is turned toward It. But Unity is toward all of multiplicity; It is in multiplicity and multiplicity is in Unity.

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Wide and Deep / 173

The Bosnian word for dark blue, modra (in the feminine form of the adjective),6 is the color of a woman’s cloak or mantle in religious art. Woman is the key symbol of the receptive principle. Every icon of Mary portrays her in a blue cloak; thus the receptive principle is mantled in Essence. Unity receives all things from Essence; and that which Unity has received is made manifest in the totality of all things. God embraces all things with His mercy and His knowledge; and as Essence embraces all that is. Rijeka or ‘‘river’’ is the multiplicity in which Unity discloses itself; and Unity is the confirmation of Essence. Essence is a constant inflow and outflow, never the same twice; manifestation is in perpetual flux. But that which is made manifest is not the same as the way in which it is made manifest. Only the river comprises within itself both the nearness and the remoteness of that which is in flux. Full flux is also total condensation. Flux and density may appear to be irreconcilable opposites: but God as One unites opposites. To say that Essence is ‘‘wide and deep’’ is to acknowledge the meaningless of our speech, unless Essence is manifest in it. It is only with Essence that speech acquires meaning. Every dimension in the outer and inner realms, including width and depth, acquires meaning with Essence. Its width and depth denotes the openness of the human self to emptying itself of all that is nonreality and to receive the Real into itself. This is what makes the self, in its ultimate potential, a shoreless, bottomless river. God has shaped each individual self to His measure,7 and each is thus created unique and unrepeatable. In every one, the Creator discloses Himself as in His full image: ‘‘God never discloses Himself in a single form to two individuals, nor in a single form twice.’’8 We are on a journey toward the river. Wherever we are, we are facing the river, as denoted by both our fairest stature and the mode of our onward march: Whereas the animal is horizontal and only advances towards itself—that is, it is enclosed within its own form—man, in advancing, transcends himself; even his forward movement seems

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vertical, it denotes a pilgrimage towards his Archetype, towards the celestial Kingdom, towards God. The beauty of the anterior side of the human body indicates the nobleness, on the one hand of man’s vocational end, and on the other hand of his manner of approaching it; it indicates that man directs himself towards God and that he does so in a manner that is ‘‘humanly divine,’’ if one may say so. But the posterior side of the body also has its meaning: it indicates, on the one hand the noble innocence of the origin, and on the other hand the noble manner of leaving behind himself what has been transcended; it expresses, positively, whence we have come and, negatively, how we turn our backs to what is no longer ourselves. Man comes from God and he goes towards God; but at the same time, he draws away from an imperfection which is no longer his own and draws nearer to a perfection which is not yet his. His ‘‘becoming’’ bears the imprint of a ‘‘being’’; he is that which he becomes, and he becomes that which he is.9 God discloses himself in the world, but the world is not God. Though it is not, there is nothing that it could be in reality were there not God. All that is in the world and the world itself as a whole cease to be at every instance, only to remanifest themselves as His new creation. The world is in a constant state of flux, and thereby all is encompassed in its indivisibility from God as both source and outflow. God reveals Himself in this manifestation, ever differently at each instant. To know Him means to be that manifestation; and being His manifestation means to know Him. But for this to be realized, one has to be all existence and then to abandon it for His sake. All that exists is a dark blue river, a constant inflow and outflow. For us to return whence we came, we must recognize, in all that flows in, a dark blue river that flows out yonder. This means that we must acknowledge that all things partake of the nature of a sign or particle in this inflow and outflow. There is nothing that is not the river. And when all is summed up in our inner self, it must be traversed or left behind, for there is no self but the Self.

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Wide and Deep / 175

This is why we are a guest, a stranger, in the whole of existence. Whatever point we reach, we are there only in part; but we want the Whole, and the Whole wants us. Everything that comes and goes in flux manifests the Whole and is all that the Whole is not; but there is no whole but the Whole. When the whole of a dark blue river is gathered up and crossed, the self is in the Self—one in the One, without duality: the Self is what it knows and It knows what it is. As long as we, guests or strangers, pass through the world as the manifestation of God, we recall the lost locality where we saw God in all things, for to the perfect person there is nothing but Him to see. Our memory of Paradise lost is thus but confirmation that all things perish except His Face. There is no place, no station, no condition that can satisfy us. We are children of the Hour, in which we are born again; and thus it is in the entirety of the image of the Living, the Eternal, who sleeps not, neither does slumber seize Him. All things in the universe and all the worlds combined both disclose and conceal God. To ascend within them is to take down the veils from the face of the Beloved. For this reason, there is nothing in the worlds nor in all the worlds together that is without meaning and significance for the traveler on the upward path, for whom there is meaning only in traversing the path toward the whole of the manifestation of the One Who is. But the traveler halts nowhere, for it is not worthy of us to take the worlds and all things in them as anything other than signs nor to journey toward anything other than what they designate. The being of the traveler ‘‘‘becomes’ whatever it knows and realizes itself through that knowledge.’’10 Everything around us is influx, but ours is the center that is defined by Intellect, embedded in the Unalterable Mystery and so in our inner self, which suffers and endures its temporal humanity but remains at peace in its immortal core, which is identical to our realization in attesting to the Unity of God. The Scribe of all the lettering in the outer and inner realms is none other than God; and the recitation of those symbols—the voice that we hear—is none other than the voice of God. The one who bestows on the lettering the sense of

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praising the All-praised and illumines them for the reader is the Allpraised, Whose Light is revealed in its shining. On our path toward ourselves in Peace we therefore cut off our links with all things, that we may have a link with God. Our homeland is not in this world; the goal of our journey is the House of Peace or Peace Itself. But our advance along the path, our passage through and beyond all things manifest, which is their inclusion or discovery in our being as travelers, can also be represented as recollection and gradual seclusion. In being both a thing in the world and the sum of all that is in it, we recall in this whole the existence of Him Who discloses Himself in them. In this state of recollection, we gaze through the world and see the Self in it. Travelers focused on the through and beyond, we thus retreat from the unreal or the sign, that we may know the Real, the Signified; and in this retreat we direct ourselves to being what we know and to the knowledge of what we are. Ours is a journey through and beyond the self so that we may find the Self in everything, both inner and outer. It is to forget ourselves that we may find ourselves or the flight from ourselves to the Self. It is to die in ourselves to be born in the Self. And hence we find in all of multiplicity only signs that serve as the recollection of Unity.

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12. A Hundred Wi n t e r s

It is a hundred winters wide It is a thousand summers deep

We are situated in time. The blade of existence that never evades the hour is revealed in that ‘‘being’’ in time. Our reality is in that eternal moment at which existence, ever in flux, flows in as incessant manifestation and simultaneously flows out again. The blade of time is crueler than the cutting edge of a sword. Everything remains in it, everything flees to it and from it. Our ‘‘now’’ differentiates our self into its various directions—up and down, right and left, forward and back. In every one of our states, which is ‘‘now’’ in a specific place, we have the memory of the past and a preconception of the future. However much we cover with this memory, and regardless of whether it is just a little or a great deal, all that is ours manifests Essence. Whatever comes to us from the past flows away from us into the future. All the waters present at our level of existence are flowing in and out but are ever at that level. As we walk the earth, we come to

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the riverbanks; walking arrogantly or humbly, we come to the Riverbank. God tells us: ‘‘Turn not thy cheek away from men in scorn, and walk not in the earth exultantly; God loves not any man proud and boastful. Be modest in thy walk, and lower thy voice; the most hideous of voices is the ass’s.’’1 God orders those who surrender to walk the earth humbly. They are there, in existence between the two banks, above the depths of the Vale and below the sublime Heights. They came there from preexistence, in which they swore to God by testifying that He was their Lord.2 This they could testify from their center by being illumined by the shining of the light which is the praise of God.3 This oath in preexistence includes trust as their link with God as the Faithful and the acceptance of the Light of the Praised as the first of those who surrender.4 And then they came into preexistence with this pledge of the covenant in existence. Whence they came, there they return, to set forth the reckoning on the Day of Reckoning for their attitude toward the original oath during the trials it underwent in existence. In this way, our being in the world is a relationship with the River and its banks. When we are on the banks, we may move upstream toward the source or downstream toward the mouth of the River. The source and the mouth of the River are the signs of our beginning and our end. But we cannot cross the River except by changing the way we cross. We can wade through it or swim across it, cross by ford, by bridge, or by boat. And once we have crossed, we are on the far bank, on the other side. The land we have reached is that other side; and we are strangers there. We came into this world from some other side that seems to us in our mind’s eye to be nothingness or obscurity. Our yearning to find ourselves in the hazy regions of our origins or our potential is what urges us on toward the edge of the world; but it constantly eludes us. We want the other bank, the world beyond the limits of everything we experience in our ‘‘now.’’ We want the certainty of death to be transformed into the same as our now and to find ourselves with pure consciousness on the other side, in another world.

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A Hundred Winters / 179

The earth is the other side of the heavens. The water of earthly rivers comes from the skies and rises to them. They are all earthly rivers of outflow and inflow on the surface of a single level of existence; outflows of the River that flows from the heavens and that spans the ocean depths and the heights of heaven. It is the Flow by which Essence discloses itself, from God and Intellect to nothingness. We receive this water that is sent down in our own measure: ‘‘He sends down out of heaven water, and the wadis flow each in its measure, and the torrent carries a swelling scum.’’5 Whatever that measure may be, it is enough to receive what comes from the All-high. Our openness is our submission to the Lord to Whom we pray: ‘‘Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succour. Guide us in the upward path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed.’’6 Although the things of the outer and inner realms present themselves to the observer as an order, an array, they cannot have a higher or lower position on the basis of what they are. There is nothing that is not created with Truth as its reason and purpose.7 And the one to whom all things are due in their purpose is none other than the Creator. All things manifest the one and only Essence. This is patent to see, which is the reason it is forgotten. The Shaikh al-Akbar says of this: There can be no ranking in degrees in the divine things, since a thing cannot be considered superior to itself. Thee divine realities and relationships cannot be ranked one over another, except insofar as they are attributed to something [in the cosmos], since they have no ranking in their Essence.8 This river is dark blue in the heights of heaven and in its earthly depths. It includes all things in the outer realm, embracing and enfolding them as signs that are both in and from it. So it is with the sun and the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and the animals. Their servitude, their prostrating themselves to be nearer to it, are in its blueness. The Word by which all things are fashioned into existence comes from that blueness: ‘‘Whosoever desires glory, the glory altogether belongs to God. To Him good words go up, and the righteous deed—He uplifts it.’’9

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The one who bears the Word into the Messenger’s heart is in the vista of the greatest depth by the Lote-Tree of the Boundary: ‘‘indeed, he saw him another time by the Lote-Tree of the Boundary.’’10 If the Word made manifest is light,11 the depth is both before and behind it. It is understandable, therefore, that Abu-Bakr Siraj ad-Din should say of the records of the Book, which are third in our most sublime human potentialities, immediately after listening and speech: Colour is used towards the same ends as form. Gold was the initial element; and after a short period of fluctuation, that is, by the middle of the fourth/tenth century, blue had been given a marked precedence over both green and red, and it was soon raised to the level of parity with gold in the East, whereas in the West gold retained its original supremacy with blue as second.12 The dark blue denotes the infinitude that is before and beyond it. It embraces all things and is thus a sign of God’s mercy, as He says: ‘‘My mercy embraces all things.’’13 The name Merciful thus corresponds to the dark blue. He embraces all things in His mercy, which means that He is the Hidden Treasure that discloses itself in Intellect and the Pen; and it is by means of Intellect and the Pen, as the duality by which the Light shines, that the creation of all things is made known. Creation is the disclosure of the Divine Names. All things existent are in the power of those Names, all of which are Unity in the Treasure. When the Treasure is disclosed, the Names remain within it but are also made manifest in the world of differentiation. They are the link between the world as a whole and all things manifest in it with the Essence. The world as a whole is the sum of all the Names made manifest, as God’s command to us suggests: ‘‘Say: ‘He is God, One, God, the Flow, who has not begotten, and has not been begotten, and equal to Him is not any one.’’’14 The Names are the link through which the Essence is in relation to creation. We therefore have to pass through both the Essence, as the center, and Its manifestation. But nothing can be added to or subtracted from the Essence. When we focus on manifestation, we traverse it, for it is nothing without the Essence. This is why the prophets

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A Hundred Winters / 181

are God’s mercy to people.15 Their purpose is not to foretell the future; they speak of God Who is in and beyond all things but Who seems to our undisclosed self to be absent, though He is ever present and King at all times, above all things. The prophets testify to and animate our lament for the nearness to God, Who is in the human center, and for the lost Paradise, when both humankind and the world discovered God. The prophets attest to our potential to remember God and to enter into solitude; which means to discover His beauty and magnitude in the Names inscribed in the outer worlds and the inner self of each of us. In journeying through and beyond all the signs in the outer worlds and our inner self, we distance ourselves from illusion and draw closer to the Essence as the illumined and shining center of everything He discloses. The depth and breadth of the world, or those disclosures, are our supreme potentiality. It is only when we discover this that we can see it as the manifestation of the Essence and to see in it only the Essence. Wherever we are, the world reveals itself to us as an expanse, as a wide river. We are perpetually with this manifestation as a level below which is depth and above which is height. The dark blue of the river attests to its depth; but this is merely a sign of height. The thousand summers of the width of the river correspond to the hundred years of its depth. But only the upward path leads beyond all createdness, beyond mind and beyond God Whom we know at different levels of revelation. Whenever we find good in something and thus divine its center, we climb another rung on the ladder of existence. In ascending to a higher level of our inner self, corresponding to a higher level of the world, we see things manifest as emerging from the shadows into the light. The breadth of our inner self or of the world to which we are ascending is always tenfold greater than the path we traversed as we ascended from the shadows toward the Light: ‘‘Whoso brings a good deed shall have ten the like of it.’’16 If a year is a circle of ascent from winter toward summer, then ripening and light are the apex at which it is summed up. All that we achieve in our ascent through the year into its summer is a tenfold

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increase in knowledge. But the knowledge we have is always little by comparison with our goal. Guided by the love we bear to that goal, we ascend toward it, or grow in knowledge. The thousand summers at each level to which we ascend attest to the height we must cross. Every summer is sent down from the Treasure.

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13. Ab o u t It s L ength

About its length don’t even dream The black the bleak cannot be healed

If we want to travel up the river, we must pray: ‘‘Guide us in the upward path, the path of those whom Thou has blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful, nor of those who are astray.’’1 This return along the River entails overcoming everything we experienced in the fall. The return is the upward path, the opposite of the path leading downwards. We are both Spirit and flesh. When they are understood and realized in Unity, they clearly reveal that they are the image of the heavens and the earth. This is why one can say that the world is humankind and we are the world. Our ascent is thus the same as the world’s ascent, for the faithful testify: ‘‘We hear, and obey. Our Lord, grant us Thy forgiveness; unto Thee is the homecoming.’’2 God sent down His Word through all seven heavens of existence by the selfsame path down which we fell from our primal perfection, from the place of praiseworthiness. To adopt the Word is to return to

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ascend along the River. The only successful crossing over the water is the one that saves us from duality and restores Unity to us as the Principle of all existence. The farther we advance along the upward path, the more dangerous it becomes: crags and ravines loom ever closer, thorn bushes grow ever denser, snakes lurk at every turn, shrieks and echoes increasingly press in upon us. The closer we are to the summit, the more enemies we encounter in our outward and inner struggles, the more dangerous our companions. Our path is an uphill one, and the farther we advance along it, the more hazardous the abyss behind us becomes. This is our flight from God to God. With each step along that bank of the River, we erase and demolish our previous notion of God, for there is no God but He. We know that He is in our direction but that no notion of the self is faithful to the original. He alone is the Faithful, disclosing Himself in a different image from one instant to the next. All things on earth and in the heavens and all that is between them surge in incessantly upon the human consciousness, where they nest and breed, re-form and disperse. All persist and perish, from disorder to order and back again. We attempt to find in them the highest and the deepest, often forgetting to wonder what is beyond them, whence they come, and whither they are returning. We are reminded of this, when forgetfulness threatens and is turned into an established image, by the merciful commandment: ‘‘Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’’3 All things in the outer and inner realms are none other than signs of God Who loves to be known, and each of them is a locus of this disclosure. None has reality in and with itself. When we travelers seek to pass beyond each locus, we find the speech of the One Who is both remote and near in all things. But as travelers, we want a speaker; and the pleasure we take in the conversation reinforces our yearning for union with the speaker. As we look upon His Face, we die as the locus in which He discloses Himself and become the one who satisfies and is satisfied.

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About Its Length / 185

In refusing consciously to adopt any one image of God, we discover and preserve our integrity, our health. But health is merely the manifestation of Peace, which is eternally beyond and yet also within all things in existence. Only Peace can satisfy those who surrender. Surrender is what we owe in every place and at every time, and we know that Peace accepts nothing but this as our debt toward it. The manifestation of the Hour in the uncertainty of recollections of the past and a conjectural future distances us from our center. The more distant we are, the deeper the shadows of illusion around us that provide us with images in the outer and inner realms. But our center is open to nothing except the Maker. Although God is near and is designated by every sign in the outer realms, He is also eternally remote. He discloses Himself in nearness to all His creation, but in His remoteness He prevents anyone from describing Him: ‘‘Glory be to thy Lord, the Lord of Glory, above that they describe!’’4 Although He is in and with all things as their center and their form, ‘‘Like Him there is naught; He is the All-hearing, the All-seeing.’’5 The notion of health as revealed to us in alienation and forgetting loses credibility. Our entire bodies, the whole of our inner selves, become filled with wounds and scars, putridity and pus. Everything that is not the Essence seems repugnant to us; we desire nothing but the Essence. No solace on our journey seems any different from the worst of threats. Even what reveals itself to us as the plenteousness of Paradise appears to us as a threat. Even Hell is better than forgetting Truth that ‘‘All things perish, except His Face.’’6 Even Paradise is thus but a way station on the road, on the journey across the River. As Jalal ad-Din Rumi exclaims: Passion is the elixir that makes (things) new: how (can there be) weariness where passion has arisen? Oh, do not sigh heavily from weariness: seek passion, seek passion, passion, passion!7 As travelers toward our primal selves, we are unable to avoid the uncertainties of past and future in any of the innumerable multitude

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of our human conditions. In them, we are as if in the chill of the shade, from which we are trying to escape to the blessed fields of Light. Even when we become used to the shade, it seems like a weary pain, one to which we cannot reconcile ourselves. ‘‘The black the bleak [that] cannot be healed’’ is the distance of the self from the Self. Pain pursues us on our journey from one world to another, from ourselves in forgetting toward ourselves in remembering. This is the longing for the self to pass over and beyond all things and to achieve union with the Face of the Beloved, the Face that alone does not perish. There is neither pain nor health in the Essence, neither suffering nor joy. There is only Him. On the ascent, therefore, we have no concern even for our broken hearts, for we know that He is with those whose hearts are broken;8 we care not that we are hungry or thirsty, we are heedless of suffering and death, for we know that He is putting us all to the test: ‘‘That is because they are smitten neither by thirst, nor fatigue, nor emptiness in the way of God, neither tread they any tread enraging the unbelievers, nor gain any gain from any enemy, but a righteous deed is thereby written to their account.’’9 You should return to God through trials, for ‘‘God loves everyone who undergoes trials and who turns toward Him.’’ So said the Messenger of God.10 And God says, ‘‘He created death and life to test you, which of you is best in works.’’11 Trial and testing have the same meaning, which is none other than the examination of human beings in their claims. ‘‘It is only thy trial,’’ that is, Thy examination, ‘‘whereby Thou misleadest whom Thou wilt,’’ that is, Thou bewilderest him, ‘‘and Thou guidest whom Thou wilt,’’12 that is, Thou makest clear for him the way of deliverance in the midst of the trial.13 Redemption is our goal as we travel the upward path. God calls upon us to address Him with the words in which He teaches us: ‘‘Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for succour. Guide us in the upward path, the path of those whom Thou has blessed.’’14 This guidance to God is His alone; he proclaims and grants it to His chosen servants, who are His manifestation, and they show us the path with His permission. The prophet Moses, too, addresses the guide: ‘‘Shall

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About Its Length / 187

I follow thee so that thou teachest me, of what thou hast been taught, right judgment?’’15 The poet is a guide, saying to the guided: ‘‘About its length don’t even dream, The black the bleak cannot be healed.’’ In this way he turns us as travelers toward ourselves, for the point of the journey is to discover everything with us, as our wealth: ‘‘We indeed created Man in the fairest stature.’’16 ‘‘He created the heavens and the earth with Truth, and He shaped you, and shaped you well; and unto Him is the homecoming.’’17 Truly, the black the bleak cannot be healed, but the Light, the shining of the light and illumination, can be. They are Peace and hence health in our every direction toward them. He is our goal on the journey, the return, He as the Beautiful Who discloses Himself in the beauty of our creation. Beauty is our connection with the Beautiful, and it is through that connection that the human self ‘‘tastes’’ the most profound roots of all existence. Although the Beautiful discloses Himself in Beauty, in the things of this world, His disclosure can never be reduced to a single place or time or event. The Essence manifests itself in the world in Beauty; only thus can we explain why beauty always transcends its manifestation. It gives more than any human knowledge can encompass, limited as it is to things and their forms. Although Beauty shows itself in the world of boundaries, it is beyond being reducible to any confines. Beauty can thus be said to rise above what is received by it. We experience it as connection with manifest Essence. Our existence means to return to the One Whom we know and Whom we love as the Known. The goal of the return is union with the Beloved. The distance between them, the self of the lover and the Self of the Beloved, is beyond our waking and our sleep. However far we may have ascended, our knowledge of the Beloved is in our thinking, which means that they are separated. As long as we are returning, we remain in the shadows and hence are beset with suffering. Our self yearns to be in union; it sees the Self with Itself. This is the meaning of His speech through the Messenger: ‘‘I am with My servant’s opinion of Me, so let be good his opinion of Me.’’18 But our opinion is changeable; it provides an innumerable multitude of images of God

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188 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

that appear to us to be God. We are thus on the path we have to travel and beyond the sleep that confirms itself to us in shadows or the possibility of seeing the Light by comparison with the darkness. But we want the Light by comparison with Itself. As long as that desire remains, pain is its testimony to us. Our only salvation is mercy, which is our good opinion of the Self.

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14. A Da r k Bl u e River

That’s where a dark blue river flows

God is; and He is in every present instant, in the direction of all who pray, and in every opinion of Him. But we change from one instant to the next. This is why qalb, the Arabic word for the heart, the deepest or highest center of humanity, derives from the verbal root meaning to turn around, to invert, to change, to transmute. All that reaches the center is turned around, obverse to reverse and reverse to obverse. Nothing in that place is worthy of persistence. Thus a place is also a nonplace where time is nontime and duration is nonduration. It is the station of nonstation. Everything that has been raised up is sent down, and everything that has been sent down is raised up. Hence the Messenger calls upon his Lord with these words: ‘‘O God, the Turner of the hearts, turn our hearts to Thine obedience.’’1 The moon is the sign of the heart receiving the light of Intellect. In receiving and reflecting light in the darkness of the self, it passes through phases, expressing flow and change. The moon moves

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190 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

through the darkness of the earth, perpetually surrendering itself to the light of Intellect. Twelve cycles of the moon constitute a year: The number of the months, with God, is twelve in the Book of God, the day that He created the heavens and the earth; four of them are sacred. That is the right religion. So wrong not each other during them. And fight the idolaters totally even as they fight you totally; and know that God is with the conscious.2 Although the moon receives the Light, fully at peace in It, it is what it receives. Its image does not exist without the received Light. The moon thus clearly manifests the locus of reception and the receptor; it has nothing but what it has received. With this clarity it turns those who gaze upon it toward the One to Whom all in existence is ultimately due, on the principle that there is none to whom anything is due but He. The moon is barren and dead without the Light, but in its revolution and phases it attests to the inflow and outflow of life. And human life, whatever level of existence it may be on, is but a taste or sign of the fullness of life that is God’s. The closer we are to God, the more our lives show themselves to be an attribute received from the Living, and thus the closer, too, we are to death, in which all the states of our self as idolater die or perish. Only servants of God have everything received from their Lord, including their life. Those who are not this have illusion instead of reality. This is why the servants of God die before they die. They wage a great battle in the totality of their existence against all the illusions in their inner self to free it of all that is associated with God. The self thereby responds, by means of its little knowledge, to God’s command that every self in which anything is associated with God be slain: ‘‘Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.’’3 Only those of us who accept our self as dead may receive the Self as Living. This is because every human condition or humankind as a whole is comprised within the potential differentiations of the self from evil or darkness to peace

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A Dark Blue River / 191

or light. We are expected, if we are to find ourselves in our primal potentiality, to wage war without cease against the potentialities within ourselves that are lower and hence beneath our original fairest stature. It is in this great battle that we find or discover life through the death of all in the self that is not the Self. We die that we may live and renounce everything that we may receive, as God says: ‘‘Count not those who were slain in God’s way as dead, but rather living with their Lord, by Him provided.’’4 Our giving our life, our slaying every state of the self that shows itself to be an idolater, our dying before we die, is like sowing seeds in the earth so that they may germinate, grow, and bear fruit. God says of this: ‘‘Why is he who was dead, and We gave him life, and appointed for him a light to walk by among the people as one whose likeness is in the shadows, and comes not forth from them?’’5 Since the human self is differentiated from incitement to evil to its realization in Peace, we may be said to encompass an innumerable multitude of conditions from nullity to the Absolute. We are the locus of manifestation of the Light and as such can have no reality without the Reality. Whenever the locus is given precedence over what it receives, the side of evil, our facing toward nullity, becomes the source of distortion of the Names and of accepting gods other than God. And this demands of us, in a voice from our deepest center, a relentless war against all selves that internalize the belief that God has any associate other than that He is the associate of all things. Our inner self is differentiated around a single center, which is the received light or original covenant of the Light that manifests itself in Its Praised One. The human heart is always between God’s two fingers,6 as is every level of its manifestation. Each of these levels is an idolater separating itself from its center. Our turning toward the Center is thus in constant denial of all of our memories, all our images. There is Unity in multiplicity and multiplicity in Unity, and hence God never discloses Himself in the same way twice. He is the One and Only Essence, but always blue, for He is the depth of every one of His manifestations. The blue is the river, for It manifests Itself differently at every instant, and nothing from that manifestation may be associated with it nor taken away from it.

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192 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

The poet’s ‘‘Ima jedna modra rijeka,’’ whose literal meaning both ‘‘There is a dark blue river’’ and ‘‘There is one dark blue river,’’ may be interpreted as the Recitation. When the individual self utters it, it flows in its primal nature as one and the same. This inflow is ever through the manifestation of the one Essence, which is ‘‘dark blue’’ in its depths and its heights. The deeper and higher it is, the darker the blue. All the horizons are its shallows, and thus the sum of all of them becomes ‘‘a dark blue river.’’ All comes or emerges from It and all returns to or flows into It. Everything up to the banks of the dark blue river is multiplicity, or the manifestation of the names; but the River is one. To know the River is to know that multiplicity; and in knowing multiplicity, Unity, too, is known. One without the other turns to concealment, association, or extinction, which is to allow principle to the darkness or to nullity; but principle belongs only to God. Unity manifests itself in that multiplicity, of which It is first and last, interiority and exteriority. Thus the line ‘‘Ima jedna modra rijeka’’ corresponds to the testimony that there is ‘‘no god,’’ in the face of all the multiplicity that has ceased to manifest Unity in the forgotten self. It calls up the testimony ‘‘but God’’ as the first revelation of the Essence, which even when made manifest also remains beyond all things as the ‘‘dark blue river.’’ Thus what the poet expresses as a/one dark blue river leads all of multiplicity, all that is enumerable in the sensory world; and that which is made manifest in the sensory world as multiplicity is none other than the revelation of what is in the Dark Blue River. We must cross to It past all manifestation, beyond all things, over all things, beneath and above all things. Unity is in this crossing as utterly remote and intimately near, wholly other and entirely alike, and thus bears witness to Itself in all things. But it is God Who manifests Unity—God, there is no god but He. There is a Dark Blue River, which manifests Itself in everything, and all things manifest themselves in the River. The River is the same as all things that are made manifest, and all things that are made manifest are the same as the River.

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A Dark Blue River / 193

But when things are seen without Unity, they are dead though they may seem to be living. Only Unity is Living; life is from Unity alone. To slay everything that is not the same as Unity is thus the same as finding Life in each of them. Those who are in association with things that are not Unity die or are slain, killed by the things that conceal Unity. We are therefore commanded to kill them, so that the Face of Unity may be disclosed to us in the outer and inner realms. We are expected to cross the boundary guarded by the hydra-headed dragon and to do so by slaying it, for it denotes the potentiality in the self that is the barrier to its return to Peace. Killing every individual thing but its link with the flow grants life to all things, or the ‘‘dark blue river.’’ And the life so obtained, that dark blue river, is Unity made manifest in the multitude of Its images. Over and beyond each of these images, above and below each one, are they themselves as numbered, concealed and manifested in the Essence of the Book.7 The ‘‘dark blue river’’ is both concealment and disclosure. When It is made manifest, it means that Its Unity is sent down into a multitude of forms: ‘‘And thou beholdest the earth blackened, then, when We send down water upon it, it quivers, and swells, and puts forth herbs of every joyous kind.’’8 All this luxuriant duality of plants manifests a dark blue river in the infinite multitude of dualities of its descent. And where there is descent, there is ascent. Unity reveals itself in the descent, and that revelation is differentiation or multiplicity—Unity in multiplicity or the whole in its differentiation into its individual parts. Unity loses nothing thereby, nor is anything added to It. Does not this attest to beauty, which is the link between multiplicity and Unity? Beauty is thus ever superior to what it gives. What is more, it always gives more than it is itself. The Essence as such remains hidden, though made manifest in things. But things speak of nothing other than the Essence, which is in them, and they in It. In our entire experience of the return, we are perpetually remote from our goal, although we know that He is near to us. All suffering and agony are a flight from Him. As travelers, we constantly repeat to ourselves: ‘‘I seek refuge in Thee from Thee.’’9 The exclamation: ‘‘There is a blue a dark blue river’’ is the counterpart to this refuge as the conclusion of our journey.

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15. We Ne e d t o C ross

That’s where a dark blue river flows A river that we need to cross

The six directions from the human heart—up and down, right and left, front and back, proper to all of us in the departure toward infinity and the return to Unity or absolute nearness—correspond to this incomplete poetic narrative of twelve couplets. This is our human potential. Wherever we are, we are far from God, but God is infinitely close to us. To recognize His Unity is to admit that we are fallen, which means we have the potential to return. And to admit our postlapsarian condition is to know of the Divine message: ‘‘O men, you are the ones that have need of God; He is the All-sufficient, the All-laudable.’’1 When we internalize the poverty within us and see everything as received from God, we make the transition from the Vale to the Height through all things in the outside world, from flesh to Spirit, through all the levels of our inner self. The transition includes the sending down of the Recitation into our inner self, or the discovery of God’s nearness. The reception of the Recitation in the self is the transition

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We Need to Cross / 195

through all the levels of the world and the self along the path of the Perfect Man, who is proud of his poverty, who is the Praised, for he testifies that ‘‘praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being.’’ He is the Praiser too, for this is how he returns to God what he received from Him, for He is the All-Praised and makes His creation such. The Praiser is the guide, for he is guided. He passes from the Vale to the Height and from the Height through all the levels of existence to the supreme nearness to God, to ‘‘two bows’-length away,’’2 where he ‘‘then revealed to His servant that He revealed.’’3 He is like the moon: he has nothing but what he has received, and gives what was bestowed on him. He illumines, for he is illuminated, and finds nothing within himself but the Light. The journey through all things in the outer and inner realms along the upward path toward Unity is love, or the bond with God as the Beloved. Nothing can be accepted as the goal other than Unity; but the bond with It on the upward path manifests itself as love and knowledge, which are differentiated in the ascending self and reveal themselves as faith. We want to know what we love and to love what we know. The Beloved is needed by those who know Him and who can be satisfied with nothing but Him. In loving, we want to be the one we know. This is the meaning of God’s call: ‘‘O believers, whosoever of you turns from his debt, God will assuredly bring a people He loves, and who love Him, humble towards the believers, disdainful towards the coverers, men who struggle in the path of God, not fearing the reproach of any reproacher.’’4 The ascent, the drawing nearer to God, is possible in human love for God by following the Praiser, whom God commands to say: ‘‘If you love God, follow me, and God will love you.’’5 And those who love God will have no one and nothing but Him. To pass through all things to Him is thus to see both the outer and the inner realm as a ‘‘dark blue river,’’ as a source or descent, as the mouth of the river or the return, as the riverbed or the earth, and as the heavens or the LoteTree of the Boundary. All this is summed up in our little knowledge by which the One Who loves us and Whom we love and to Whom we wish to return makes Himself known to us.

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196 / Across Water: A Message on Realization

And God loves us, for he discloses His Beauty in and by means of us. In loving us, God loves Himself, for He sees in us Himself as His image. Our love of God is realized in Unity, in transcending all plurality, including the lover and the beloved. Man is created in the fairest stature,6 or as the image of the Merciful.7 This is our true, loyal, or absolute debt. We are indebted with the totality of our existence, and the repayment of the debt is the only way in which we can find or discover ourselves, as God tells us: ‘‘So set thy face to the debt, a man of pure faith—God’s original upon which He originated mankind. There is no changing God’s creation. That is the right debt; but most men know it not.’’8 And again: ‘‘So set thy face to the true debt before there comes a day from God that cannot be turned back; on that day they shall be sundered apart.’’9 God also says: ‘‘They were commanded only to serve God, making the debt His sincerely, men of pure faith, and to perform the prayer, and pay the alms—that is the debt of the True.’’10 This is why God orders us to say within our inner selves: ‘‘As for me, my Lord has guided me to an upward path, a right debt, the creed of Abraham, a man of pure faith; he was no idolater.’’11 The line ‘‘A river that we need to cross’’ suggests that it is impossible to reach the Essence by reflection. The Messenger’s command not to reflect on the Essence directs us to the higher potentialities of the self. We can know about the Essence from and by the Recitation, from and by the Revelation, both of which transcend both Analytical Reason and Intellect and are hence known as ‘‘taste,’’ as something we feel. We come to this by means of recollection, for God disclosed Himself. His knowledge is all-embracing: ‘‘Remember thy Lord in thy soul, humbly and fearfully, not loud of voice, at morn and eventide. Be not thou among the heedless.’’12 Our createdness in the fairest stature means that we are beings of supreme potential, for we are able to find and return to God on the basis of our knowledge. This potential is at the center of the human being: from our beginnings, we know of God as our Lord and Creator of all things.13 Paradise may be regained by following God’s directions, which means remembering God and doing good deeds. It is the

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We Need to Cross / 197

path that ascends from the lowest of the low to the sublimest heights at which and for which we are created. But we can also turn our backs on God. These two possibilities entail two outcomes in the next world—heaven and hell. Both are differentiated into a multiplicity of levels corresponding to human natures and what they have earned in their earthly life. But neither heaven nor hell is eternal. God says in the Recitation, of those who are in hell, that they are ‘‘therein dwelling forever, so long as the heavens and earth abide, saved as thy Lord will; surely thy Lord accomplishes what He desires.’’14 A famous tradition tells us that the people of hell will be led out of it group by group and taken to heaven. The angels, prophets, and believers will plead for them. But as for those who remain in hell, for they did no good deeds and there is thus no one to intercede on their behalf, God Himself, the Most Merciful, will intercede and will lead all who remain there out of hell and cast them into the River of Life15 at the entrance to the Gardens of Paradise;16 for His mercy embraces all things and overcomes His anger. Thus hell will cease to be, and all will come together in the Gardens of Paradise, where God will address them: ‘‘He would say: ‘There is with Me for you better than this.’ They would say: ‘O our Lord, which thing is better than this?’ He would say: ‘It is My pleasure. I will never be angry with you after this.’’’17 All things in existence are from God, and to Him they return.18 But we are indebted to God in all things but one; and to all things that are our debt, God has the right, all but one. We have the right to be redeemed or to return to God, for our existence did not in any way include our will. Merciful and Compassionate God thus redeemed what was His due and will enfold everyone in His Pleasure. To be perfect is to recognize that the Absolute Essence has both Unity and multiplicity in Its manifestations, and that none may know It but Itself. The Perfect Man recognizes Essence in Its Unity and Its multiplicity and is at peace with It as Peace. That Peace derives from the literal acceptance of Its command in the Book. The Perfect Man has internalized God’s commandment: ‘‘And be conscious of God;

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God teaches you, and God has knowledge of everything.’’19 Such persons are thus taught the meaning of the Book, of the world, and of their inner selves. Knowledge of this kind is not a rational, intellectual enterprise; it is the encounter with God’s disclosure of Himself, the opening of the heart to the infinite wisdom. And we as human beings, all of us, are the potential for perfection. The Absolute Essence is that potential. It is one and the same but manifests itself at every instant in a different way, never to be repeated. So it is with the Perfect Man who is the sum of all the Divine Names and manifests them differently from one instant to the next. This manifestation is the River in its constant flow, its manifestation of Itself to Itself. Thus Essence discloses Itself and yet remains hidden. The manifestation of Essence is the River. At every instant, Essence manifests itself differently, which means that all forms of manifestation are different at every instant. Nor are their existences equal at one and the same instant. They are different even when they are similar, and similar even when they are wholly opposite. There is nothing in them that is not Essence. Those who observe existence are entirely in them; and the observers’ being, too, alters from one instant to the next. They are the extension or manifestation of their own hearts; and the heart is so attuned as to participate in every change and to be beyond them. The entire River is encompassed within the heart, which knows its dark blue as the unattainability of its depths and its heights. It is the inexhaustibility of being that is disclosed and concealed at every instant. Although this inexhaustible abundance of forms is none other than the Essence, the open heart desires the Essence in Itself and all Its forms as well as through them. The Perfect Man is the child of the Hour. All the forms in which the Essence discloses itself are received but instantly given to It. The Perfect Man has nothing that is not the Essence; for such persons, there is no god but God. This is internalized in them. They are in and yet also beyond all things; they are the River but also across It. Essence revealed by our discovery of It is attained through disturbance, which arises from the division of our thoughts into two aspects, two directions. The first aspect of this division faces Unity, the second

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We Need to Cross / 199

multiplicity. Those who know from the experience of revelation cease to be disturbed; neither similarity nor difference, neither nearness nor remoteness, neither attraction nor repulsion, neither amalgamation nor opposition dismay them. They know that diversity corresponds to the nature of the locus and that it is in every case the eternal archetype of things. The Essence gives and takes various forms according to different eternal archetypes, which means in conformity with the different loci of Its manifestation, and hence the specific expressions that we observe from It alter accordingly. The Essence receives each of these expressions that are ascribed to It. But nothing is ascribed to It apart from that by which It manifests Itself. These are the specific forms in which the Essence manifests Itself; and there is nothing in all the worlds but that, nothing but the Essence.20

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Epilogue: The Perfect Man

Absolute Essence is Unity, which is plurality in Its manifestation. It cannot be compared with anything and is like all created things. Its complete manifestation is the Perfect Man in whom is the sum of all the Divine Names. Just as God is perfect in His Essence and through His Names, so the good display human perfection through their essential reality, as a form of the name God, and through their fortuitous manifestations, as the outward revelation of all God’s individual Names in given circumstances. Each human life begins as an insignificant seed, from which the body is formed; and this is an ark that the mother drops into the water of the great river. The ark is humanity, and the water of the great river is the knowledge that humanity comprises within itself. In bringing together that knowledge, humanity discovers its Creator. It receives from Him within itself all His Names, both differentiated and assembled. When the Names are differentiated, they are made manifest by the things of this world, all of which together praise God: there is nothing that does not proclaim His praise.1 Hence all of existence is the Praiser and has received praise from God. It is indebted to praise, and in praising God as the Giver, it repays its debt. We are the sum within ourselves of all that praise by the whole of creation. We are the

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Epilogue: The Perfect Man / 201

Praiser in his supreme potential; and that supreme potential depends on receiving praise from the Lord of the worlds. By receiving that praise, we are the Praised; and when that which has been received returns to its source, we are the Praiser. It is thus because God as Light gives off light at every instant. This illumination is also the first revelation, which is none other than the Praised, for giving praise is his link with the Light. The light of the Praised is thus the root of all creation. It manifests itself in human form as the Messenger of God, who is both Praised and Praiser. It is through him that all things return the light that illumined them, as their eternal treasure. Each of us is the sum of all that has been dispersed in existence: ‘‘Hast thou not seen how that God has subject to you all that is in the earth and the ships to run upon the sea at His commandment?’’2 We embrace all things in existence, and in this embrace we are His image, for He embraces all things. God gave Adam, which is to say us, knowledge of all the names; and all things in existence have their corresponding name. It is in the knowledge of all the names that we encompass within us all things manifest. Our supreme potential is realization in the name God, which is the sum of all His Names. Our praise of God thus attains the supreme potential—to praise Him with all his Names. In thus praising God, we discover ourselves as a perfect or good praiser, one who knows that praise belongs to God, Lord of the worlds. We thus internalize within our inner self all the things manifested in the created world. But we will have none of them, nor all of them combined, as our goal. All of them together manifest God through His Names; but we want God as our hearing and our sight, our grip and our step. If we are to realize ourselves as good, we can be satisfied with nothing but God. We are His vicegerent, so nothing in existence can be sufficient but Him. To find ourselves as such, we renounce all things as ours that we may gain everything, as a servant open to receiving everything from his Lord. We are the image of God, whatever state we are in; and we change from one instant to the next. We are thus an innumerable multitude of images of God, but we do

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not want an image; only God can satisfy us. This is why we preserve not one of the images of God but leave them all behind us as we journey toward God. It is only when we have left our pure self as image, entirely at peace that we may receive it, that we are perfect, for we know ourself through the Face that never perishes. This is God’s pleasure as the supreme attainment, the return to Him. The eternal archetype of the good as the Perfect Man is the Praised, Muhammad, who is also the Praiser. The whole of existence, within his potential, as well as its manifestation in creation. He is the one who is the Messenger before Adam was in being between water and earth. The Praised is thus the unifier of all archetypes and all their manifestations. He is the creative principle and thus the First Intellect. He is thus exalted, for in his goodness he is nearest to the goodness of God. He is the supreme human potential and thus the finest example. To join him is to discover or realize that supreme human potential. God says of those who take him as their finest example, which is to say as Praised and Praiser, God’s servant and Messenger: ‘‘So do not faint and call for peace; you shall be the upper ones, and God is with you, and will not deprive you of your works.’’3 This human sublimity is the possibility of finding the praiseworthy nature in the self or of responding to the call from God: ‘‘Magnify the Name of thy Lord the Most High!’’4 The relationship between the human being as ‘‘upper’’ and God as such expresses the radical testimony that there is no god but God, no good but the Good. To find oneself is to find God. The good are thus the manifestation of what has been received from God and recognized as such. The good have nothing that is their own; they have extinguished their selves so as to be the ‘‘locus’’ of manifestation of the Self, and in renouncing all things as their own, they have received everything as a gift from God. The creation in its entirety embraces everything with which God discloses himself; and that embrace is human being. The perfect or the good are the embrace, and they are conscious of it. They are the Praised and the Praiser in his existence as the principle of all things.

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Epilogue: The Perfect Man / 203

And all of us, as the children of Adam, individually and together, have the embrace of all of creation or all of His Names as our nature. But not all of us are perfect; only those who are conscious of the embrace. God says of them: ‘‘Alif Lam Mim. That is the Book, wherein is no doubt, a guidance to the godfearing who believe in the Unseen.’’5 The Book has three forms—the cosmos, humankind, and the recitation. It bestows the summary name God on each of these three forms in its differentiation. We encompass this differentiation, and when we are conscious, we believe—which is to say that we know and love the Plenitude of meaning—in the Unseen from Whom and to Whom all paths lead, for He is beyond all manifestations of Unity at every instant. That by which the Unseen discloses Himself to every individual remains ours alone in our knowledge, for we are in love with It. It is disclosed to us alone, and both the Unseen and those who see It are ashamed to disclose it to any other. And there is nothing but God to be disclosed or concealed. Our relationship with God is that of the true and the True, the faithful and the Faithful, which is to say as the knower who loves and the Lover Who knows. This relationship of knowledge and love, which manifests itself as faith, determines the level of our realization or knowledge of ourself. The good are in and with their own essence, which is none other than the Being of God. But they are constantly changing, perpetually taking new forms; and as such, they are part of God’s Self-disclosure, incessant but never repeated. All the worlds were created out of God’s love of being known. Thus love and mercy are the first principle and the purpose of His disclosure. The plenitude of this disclosure, however, is in the Perfect Man alone. Only those who are perfect manifest all of God’s attributes, all the qualities of the Being. Such people have realized within themselves the full image of God; and the name God thus shines within them in all its glory. When the good are observed from without, they are unrecognizable to those who have concealed the Self in their own inner self and who have taken gods other than God. Seen from the outside, the good are

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like everyone else; they eat and drink and go about in public places. But the entire material world is merely a distant light that has touched the dust. The good, however, are fully in their own interiority, through which the innumerable multitudes of levels of being are arrayed in the realms between their sensory human center and that of God. They are that through which the gulf between the absolute void and the Absolute Essence is encompassed. The outside world and the Perfect Man are one, for both manifest one and the same Unity. The outside world is the body, and the good are its heart. All things manifest are summed up in the good. Just as the name God is the sum of all His other Names, so the good are the sum of all things of the world, and God discloses Himself as a whole in them. In the good, the Beginning and the End are joined. The good live wholly and consciously at every level of the descent by which the shining of the light is separated from the Light itself. They live, too, at every level of the ascent by which the light accompanies their journey and through which human wisdom is reunited with God’s knowledge. The good are part of the Whole, multiple and One, small and Great, all manner of things and All. Just as they circumambulate God, so the world revolves around them. Our journey is the discovery and recognition that we have nothing that is ours. In detaching ourselves from the delusion of ‘‘ours’’ we draw closer to the confluence of two rivers. This boundary we cross as travelers is where all that is is received as the Unity that discloses Itself to Itself.

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Annexes

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A. T he Po e t

Although prophecy may resemble poetry and the Prophet be accused of being a poet,1 the similarity is accompanied by an essential difference. Poets may speak in their own language while yet being in a relationship with God, or the Holy Spirit may descend upon them. But this, too, is their speech. But when a prophet conveys the Revelation, it is the Divine speech in human language, as God says: ‘‘We have not taught him poetry; it is not seemly for him. It is only a Remembrance and a Clear Recitation, that he may warn whosoever is living, and that the Word may be realized against the idolaters.’’2 In poetry and its sister form, song (in Bosnian, the word pjesma covers both), rhythm, rhyme, and melody take precedence over the message, over remembrance and recitation, as a warning to the living. In the Revelation it is the other way around: Remembrance, Recitation, and warning take precedence over rhyme, rhythm, and melody, for the Word descends into the language of the Prophet. When poets speak to the accompaniment of the descent of the Holy Spirit into their language, it is their reception of the Word out of all the multitude of its manifestations in the world and in humankind. God says of the difference between the poet and the Messenger: ‘‘No! I swear by that

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208 / Annexes

you see and by that you do not see, it is the speech of a noble Messenger. It is not the speech of a poet (little do you believe).’’3 Both poets and prophets have their own utterance which transcends their will. In the case of poets, this outward depth or height may be attained through the Holy Spirit but also through things that belong to different levels of existence, such as jinns, for instance. Poets may speak from being engrossed by them or from being possessed. A prophet, on the other hand, can never convey what God has revealed to him to the accompaniment of any interference, regardless of how great the efforts of those who would conceal or divert the prophet’s direction toward the Principle. He is the Prophet of God and remains so despite the hostility his revelations encounter, as God says: So We have appointed to every Prophet an enemy—Satans of men and jinn, revealing tawdry speech to each other, all as a delusion; yet, had thy Lord willed, they would never have done it. So leave them to their forging, and that the hearts of those who believe not in the world to come may incline to it, and that they may be well-pleased with it, and that they may gain what they are gaining.4 This impetus to speech grounded in one or other level of existence—be it in the outer or the inner realm—rather than in the Creator appears to be a challenge to the Revelation, although the two are similar and yet essentially different manifestations in human language. God says of this: We sent not ever any Messenger or Prophet before thee, but that Satan cast into his fancy, when he was fancying; but God annuls what Satan casts, then God confirms His signs—surely God is All-knowing, All-wise—that He may make what Satan casts a trial for those in whose hearts is sickness, and those whose hearts are hard; and surely the evildoers are in wide schism.5 Since the Prophet makes known the Principle and the path leading to it, opposition to his message takes the form of his being accused of being possessed.6 If the source of what he says is anything other than

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The Poet / 209

the Truth, the duty owed to Remembrance, Recitation, and warning by those who oppose him would be abolished. The individual response to God’s call through His Prophet of all of us who are adamant in our association with a god other than God is invariably shaped, therefore, by a rejection of Truth as the source of the Revelation. God says of Pharaoh as an example of this: ‘‘But he turned his back, with his court, saying, ‘A sorcerer, or a man possessed!’’’7 God’s response to this accusation is: ‘‘Therefore remind! by thy Lord’s blessing thou art not a soothsayer neither possessed.’’8 A prophet is always facing Truth, which chooses him, and he submits to It. In so doing, the prophet eliminates his own will so that his inner self may be fully at peace in receiving what God sends down to him. But he receives it as a Recitation recited to him and which he recites to those who listen to him. Since the Prophet is the sum of the totality of existence, his speech, his listening, and his Recitation are made manifest through that which is created. But whenever a created thing is accepted apart from the Creator, it is evil, a diverter from Truth. It may appear to be the speech of a poet/songmaker or poetry/ song. Thus transcending this appearance consists of persistence in listening and urging to silence in his presence, as God commands: ‘‘And when the Recitation is recited, give you ear to it and be silent; haply so you will find mercy.’’9 Everyone other than the Prophet may be more or less close to this as the finest example. But everyone may be more or less diverted from this orientation toward Truth. In each of these possibilities, various things may divert us; but whatever they are, they are diversions. Anyone who speaks on their behalf in rhythm, rhyme, and melody is a poet. God says of this: Shall I tell you on whom the Satans come down? They come down on every guilty imposter. They give ear, but most of them are liars. And the poets—the perverse follow them; hast thou not seen how they wander in every valley and how they say that which they do not? Save those that believe, and do righteous deeds, and remember God oft, and help themselves after being wronged.10

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In this is a visible differentiation of poetry or song into two opposite extremes. A prophet always makes known to us the higher potential with which he is equated—pure models manifest themselves in him. When the poet is at this extreme, his inner self, too, becomes the stage for finer examples. The melodiousness of things manifest, or their link with the one and only Essence, comes to the surface of language; the form is inclusive of the Essence. This is poetry. The recipient of this inclusivity is invariably subordinate to what is received, be it harmony, natural form, or inner meaning. In every potent poem, linguistic form is subordinate to the Essence by means of the inclusivity in the poet’s inner cognition. It is different with the Divine Recitation. Here the human word evolves under the pressure of divine impetus or inspiration. Poetry, on the other hand, arranges and engages language to accord with its objective. To do so, poets must submit to internal pressure, which may be the outcome of various levels of their inner selves— from the self that incites to evil right through to the self at Peace. When poets turn to Peace as the supreme potential of their inner selves, they discover in things manifest the light of the Essence that shines upon the world, humankind, and language. They strive to find in all things the Face of Truth. But when any condition of the inner self is taken as ultimate, things appear to be sealed off, without purity or transparency. Such poets may write of Paradise and angels, but the wall around their inner self prevents them from seeing that God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. Prophecy always makes the distinction between the illusory and the real; poetry may sometimes do so, and when it does, it is the reflection or presence of the Holy Spirit in the poet’s language. But poetry is often what prophecy can never be—it may conceal the Real, proposing a fraud in Its place. It may be a diversion from Truth but present itself as turning to Truth. Our knowledge of ourself, the Book, and the world is a constant struggle with the boundary. The totality of existence manifests itself within boundaries. All that we can know is recognizably divided into two—up to the boundary and beyond it. That which is beyond the

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The Poet / 211

boundary is concealed by what is on this side of it—concealed, because it is not the same as what is beyond it. But what lies beyond the boundary is also revealed thereby. One may say of the self, and the Book, and the world that they both conceal and reveal that which eludes any circumscription, any isolation. When the self, the Book, and the world are regarded as existence up to the boundary, and their derivation, that which is beyond the boundary, is denied, they manifest themselves as density or concealment. As such, they may be taken as sources of knowledge, for even in this distorted form they are not left without their mutuality with the Principle. These two possibilities correspond to the prophets and the people to whom they are an example and to poets who take things as enough in themselves. In his explanation of the world, Hazrat ‘Ali says of this distinction: ‘‘One who hankers after it does not get it. If one keeps away from it then it advances towards him. If one sees through it, it would bestow him sight, but if one has his eye on it then it would blind him.’’11

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B. Coagulation

God discloses Himself in creation. All that is arrayed in the totality of His creation in six days and the seven heavens is summed up in humanity. Those of us who know the world in which we live know ourselves; and those who know themselves know the whole of existence. True knowledge of ourselves and the whole of existence is knowledge of the Creator. With this knowledge, we are pure and thus like a mirror of the Creator. In observing the world, we see His Face. Whenever we forget the Face, the world and our inner self become coagulated or obscured; and we then see a closed world and a closed self. Our reason seems to be an adequate guide in this circumscribed realm. But whenever the Creator opens up the world, sweeping away the obscurity by His disclosure, and sends down His words to a chosen individual to be His Prophet and convey them to the people, the veil of the horizon is lifted, the heavens descend and multiply. Prophecy is the relationship between God and a man, a mutuality that sheds light on the debt: we and the world are indebted to God, as Bestower, for our existence. Our consciousness of this enables us to cross the boundaries of self-containment. Both prophecy and poetry are relationships between ourselves and the world as Truth made manifest. Whenever something in the outer or inner realms is taken in disregard

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Coagulation / 213

of what it manifests as the truth of its creation, prophecy and poetry become falsehood. The coagulation of the signs in the outer and inner realms thus becomes the veil over the Face of Truth. Prophecy is the manifestation of the Principle in knowledge, the way, and virtue. Remembrance of the Principle is therefore greater than all things: ‘‘Recite what has been revealed to thee of the Book, and perform the prayer; prayer forbids indecency and dishonour. God’s remembrance is greater; and God knows the things you work.’’1 The path toward God is impassable without the Messenger as the finest example; and the finest example is to reject the will so that the Will may be made known in the inner self. We are then God’s perfect servant, and our finest example is the Messenger, whom God chose to reveal His speech as directions through the language and the nature of His chosen one. And God says: ‘‘I have not created jinn and mankind except to serve Me.’’2 But who are the jinns? And how may we become possessed, seized by jinns? The answers to this question are highly relevant to our studies of Dizdar’s poetry, and of ‘‘Blue River’’ in particular, in the light of the Recitation. Poetry may conform to the Recitation or be contrary to it. The former may not be the measure of the latter but it may be a reflection. Prophecy is thus always at a higher level and is thus the measure of poetry, the standard by which it is judged. The verbal root j-n-n of the word jinn means ‘‘to cover, conceal or veil; to become dark.’’ In the Recitation, God says of Abraham: ‘‘When the night overshadowed him with its darkness (janna ‘alayhi) he saw a star.’’3 Since the verb can be used intransitively, the noun jinn means ‘‘dense or confusing darkness’’ and, more generally, ‘‘that which is concealed from the senses’’; phenomena or forces that exist but cannot be observed in the normal way. These phenomena and forces have no corporeal existence and are thus for the most part beyond the reach of the human physical senses. Such phenomena may partake of the nature of things, beings, and thoughts. Their existence is suggested by God’s persistence in disclosing Himself as Lord of the worlds and as Hidden but at the same time as Light. The fact that we cannot observe something does not mean it does not exist. Once we

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assume that nothing exists except what we can know by means of our senses, the world is a closed system and we are displaced from our highest level. Our isolation and that of the world cause us to lose the potential to transcend or discover ourselves in the ascent toward the Principle. The form of these phenomena that for the most part cannot be known to the senses are ‘‘Satans’’ and ‘‘satanic forces,’’ as well as ‘‘angels’’ and ‘‘angelic forces,’’ since they are concealed from the human physical senses. Here it should at once be said that the terms Satan and angel are used in this work in the Arabic sense, the former meaning the ‘‘diverter,’’4 and the latter deriving from the verb meaning ‘‘to be sent on a mission.’’ They denote two phenomena, the former diverting from the Principle, and the latter forming a link with It. Given that every human condition is one of relationship to the Light and Principle and its meaning in existence as the darkness, to turn to the Lord of the worlds is to ascend the upward path and to rise steadily above nothingness and the darkness. When we lose the upward trajectory of the ascent, we turn to the darkness, away from the Light. The link between the Light and ourselves is the angels, who, according to a tradition of the Prophet’s, are created from Light.5 When this link is ruptured, this connection lost, we turn away from the Light, the darkness or jinns form a break or veil over the Light. But there is no such thing as absolute darkness. There is no existence that is not reached by the Light, which is present and close even in the most inspissated darkness. The Light can be distinguished in the darkness, though it may be beyond the reach of our physical senses. We all have our own diverter as well as our own guide, and it is through our guide that we find our original perfection, whereas the diverter distorts and conceals it from us. This is the struggle with ourselves of which God says: O Man! What deceived thee as to thy generous Lord who created thee and shaped thee and wrought thee in symmetry and composed thee after what form He would? No indeed; but you cry lies to the Doom; yet there are over you watchers noble, writers who know whatever you do.6

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Coagulation / 215

We are diverted from our generous Lord by all that distracts us from awareness of our debt, all that conceals the Light and proposes itself as the Principle in Its stead. Not one of us is spared the constant temptation of this diversion. Even the prophets knew it: ‘‘So We have appointed to every Prophet an enemy—Satans of men and jinn.’’7 Our free will manifests itself in the option to choose between two possibilities—the beautiful and the ugly, good and evil. Whenever we choose the beautiful, we rise from a lower to a higher level, from one shadow of existence toward another that is closer to the Light. But when we choose the ugly, we sink deeper into the darkness, further from the Light. In the first case, we have refused to be diverted and have responded to the call toward the Principle. The Prophet is the finest example of conquering every diversion of the self from its direction toward Peace.8 Any adherence to things and thoughts that divert us from the ascent means that we are giving in to the darkness in its diverse forms, responding to the diverter or to that which covers or conceals. But wherever we turn, there is only the Face of God. We can thus ascend the path to God only through the Prophet, for he sets the example; in nothing does he yield to the diverter, for all things perish except the Face of God, so nothing on our return journey can be valid in principle other than He Whom nothing resembles and Who is near. Those who are obsessed, possessed by darkness, are those who do not opt for the Light in the differentiation between the Light and darkness but choose rather the dark. We are thus perpetually faced with three possibilities. The first is to ascend the upward path or to rise through the worlds, one after another, which is to follow the Prophet as the guide or the finest example. The second is to opt for the darkness, to descend, and to fall ever deeper and further from the Principle, which is to choose the diverter. And the third is to remain trapped on a single level of existence, when all our movements are but wanderings leading us from nowhere to nowhere. Any direction other than that of the upward path entails mutuality with concealment, or being covered, which is to be associated with that which conceals or covers. This may be in the multiplicity of forms

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that are beyond our sensory observations. God says in the Qur’an of such phenomena that they are created ‘‘of fire flaming,’’9 ‘‘of a smokeless fire,’’10 or simply ‘‘of fire.’’11 We should bear in mind that fire unites heat and light and that its differentiation is in regard to hell and heaven. To face in the direction of hell means to opt for concealment and its phenomena; to turn to heaven means to choose the Light and Its manifestations. This is the meaning of the concluding words of the Recitation: Say: ‘‘I take refuge with the Lord of men, the King of men, the God of men, from the evil of the slinking whisperer who whispers in the breasts of men of jinn and men.’’12

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Notes

Preface

1. The Philosophia perennis is primarily concerned with the unity of the Principle and the principle of Unity. This is the question of God’s reality as the essence of the manifold of being. This reality is such that it is manifest both mediately and immediately. The question of immediate knowledge of the real is the heart of the perennial philosophy. That some individuals have such knowledge and that they pass it on to others as doctrine, ritual, and virtue may be accepted or rejected. Both responses have been made throughout the history of humankind. As is evident from the now generally accepted name for this phenomenon, the philosophia perennis relates to wisdom or Sophia. Such wisdom has always existed at the core of the various religions and traditional philosophies. Wisdom is one, but it has found expression in different languages. The love of wisdom is the love of God as Wise, a love which leads away from separation, as He has no other. The purpose of perennial philosophy is to establish, maintain, and strengthen human connection with the Divine. Given that human existence derives from God as Perfect, our goal can be nothing less than perfection. This is our potential. It does not depend, in principle, on the circumstances of our lives: it is a matter of human being as such. Circumstances may facilitate or hinder our discovery or distortion of our original perfection. They cannot, however, destroy or render entirely impossible the realization of the purpose of humanity. Accordingly, the perennial philosophy is not a matter of history or the future, which lie beyond the reality of any given self: it is, above all and beyond all, a matter of our individual self-realization. The ontology, metaphysics, cosmology, anthropology, and psychology of the perennial

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philosophy affect our self realization in our highest moment—the discovery of ourselves as fully in God’s image. On the history of the concept of the philosophia perennis in the West see: Schmitt, Perennial Philosophy: from Steuco to Leibnitz. For more on this and the perennial philosophy itself, see the following works: Schuon, Islam and Perennial Philosophy; Gue´non, Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta; idem, The Multiple States of Being; Schmitt, Studies in Renaissance Philosophy and Science; Lings, The Eleventh Hour; idem, Symbol and Archetype; Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred; idem, Islamic Philosophy from its Origin to the Present; Pallis, The Way and the Mountain; Perry, The Treasury of Traditional Wisdom; Burckhardt, Fez, City of Islam; Idem, Chartres and the Birth of the Cathedral; Smith, Forgotten Truth; Laibelman, The Other Perennial Philosophy; Chittick, The Heart of Islamic Philosophy; Veljacˇicˇ, Philosophia Perennis; Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy; Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia Perennis; Kazemi, Paths to Transcendence. I: Prologue

1. It was Hegel’s view that the historical process was not an indeterminate flux, oriented to no particular destination, but would attain its end with the creation of a really existing this-worldly free society. This would be the so-called ‘‘end of history.’’ Hegel expounded his understanding of history in the lectures that go under the name of The Philosophy of History (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History, translated by J. Sibree, New York, Dover Publications, 1956). Hegel’s legacy has been transferred, for the most part, via Karl Marx, who used it for his own purposes. Marx shared Hegel’s belief in the ‘‘end of history.’’ Hegel believed that alienation—the division of man against himself and his subsequent loss of control over his destiny—would be adequately resolved at the end of history, through the philosophical recognition of the freedom possible in the liberal state. Marx, by contrast, took the view that in the liberal state, man remained alienated from himself, because his creation, capital, had become his master, ruling over him. For the Marxist, the ‘‘end of history’’ would come only with the victory of the true, ‘‘universal class’’ of the proletariat and the consequent realization of the global communist utopia, which would end the class war, once and for all. For more detail on the Marxist reformulation of the ‘‘end of history’’ see: Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. 2. Qur’an 2:255. 3. Imam al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, trans. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dal al-Arabia, 1985), 8:336–337. I.1. The Poet

1. Formally speaking, the language, meanings, and symbols deployed in this book are Bosnian, but under the sign of the perennial philosophy.

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Notes to page 7 / 219

For their connection with the medieval burial grounds, land, and identity of Bosnia in the poetry of Mak Dizdar, see Amila Buturovic´, Stone Speaker: Medieval Tombs, Landscape, and Bosnian Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdar (New York: Palgrave, 2002). Noel Malcolm says of the key factors of the Bosnian enigma from the modern perspective: It was a land with a political and cultural history unlike that of any other country in Europe. The great religions and great powers of European history had overlapped and combined there: the empires of Rome, Charlemagne, the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians, and the faiths of Western Christianity, Eastern Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (London: Macmillan, 1994), xix. Dizdar’s key theme is of Bosnia as an indefinable, intangible polyphony that eludes the imagination of the waking state. In Kameni spavacˇ the poet summarizes it thus: Once upon a time a worthy questioner asked: Forgive me who is and what is sir Where is Whence and Whither sir Prithee sir Is this Bosnia The questioned swiftly replied in this wise: Forgive me there once was a land sir called Bosnia A fasting a frosty a Footsore a drossy a Land forgive me That wakes from sleep sir With a Defiant Sneer. Mak Dizdar, Kameni spavacˇ /Stone Sleeper, bilingual ed., English trans. Francis R. Jones (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Did, 1999), 172–175. Selimovic´’s Hasan, hero of his novel Dervisˇ i smrt (Death and the Dervish), has to say of this: Not an hour’s walk from here are regions so backward you can hardly believe your eyes. Here, in your backyard, not far from this Byzantine splendor and wealth, which has been hauled in here from the whole empire, your own brothers live like beggars. But we belong to no one, we’re always on some frontier, always someone’s dowry. Soon we

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220 / Notes to pages 7–11

won’t even know who we are, we’re already forgetting that we’ve even been striving for anything. Others do us the honor of letting us march under their banners, since we have none of our own. They entice us when they need us, and reject us when we’re no longer any use to them. The saddest land in the world, the most unhappy people in the world. We’re losing our identity, but we cannot assume another, foreign one. We’ve been severed from our roots, but haven’t become part of anything else: foreign to everyone, both to those who are our kin and those who won’t take us in and adopt us as their own. We live in a crossroads of worlds, at a border between peoples, in everyone’s way. And someone always thinks we’re to blame for something. The waves of history crash against us, as against a reef. We’re fed up with those in power and we’ve made a virtue out of distress: we’ve become noble-minded out of spite. You’re ruthless on a whim. So who’s backward? Mesˇa Selimovic´, Death and the Dervish, trans. Bogdan Rakic´ and Stephen M. Dickey (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 330. 2. Francis R. Jones’s English translation, in the bibliography under Dizdar, Stone Sleeper, is based on this revised edition. In his afterword, Jones discusses the background to his translation. See also Jones, ‘‘Bringing Mak into the Mainstream—Textual and Cultural Issues in Translating Dizdar’s Kameni spavacˇ,’’ Forum Bosnae 11 (2001): 261–285. 3. Amila Buturovic´ writes about the stec´ci in Dizdar’s view of Bosnia: Moreover, in Dizdar’s poetic cartography, the stec´ak lies at the epicenter of Bosnia’s in-betweenness: textually, on the margins of ancient manuscripts; topographically, on the brink of primeval forests; culturally, on the verge of forgetting. The manifold marginalization turns the stec´ak into the navel of Bosnia, the very core of its liminality: ‘‘Bosnia’s situation is reflected in its earliest texts, literary and artistic.’’ Buturovic´, 48, quoting Mak Dizdar, Stari bosanski tekstovi (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1971), 11. 4. See Sˇefik Besˇlagic´, Stec´ci: Kultura i umjetnost (Sarajevo: Veselin Maslesˇa, 1982); Marko Vego, Zbornik srednjovjekovnih natpisa Bosne i Hercegovine (Sarajevo: Zemaljski muzej, 1962–1970); Marian Wenzel, Ukrasni motivi na stec´cima (Ornamental Motifs on Tombstones from Medieval Bosnia and Surrounding Regions) (Sarajevo: Veselin Maslesˇa, 1965). 5. See Dizdar, Stari bosanski tekstovi; and Herta Kuna, Srednjovjekovna bosanska knjizˇevnost (Sarajevo: Meunarodni Forum Bosna, 2008). 6. For the content and fate of these books see Kuna, Srednjovjekovna bosanska knjizˇevnost; Nazor, ‘‘Rukopisi Crkve bosanske’’; and Reidlmayer, ‘‘Convivencia under Fire: Genocide and Book Burning in Bosnia.’’

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7. In the 1930s, the Hellenist Milman Parry discovered the (at that time) little-known oral heritage of Bosnia. His discovery was a true scholarly miracle. Parry, Albert B. Lord, and their associates recorded more than two hundred thousand verses of a previously unknown oral heritage, giving rise to the famous Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature at Harvard University. See Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003); Zlatan Cˇolakovic´, ‘‘Bosniac Epics: Problems of Collecting and Editing the Main Collections,’’ Forum Bosnae 39 (2007): 323–361; and Aida Vidan, Embroidered with Gold, Strung with Pearls: The Traditional Ballads of Bosnian Women (Cambridge, Mass.: Milman Perry Collection of Oral Literature, 2003). 8. Luke 17:21. 9. Matthew 7:7. 10. Dizdar wrote his book out of his existential descent into forgotten, denied, and disfigured Bosnia. Buturovic´ writes of his position in relation to the prevailing view of a country riven by many different ideological constructs: Dizdar’s intervention in the collective imagination is manifold: One, he moves the national clock to the period commonly tossed aside as inconsequential for the issue of national belonging. In so doing, he bypasses the existing national categories of Bosnia-Herzegovina— Serb, Croat, and Muslim—implicitly rejecting the national partition that is demanded by the institutional discourse on nationhood. Two, he spatializes Bosnian identity by situating it topographically around the stec´ak gravesites that point to the culture’s implantation and naturalization in the landscape. And three, Dizdar turns away from the kind of epic and/or novelistic narration of belonging that exalts national traits as primordial, exploring instead eclectic poetic patterns to create an intertextual tapestry of ordinary voices, images, and biographies that lie embedded in Bosnian soil. Buturovic´, Stone Speaker, 83. I. 2. Roads

1. For the history, doctrine, and structure of the Bosnian Church and an outline of relevant scholarly debate, see Pejo C´osˇkovic´, Crkva bosanska u XV. stoljec´u (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2005); Sˇanjek, ed., Fenomen ‘‘krstjani’’ u srednjovjekovnoj Bosni i Humu; Franjo Sˇanjek, Bosansko-humski krstjani u povijesnim vrelima (13.–15.st.) (Zagreb, Croatia: Barbat, 2003); Sˇanjek, Bosansko-humski krstjani i katarsko-dualisticˇki pokret u srednjem vijeku (Zagreb, Croatia: Krsˇc´anska sadasˇnjost, 1975); John Fine, The Bosnian Church: A New Interpretation (Boulder, Colo.: East European Quarterly, 1975); Sˇidak, Studije o ‘‘Crkvi bosanskoj’’ i bogumilstvu (Zagreb,

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222 / Notes to pages 16–18

Croatia: Liber, 1975); Milan Loos, Dualist Heresy in the Middle Ages (Prague: Academia, 1974); Sima C´irkovic´, Istorija srednjovekovne bosanske drzˇ ave (Belgrade, Serbia: Srpska knjizˇ evna zadruga, 1964); Dominik Mandic´, Bogumilska crkva bosanskih krstjana (Chicago: Croatian Historical Institute, 1962). Bosnian religious plurality was seen as an anomaly in the nationalist ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which informed the major anti-Bosnian programs. On the inadequacies of our cognitive instruments for understanding social, cultural, and political circumstances in Bosnia and the consequences of the failure of leading actors of the international order to come to grips with the destruction of the country at the end of the twentieth century, see David Campbell, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); and Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (London: Macmillan, 1994). 2. Jacobo Morellio, Codices manuscripti latini Bibliothecae Nanianae (Venice: Antonii Zattae, 1776), 12–13. 3. Ibid. 4. C´iro Truhelka, ‘‘Testamenat Gosta Radina,’’ Glasnik Zemaljskog muzeja u Bosni i Hercegovini 23 (1911): 355–375, 368. 5. See, e.g., Ilarino da Milano, ‘‘Fra Gregorio O. P. Vescovo di Fano e la ‘Disputatio inter catholicum et paterinum hereticum,’’’ Aevum 14 (1940): 85–140. 6. C´irilski rukopisi (Zagreb: JAZU), Archives III, a, 41, fols. 31r–34r, cited in Franjo Sˇanjek, Bosansko-Humski Krstjani i Katarsko-dualisticˇki Pokret u Sredjnem Vijeku (Zagreb, Krscˇanka Sadasˇnjost, 1975), p. 138. 7. These practices are among the subjects of the De Disputatione inter Christianum Romanum et Patarenum Bosnensem attributed to Paul of Dalmatia (ob. 1255 A.D.), the text of which is given in Franjo Sˇanjek, Bosansko-Humski Krstjani u Povjesnim Vrelima (13.–15. st.), (Zagreb, Barbat, 2003), p. 153ff. The practices are condemned by Johannes Torquemada, Symbolum pro informatione Manicheorum, articles 28–34, also given in Sˇanjek, p. 295ff. The Symbolum was written in 1461 A.D. as part of the inquisitorial process against three prominent members of the Bosnian Church, imprisoned in Rome, who were prevailed upon to deny their creed. 8. Qur’an 2:138. 9. Ibid., 5:15–16. 10. Paul’s Epistle to Titus 2:12–13. Part of this Epistle is included in the Obrednik Crkve bosanske (Book of Rites of the Bosnian Church), written by krstjanin Radosav in the latter half of the fifteenth century for krstjanin Goisav, the original of which is now in the Vatican Library as Manoscritto Borgiano Illirico, 12, fol. 59. See Anica Nazor, ed., Radosavljeva bosanska knjiga: Zbornik krstjanina Radosava (Sarajevo: Med¯unarodni Forum Bosna, 2008), 58v.

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Notes to pages 18–29 / 223

I. 3. The Word

1. Frithjof Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane: East and West (Bloomington, Ind.: World Wisdom, 2007), 4. 2. Qur’an 36:82. 3. John 1:1–5. The beginning of the Gospel according to St. John (1:1– 17) is the conclusion of the Obrednik Crkve bosanske (Book of Rites of the Bosnian Church). See Nazor, Radosavljeva bosanska knjiga, 57–57v; and Sˇanjek, Bosansko-humski krstjani i katarsko-dualisticˇki pokret u srednjem vijeku, 160. 4. For more developed interpretations of these relationships see, e.g., Frithjof Schuon, Gnosis: Divine Wisdom, trans. George E.H. Palmer (Middlesex, UK: Perennial Books, 1990), 78–83; and William C. Chittick, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul: The Pertinence of Islamic Cosmology in the Modern World (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), 29–30. 5. See Qur’an 15:21. 6. Shaykh al-Mufı¯d, Kita¯b al-Irsha¯d (The Book of Guidance into the Lives of the Twelve Imams) (New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, 1981), 21; Ab a¯l-Qa¯sim Sulayma¯n al-T.abara¯nı¯, Al-Mu’jam al-kabı¯r, 20 vols. (Mosul, Iraq: Maktaba al-’ulum- wa al-h.ikam, 1983), 11:65. 7. Qur’an 22:18. 8. Chittick, Science of the Cosmos, 145. 9. Enes Durakovic´, Govor i sˇutnja tajanstva: Pjesnicˇko djelo Maka Dizdara (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1979), 108.

I. 4. Man

1. The terms ‘‘recitatory’’ and ‘‘recitation’’ are used here where in the original Bosnian essay the Bosnian word ucˇenje was used. This word denotes study or learning and is derived from the verb to recite. It is used to refer to the Qur’an. Sensu latu it is used to denote all of God’s utterances in human language, and sensu strictu to denote the Qur’an—a noun itself derived from the Arabic verb meaning ‘‘to recite,’’ hence ‘‘Recitation.’’ The Recitation sustains us in our endeavors to emerge from the shadows of doubt to the light of certainty, as God says: ‘‘So, if thou art in doubt regarding what We have sent down to thee, ask those who recite [yaqra’una] the Book before thee’’ (Qur’an 10:94). The Recitation is thus everything manifested by the cosmos beyond the boundaries of sensory cognition. The three most recognizable works of the Recitation are the universe, humankind, and the Book. Since these three elements of the single Recitation reveal the Truth, it is ever with them, in such a way as to be both near to and remote from them, similar to and different from them. The Truth is always one but manifests itself at every instant in a different manner. Every utterance about

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224 / Notes to pages 29–33

the Truth is primal in this innumerable multiplicity of its manifestations. Its measure is the sophia perennis in all the multiplicity of its disclosures. When speakers seek confirmation of what is theirs, when they wish it to be assessed, they turn to the Recitation in one form or another, for it is there that we find verification and confirmation. This is why this work refers so frequently to the Recitation (specifically, to the Qur’an), for it is the speech of the Truth. Hence every narration may be connected through it with the fact that every sign in the outside world, the horizons, and the inner world of the self is with the Truths. 2. On traditional oral literature in Bosnian and its interconnection with other cultures, see John Miles Foley, Traditional Oral Epic: The Odyssey, Beowulf and the Serbo-Croatian Return Song (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Basing his studies on the records made by Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord in Stolac in 1933–1935, Foley writes: ‘‘The Stolac songs, whether sung, recited, or oral-dictated, constitute oral tradition in its purest form, without the usual deflections inevitable in any transmission process.’’ Ibid., 42. 3. Dizdar, Kameni spavacˇ/Stone Sleeper, 199. 4. This phrase is drawn from a common epitaph on Bosnian tombstones. See, e.g., Sˇefik Besˇlagic´, Leksikon stec´aka (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 2004), 117. 5. Imam ‘Ali says: ‘‘People are sleeping, and when they die, they wake.’’ In Isma`’ı`l b. Muhammad al-’Ajlu¯nı`, Kashf al-khafu¯ ‘ammu¯ ishtahara min al-ahu¯dı`th ‘alu¯ alsina al-nu¯s (Beirut: Muassasat al-Risa¯la, n.d.), 2:374. 6. John 8:14. 7. On the attitude of the Church of Rome to the Bosnian krstjani, see Dragutin Kniewald, ‘‘Vjerodostojnost latinskih izvora o bosanskim krstjanima,’’ Rad Jugoslavenske Akademije znanosti i umjetnosti 270 (1949): 115– 276. On the attitude of the Eastern Churches to the Bosnian krstjani, see Aleksandar Solovjev, ‘‘Svedocˇanstva pravoslavnih izvora o bogumilstvu na Balkanu,’’ Godisˇnjak istorijskog drusˇtva Bosne i Hercegovine 5 (1953): 1– 103’’; Solovjev, Vjersko ucˇenje Bosanske crkve (Zagreb, Croatia: Jugoslavenska Akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 1948). 8. Rene´ Gue´non, Symboles de la science sacre´e (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), 400–401. The relationship between Intellect and Reason is a precondition for understanding Bosnian unity in plurality. The religious forms are vehicles of the transcendent Essence. They can function only as finite receptacles of the Infinite. If it is forgotten that religious forms are inalienable symbols of the Essence, religious pluralism manifests itself as a ‘‘horizontal’’ and worldly caricature of the ‘‘vertical’’ and spiritual perspective of the ‘‘transcendent unity of the religions.’’ Looking from a traditional viewpoint, such plurality cannot manifest itself as a principally grounded harmony. It

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Notes to pages 33–47 / 225

is worthwhile to quote here the words of Jesus: ‘‘A vine has been planted without the Father and, as it is not established, it will be pulled up by its roots and be destroyed.’’ The Gospel according to Thomas, trans. A. Guillaumont et al. (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1976), 40. 9. Genesis 1:31. 10. Deuteronomy 18:22. 11. Matthew 7:16. 12. See Annex A, ‘‘The Poet.’’ 13. Qur’an 26: 225–226.

I. 5. Heaven

1. Qur’an 7:172. 2. John 15:1–5. 3. In the Greek translation of the Aramaic originals of the Gospels, the name Para´kle¯tos (‘‘one called to the side of’’) is used, which is usually rendered as Advocate or Comforter. From earliest times, however, readings of this translation have suggested that the original word used was Perı´klytos, which corresponds in Aramaic—the language that Christ actually used—to Mawh.amana (‘‘The Much-Praised’’) and to Muh.ammad in Arabic. 4. John 15:26–27. 5. Qur’an 3:2. 6. God says through the Praised: ‘‘My earth and My heaven embrace Me not, but the heart of My believing servant embraces Me.’’ This tradition is often cited in Sufi texts, and is included by al-Ghazali in his Ihya¯’ ulu¯m al-dı¯n. See William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-’Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 107.

I. 6. Ear th

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

John 10:9. Ibid., 16:13. See Qur’an 5:19. Matthew 20:1. Ibid., 20:16; 22:14. Qur’an 3:42–43. Ibid., 25:58. See ibid., 3:81. Ibid, 21:107. Ibid, 33:46.

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226 / Notes to pages 47–68

11. Ibid, 68:4. 12. Ibid, 33:21. 13. Ibid., 7:156–157.

I. 7. The City

1. ‘Alı¯ ibn Abı¯ Ta¯lib said: ‘‘These hearts are bowls. The best of them is the one which preserves. So preserve what I say to you. . . . But the Earth is never devoid of those who maintain God’s plea either openly and generally, or, being afraid, covertly, in order that God’s pleas and proofs should not be rebutted.’’ Alı¯ ibn Abı¯ Ta¯lib, Nahj al-Bala¯ghah: Sermons, Letters and Sayings of Imam ‘Ali (Qum, Iran: Ansariyan Publications, 1989), 521, 522. 2. Imam al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, trans. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dal al-Arabia, 1985), 8:336–337. 3. See Judges 9:4. 4. See Revelation 2:9. 5. Qur’an 9:107–108. 6. Ibid., 2:8. 7. This tradition is cited in Isma`’ı`l b. Muhammad al-‘Ajlu¯nı`, Kashf alkhafa¯ ‘amma¯ ishtahara min al-aha¯dı`th ‘ala¯ alsina al-na¯s (Beirut: Muassasat al-Risa¯la, n.d.), 1:481–482.

I. 8. The Praised

1. Matthew 7:13–14. 2. Qur’an 7:40. 3. Ibid., 17:58. 4. Imam Muslim b. Al-Hadjdja¯dj, Sahih Muslim, trans. Abdul Hamid Siddiqi, 4 vols. (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: International Islamic Publishing House, n.d.), 4:1260. 5. Deuteronomy 18:18.

I. 9. The House

1. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane, 21. 2. John 15:17–20. This part of the Gospel According to Saint John was selected and written in glagoljica script in the Cˇajnicˇe codex, a book that belonged to the Bosnian Church. See Kuna, Srednjovjekovna bosanska knjizˇevnost (Sarajevo: Med¯unarodni Forum Bosna, 2008). 3. An expression by Hazrat ‘Alı¯ quoted in Alı¯ ibn Abı¯ Ta¯lib, Nahj alBala¯ghah, 334. 4. See Qur’an 2:31. 5. Ibid., 53:23.

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Notes to pages 68–100 / 227

6. Matthew 16:26. The word ‘‘soul’’ of the King James Version has been replaced by ‘‘self’’ to reflect our use of jastvo in our Bosnian writings. This noun corresponds to the Arabic nafs, the Hebrew nefesh, and the Greek psyche¯, terms usually translated as ‘‘soul.’’ It should be noted that Spirit is the uncreated and uncreatable principle of the self and makes possible the contact between the finite and the Infinite, or the presence of the Infinite in the finite. 7. Qur’an 58:7. 8. John 10:9. 9. See Shaykh al-Mufı¯d, Kita¯b al-Irsha¯d (The Book of Guidance into the Lives of the Twelve Imams) (New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, 1981), 21. 10. Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 4:1260–1261. I. 10. Judgment

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

See Qur’an 17:85. Matthew 7:1–2. Qur’an 17:85. Dizdar, Kameni spavacˇ/Stone Sleeper, 192. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane, 51.

I. 11. I and You

1. Matthew 16:25–26. 2. See Qur’an 57:4. 3. Ibid., 22:18.

I. 12. Incompleteness

1. 2. 3. 4.

Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 4:1224. Qur’an 10:62–64. Ibid. 39:42. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane, 55.

I. 13. Message

1. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane, 97. 2. See Qur’an 12:53. 3. Ibid., 75:2. 4. Ibid., 89:27–30. 5. Jalal ad-Din Rumi, The Mathnawi, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson, 6 vols. (London: Luzac, 1997), 5:588–590.

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228 / Notes to pages 108–12

II: Prologue

1. The human self is multifarious, comprising utmost depths and the sublimest of heights. This range constitutes the trajectory of human ascent or descent along the axis of the self. To ascend is to discover or realize our higher potential, to draw closer to perfection. To descend is to plumb the shadowy depths of existence and deviate further from our original perfection. In this descent, the self reveals itself as veiled from the First Principle or, worse still, as holding some one of all the innumerable things in existence to be that Principle. Each self may be said to contain infinite possibilities. This multiplicity within the self corresponds to the multiplicity of the universe, that is heaven and earth and all that lies between them. Yet multiplicity always manifests Unity. Our existence amongst the crowd of signs on the horizons and in the self draws meaning from the discovery and realization of Unity. The testimony that there is no god but God directs us to that possibilty. It should be so realized as to affirm that the way to perfection, and through perfection to Unity, is open to us all. Discovering and bearing witness to Unity in multiplicity is how we become open to our supreme potential, freedom in service of Unity. It is only then that everything in this world can come into its own in dignity and contribute to the fullness of our self-perfection. We can speak of unity in the world and Unity of God: the world consists of the unity of the unified, whereas Divine Independence resides in the Unity of the Unique. 2. ‘‘Poets are undomesticated metaphysicians; Christ did not deal in metaphysics, he told parables. Philosophy does not adapt itself to contradictions; it seeks to resolve them as problems. Poetry expresses higher truths, and adapts itself to the apparent incoherence. Philosophy regards the world as it would a problem of which the particulars are given, as they are with mathematical problems. The poet is in the world as if in a mystery, is totally involved in it, and one does not resolve mysteries; one remains dazzled by them.’’ Gustave Thibon, Au soir de ma vie (Paris: Plon, 1993), 68–69 [Translated by S.R.]. As Patrick Laude observes, ‘‘Poetry must suggest the very ineffability of the object that it attempts to convey: it is a form of the Formless.’’ Laude, ‘‘On the Foundations and Norms of Poetry,’’ Sophia: A Journal of Traditional Studies 2.2 (1996): 31–45, 40. 3. Translated from the Bosnian original by Francis R. Jones.

II. 1. Introduction

1. Mak Dizdar was born in Stolac in 1917 and died in Sarajevo in 1971. Although he was active as a journalist and editor, he is known principally as a poet. His works of poetry are Vidovopoljska noc´ (1936), Plivacˇice (1954),

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Povratak (1958), Okrutnost Kruga (1960), Koljena za Madonu (1963), Minijature (1965), Ostrva (1966), Kameni spavacˇ (1966; English trans. Francis Jones as Stone Sleeper, 1999; rev’d English ed. forthcoming), and Modra rijeka (1971). 2. English translation in this essay by Francis R. Jones. 3. See pt. I, chap. 5, note 6. 4. Qur’an 26:224–25. 5. Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 4:1221. See also Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 8:113 for a saying with the identical meaning. 6. Qur’an 26:227. 7. Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 8:107. 8. Ibid., 4:292. 9. See Qur’an 26:194. 10. The Arabic root da¯na means ‘‘to be indebted,’’ and has derived nouns that include the words dain, a debt, and al-dayya¯n, the Judge (an attribute of God). Related to this is the commonly understood meaning ‘‘to profess a religion’’; among its derived nouns is the word dı¯n, generally understood as religion, creed, faith, or belief. The word ‘‘religion,’’ of course, derives from the Latin verb religare, to re-join, to bind again. The terms in both languages imply a connection—between debtor and creditor, between the one who binds and the one who is bound. Using the word ‘‘debt’’ and its derivatives instead of ‘‘religion’’ draws on both meanings of the Arabic root word. The notion of ‘‘the standing debt’’ (Arabic al-din al-qayyim), is denoted in the philosophia perennis as follows: we were originally created as upstanding and upright (Arabic fı¯ asanu taqwı¯min) meaning that the original nature bestowed upon us manifests itself as perfect harmony in which the entire outside world is reflected. By violating the inviolable, or opposing our will to that of God, we lost our original inner equilibrium and sank to the lowest depths; our original uprightness is re-attainable as a goal, as the discovery of what we have lost, the prerequisite for which is that we acknowledge our debt to God and ascend the upright path (Arabic al sirat al mustaqim), which is the return to God; the entire world and the inner self or soul are the sources of necessary but not sufficient knowledge; the ascent presupposes that we recognize the necessity of a third source of knowledge—that which God sends down through His prophets and which they in turn convey to us as doctrine, way, and virtue; by acknowledging our debt to God, we open ourselves to receive and give shape to, or actualize in our inner self, the Names of God, and since God is Wise, when we receive this name from Him and become wise, wisdom is the bond that guides us in our love of God and our return to Him. What makes this possible is our original human nature (Arabic al-fitra). 11. See Rusmir Mahmutc´ehajic´, ‘‘Slovo ispod slova: Pjesnisˇtvo Maka Dizdara/The Text beneath the Text: The Poetry of Mak Dizdar,’’ in Mak

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230 / Notes to pages 113–19

Dizdar, Kameni spavacˇ/Stone Sleeper, bilingual ed., English trans. Francis R. Jones (Sarajevo: Did, 1999), 208–240. 12. The Messenger himself said that the diverter (Arabic shaytan) cannot do this: ‘‘Satan is inconceivable in my person.’’ Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 1:84; Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 4:1226, etc. The Arabic shaytan (Hebrew s´a¯¸ta¯n, Greek diabolos) means literally he who bars the way to some objective or who diverts from it. This may be anything—a person, a thing, a thought—that prevents us from connecting with God or diverts us from Him. 13. By the Book is meant all the forms of Divine Revelation sent down to all the prophets amongst all the nations. 14. See Qur’an 37:95. 15. Ibid., 95:4. 16. Ibid., 64:3. 17. Ibid., 82:7–8. 18. Ibn al-’Arabi and other Sufis frequently cite this tradition as a saying of the Messenger, although it is not to be found in the principal collections of hadith. See Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 119; ‘Ajlu¯nı`, Kashf alkhafa¯, 2:374. 19. Qur’an 17:110. II. 2. Nobody Knows

1. Qur’an 42:9. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid., 37:180–182. 4. According to Ibn al-’Arabi, this is a sound hadith, having been revealed to the friends of God, even though the chain of transmission cannot be determined. See Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 66, 391 n, 14. 5. Qur’an 55:26. 6. Ibid., 42:9. 7. See ibid., 2:186. 8. This pertains to the saying of the Messenger: ‘‘He who knows himself knows his Lord.’’ Another, similar saying is ‘‘He who knows himself best also knows best his Lord.’’ This well-known saying is not to be found in the principal collections of hadith but is accepted as a revealed saying not contrary to the Qur’an and the sayings of the Messenger. Ibn al-’Arabi frequently uses such sayings in his interpretations. On this saying, see Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 344–346. 9. This saying of Abu Yazid is often quoted by Ibn al-’Arabi as a sign of the degree of the Perfect Man. See William C. Chittick, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Cosmology (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998), 158–159. 10. See Qur’an 4:176. 11. Ibid., 20:14.

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Notes to pages 119–29 / 231

12. This hadith is quoted in Sufi texts such as Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ihya’ ulum al-din (Cairo: Matba’at al-Amirat al-Sharafiyya, 1908–1909). See Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 107. 13. This tradition is found for the most part in Sufi authors and was a favourite of Ibn al-‘Arabi. For further details on its provenance and use, see Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 51, 122, 198, 277. 14. Qur’an 36:82. 15. Ibid., 2:29. 16. See ibid., 40:7. 17. Ibid., 7:156. 18. Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 9:482. 19. Qur’an 25:70. 20. See ibid., 24:35. 21. Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 1:113. II. 3. Beyond the Hills

1. This is a very common sacred tradition amongst Sufi writers, but not canonical. It is attributed to David by the Prophet Muhammad. For more details, see Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 391, n.14. 2. See Qur’an 2:33. 3. Man fell from the sublime Heights, where Adam was originally placed, down through all seven heavens. God sent down the Recitation or Command (ibid., 65:12) so that humankind might find its primal illumination and rise to the sublime heights. 4. The first words spoken in the seated position at the end of ritual prayer. 5. Ibid., 2:33. 6. See ibid., 2:35. 7. Ibid., 33:21. 8. Ibid., 33:44. 9. Ibid., 68:4. 10. Ibid., 21:107. 11. See ibid., 89:27. 12. Ibid., 41:53. 13. See ibid., 6:127, 10:27. 14. Ibid., 17:1. 15. ‘‘Essence’’ is God-in-Himself, with no suggestion of relationships with existent or nonexistent things. II. 4. From Noon to Night

1. Qur’an 16:54. 2. Ibid., 22:26–30.

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232 / Notes to pages 130–32

3. Ibid., 2:109. 4. Ibid., 40:61. 5. Ibid., 2:148. 6. ‘‘Nullity,’’ ‘‘nothingness,’’ or ‘‘the void’’ has no existence apart from the fact that we regard it as the opposite of Essence or Being and as the trajectory of existence. According to Ibn al-’Arabi, it is the ‘‘place’’ where the world acquires form. It is none other than a means of giving expression to existence. 7. Frithjof Schuon, In the Face of the Absolute (Bloomington, Ind.: World Wisdom Books, 1989), 234. 8. Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the most high God in Abraham’s day (Genesis 14:18). His name means ‘‘king of justice;’’ he is also ‘‘king of peace.’’ Abraham is God’s prophet, but this ‘‘king of peace’’ led him into the living chain of the righteous on earth. This forms the link between the horizontal trajectory of transmission, the earthly river of tradition, and the vertical descent of the heavenly river, Spirit. 9. Solomon (Hebrew Sˇelo¯mo¯h) was a prophet and king of Israel and also the son of a prophet and king of Israel. His name incorporates Peace (Hebrew shalom, Arabic salaam). It was he who built the Mosque on the Height. He sought and received wisdom from God. He had knowledge of inner things, so he could understand the language of the birds and the beasts and could command the things of the outside world. The diverters (satans, shaytans) and concealers (jinns) were subject to his will. 10. Elijah is the prophet of God who, in God’s name, opposed the prophets of the god Ba’al and their disciples. God says of him: Elias too was one of the Envoys; when he said to his people, ‘‘Will you not be the conscious? Do you call on Baal, and abandon the Best of creators? God, your Lord, and the Lord of your fathers, the ancients?’’ But they cried him lies; so they will be among the arraigned, except for God’s sincere servants; and We left for him among the later folk ‘‘Peace be upon Elias!’’ Even so We recompense the gooddoers; he was among Our believing servants. Qur’an 37:123–132. 11. Al-Khidr is the one of whom God says: ‘‘Then they found one of Our servants unto whom We had given mercy from Us, and We had taught him knowledge proceeding from Us.’’ Ibid., 18:64. The prophet Moses took him as his guide and learned from him the inner meaning of things that were incomprehensible to him from their outward appearances. He took him as guide to reach the place where the two rivers, the two seas, meet. The prophet Moses said to al-Khidr: ‘‘Shall I follow thee so that thou teachest me, of what thou hast been taught, right judgment?’’ Ibid., 18:65. Al-Khidr replied: ‘‘Assuredly thou wilt not be able to bear with me patiently. And how shouldst thou bear patiently that thou has never encompassed in thy

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knowledge?’’ Ibid., 18:66–68. Everything that al-Khidr foretold took place on their journey. When he explained to the prophet Moses what he had not understood, he added: ‘‘I did it not of my own bidding.’’ Ibid., 18:84. II. 5. Across the Haws

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Qur’an 5:116. See ibid., 4:168. Ibid., 17:1. Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 8: 213. I Corinthians 13:12. Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 1:124. See Qur’an 37:94. Ibid., 34:14–15. Ibid., 53:14–15. Ibid., 17:45. See Ibid., 57:5. Ibid., 2:163.

II. 6. Beyond All Mind

1. 2. 3. 4.

See Qur’an 75:2. See ibid., 89:27–30. See ibid., 12:53. Arabic Al-Wahid (ibid., 2:163): waw (6) Ⳮ alif (1) Ⳮ ha (8) Ⳮ dal (4) ⳱ 19. 5. Ibid., 36:82. 6. Ibid., 55:29. 7. John 1:14. 8. Qur’an 2:35. 9. Ibid., 2:36. See also ibid., 46:13–14. 10. John 16:12–13. 11. Qur’an 29:64. 12. Ibid., 16:42. 13. Muhyi al-Din ibn al-’Arabı¯, Fusu¯s al-hikam, ed., A. Affifi (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-’Arabi, 1946), 151–152. 14. Qur’an 10:94. II. 7. Down There Below

1. 2. 3. 4.

Qur’an 7:39. Ibid., 67:3–4. Ibid., 22:18. Ibid., 41:37.

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234 / Notes to pages 149–64

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Ibid., 32:17. Ibid., 2:23. Ibid., 42:53. ‘‘The Inheritor’’ is one of the Divine Names (Arabic al-Warith). Qur’an 17:21. Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 4:1477.

II. 8. From Depth to Depth

1. Qur’an 17:39. 2. See ibid., 67:3–4. 3. Ibid., 17:110. 4. See ibid., 24:35. 5. See ibid., 39:6. 6. See ibid., 96:19. 7. Part of the words spoken in the seated position at the end of ritual prayer. They feature in several formulae of the sayings of the Messenger. 8. See ibid., 55:46. 9. The first two are ‘adn and na’im (see ibid., 55:46), and the next two are firdaws and da¯r al-ma’wa¯ (see ibid., 55:62). 10. Arabic Ridwan. See ibid., 9:73. 11. Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 8:336–337. 12. See Alı¯ ibn Abı¯ Ta¯lib, Nahj al-Bala¯ghah, 152–153 and 232. 13. Ibid. II. 9. To Where The Cock-Crow Is Not Heard

1. Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 4:332. 2. Qur’an 78:17–20. 3. This tradition is quoted by Muhyi al-Din ibn al-‘Arabı¯, al-Futu¯ha¯t al-makkiyya (Cairo: al-Hay’at al-Misriyyat al-‘Amma li’l-Kitab, 1972), 3:361.5. See Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 122. 4. See Qur’an 19:93. 5. Ibid., 6:59. 6. Ibid., 113:1–5. 7. Ibn al-‘Arabı¯, Fusu¯s al-Hikam, 79, cited in English translation by Toshihiko Izutsu in Sufism and Taoism: a comparative study of key philosophical concepts, University of California Press, 1984: 105. II. 10. From Good to Bad

1. See Ar-Razi al-Kulayni, Al-Ka¯fı¯, trans. Sayyid Muhammad Hasan Rizvi (Tehran: A Group of Muslim Brothers, 1978), 50. 2. This tradition, with several chains of transmission, is given in Abu Dja’far Muhammad al-Tabarı¯, The History of al-Tabarı¯ (Ta’rikh al-rusul

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wa’l-mulu¯k), trans. Franz Rosenthal (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 198–203; see also Fakhr al-Din al-Ra¯zı¯, al-Tafsir al-kabir (Istanbul: Dar al-Tiba’at al-‘Amira, 1889–1891) 8:260; and Murata, Tao of Islam, 153. 3. Arabic al-aql is the hobble on a camel’s foot that prevents it from straying beyond given bounds. 4. Qur’an 2:29. 5. Ibid., 2:256–7. 6. Ibid., 112:1–4. 7. Ibid., 42:9. 8. Ibid., 6:103. 9. Ibid., 59:22–24. 10. See Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 1:113. 11. Ibn al-’Arabi, al-Futu¯ha¯t al-makiyya, 1:257.28, quoted in Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 60. 12. Qur’an 71:23–24. 13. See Ibn al-’Arabı¯, Fusu¯s al-hikam, 184. II. 11. Wide and Deep

1. Qur’an 3:27, 28. 2. Ibn al-’Arabı¯, al-Futu¯ha¯t al-makkiyya, 2:69.34, quoted in Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 62. 3. Al-Suyu¯tı¯ gives several instances of this tradition in Abu ‘l-Fadl ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Suyu¯tı¯, al-Ja¯mı¯’ al-saghı¯r (Beirut: Dar al-Ma’rifa, 1972), 3:262–263. See Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 62, 390 n. 3. 4. See Qur’an 2:32. 5. See ibid., 36:36. 6. Bosnian has two words for ‘‘blue’’: plava (‘‘light blue’’) and modra (‘‘dark blue’’). 7. See ibid., 13:9. 8. Ibn al-’Arabı¯ ascribes this quotation to Abu¯ Ta¯lib al-Makki. See Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 103, 395 n. 13. 9. Frithjof Schuon, From the Divine to the Human (Bloomington, Ind.: World Wisdom Books, 1982), 97. 10. Gue´non, Man and His Becoming, 76 n. 1. II. 12. A Hundred Winters

1. Qur’an 31:16–17. 2. The testimony of God as Lord in preexistence is at ibid., 7:172. 3. In preexistence, the prophets vowed to God to bear witness to and help the Messenger (ibid., 3:81–82) as the first of those that surrender (ibid., 6:163). Every nation has its prophet (ibid., 10:47) who has born witness to

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236 / Notes to pages 178–87

the Messenger in all languages (ibid., 14:4). Thus the Messenger, as the Light of the Praised, is the center of all existence and all humanity. 4. The covenant of trust as the relationship between God and humankind is referred to at ibid., 33:73. 5. Ibid., 13:17. 6. Ibid., 1:5–6. 7. See ibid., 15:85. 8. Ibn al-‘Arabı¯, al-Futu¯ha¯t al-makiyya, 2:226.2, quoted in Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 57. 9. Qur’an 35:11. 10. Ibid., 53:13–14. 11. See ibid., 5:15. 12. Martin Lings, The Qur’anic Art of Calligraphy and Illumination (London: Scorpion Publishing, 1987), 76. 13. Qur’an 7:156. 14. Ibid., 112:1–4. 15. See ibid., 44:5. 16. Ibid., 6:160.

II. 13. About Its Length

1. Qur’an 1:5–7. 2. Ibid., 2:285–286. 3. Exodus 20:3–4. 4. Qur’an 37:180. 5. Ibid., 42:9. 6. Ibid., 28:88. 7. Rumi, Mathnawi, 6:4303–4304. 8. God says: ‘‘I am with those whose hearts are broken for My sake.’’ This tradition is quoted in Rashid al-Din Maybudi, Kashf al-asrar wa ‘uddat al-abrar, ed. A.A. Hikmet (Tehran: Danishgah, 1952–1960), 1:135, 710. See also Chittick, Self-Disclosure of God, 100, 395n13. 9. Qur’an 9:120. 10. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Al-Musnad, 16 vols. (Beirut: Dar Sadir, n.d.), 1:103. 11. Qur’an 67:2. 12. Ibid., 7:155. 13. Quoted in Murata, Tao of Islam, 200. 14. Qur’an 1:5–6 15. Qur’an 18:66. 16. Ibid., 95:4. 17. Ibid., 64:3. 18. See William A. Graham, Divine Word and Prophetic Word in Early Islam (The Hague: Mouton, 1977), 130.

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II. 14. A Dark Blue River

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 4:1397. Qur’an 9:36. Ibid., 9:5. Ibid., 3:164. Ibid., 6:122. See Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 4:1397. See Qur’an 43:4. Ibid., 22:6. Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 1:256.

II. 15. We Need to Cross

1. Qur’an 35:17. 2. Ibid., 53:9. 3. Ibid., 53:10. 4. Ibid., 5:54. 5. Ibid., 3:29. 6. See ibid., 95:4. 7. Although this tradition is not to be found in the principal collections of hadith, it is regarded as sound on the basis of revelation. See Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge, 399–400. A tradition from Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 4:1378, has been interpreted with this meaning. 8. Qur’an 30:30. 9. Ibid., 30:43. 10. Ibid., 98:5. 11. Ibid., 6:161. 12. Ibid., 7:204. 13. See ibid., 7:172. 14. Ibid., 11:107. 15. The poet’s acceptance that ‘‘we need to cross’’ the river raises several crucially important questions. The river he is speaking of is ‘‘a dark blue river’’; it is not milky white, wine-red, or honey-gold, it is the ‘‘River of Life.’’ And God, there is no god but He, is the Living, the Eternal. In being alive, we are the reception, manifestation, or revelation of the Living. All that is not He is death, so our coming to life is in the denial of all that is not from Him. Our needing to cross the river means recognizing that there is no life but Life. This crossing leads us to a higher degree of relationship with the Living, and He says: ‘‘And of water fashioned every living thing’’; ibid., 21:30. Crossing the water or being fashioned from it is neither the goal nor the end; it is merely the first level of our ascent in our perishing so as to find ourselves in the Face of God, for all things perish but His Face (see ibid., 55:27). The upward path or the ascent denotes the crossing through Paradise or over its rivers:

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238 / Notes to pages 197–203

This is the similitude of Paradise which the conscious have been promised: therein are rivers of water unstalling, rivers of milk unchanging in flavour, and rivers of wine—a delight to the drinkers, rivers, too, of honey purified; and therein for them is every fruit, and forgiveness from their Lord. Ibid., 47:15. This is the river of the multiplicity of our lives from moment to moment, from hour to hour, toward eternity. Beyond every river of water is a river of milk, as the relationship between the child born and its mother, and beyond that a river of wine, as the rapture of our striving to find the Beloved beyond multiplicity, behind the veil. Beyond our love of the Beloved is the river of honey, the sum of all the signs of the sweetness of His disclosure in an innumerable multiplicity of places, for there is nothing that does not reveal the Beloved: ‘‘Whithersoever you turn, there is the Face of God’’; ibid., 2:115. 16. See Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, 9:398. 17. Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 1:119. 18. See Qur’an 24:42. 19. Ibid., 2:284. 20. It is worth adding that, according to the Shaikh al-Akbar (Ibn al‘Arabı¯, al-Futu¯ha¯t al-makkiyya, chap. 167), the great River is the Recitation in the broad sense of the Reality of the Praised and the Mother of the Book, which is to say the River of Life. No understanding of God, no image of God is God Himself. The Recitation, as His Word, is uncreated: it is with Him. Every reading of It is an interpretation or an image. The reader or reciter must break down or reject this interpretation or image in order to adopt another, which in turn must be rejected and broken down, and another, and another, to reach the source of the River and thus return to its Unity with the Creator. The danger of adopting an interpretation or image instead of Him lurks at every step of the return. We should recognize, in overcoming this danger, that the descent of the Word is by the same path as its ascent. The Word that descends like a rope thrown for our rescue, the Word in which God reveals His mercy, descends by the same path down which Adam fell to the lowest of the low. Recognizing that the path of descent and that of ascent are but the same path enables us to be with the Recitation as the River by which life is received from the Living.

II. Epilogue: The Perfect Man

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

See Qur’an 17:44. Ibid., 22:63. Ibid., 47:37. Ibid., 87:1. Ibid., 2:1–3.

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Annex A. The Poet

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

See Qur’an 21:5. Ibid., 36:69. Ibid., 69:39–40. Ibid., 6:112–113. Ibid., 22:52–53. See ibid., 15:6. Ibid., 51:39. Ibid., 52:29. Ibid., 7:204. Ibid., 26:221–227. Alı¯ ibn Abı¯ Ta¯lib, Nahj al-Bala¯ghah, 152–153.

B. Coagulation

1. Qur’an 29:44. 2. Ibid., 51:56. 3. Ibid., 6:76. 4. See pt. II, chap. 1, note 12. 5. See Muslim, Sahih Muslim, 4:1540. 6. Qur’an 82:6–12. 7. Ibid., 6:112. 8. We are created in the fairest stature, and the Praised is the foremost in that fairest stature. Every one of us, in being fashioned in preexistence from the Light of the Praised (Nur Muhammadi), attested to the Divine Being as our Lord. So that this testimony may be tested, we are given potentialities in existence from the lowest of the low to the most sublime stature. Every time we turn away from realization in fairest stature, it is part of the trial. Not even the prophets were spared it, since their lives too were a struggle to find the Self: We sent not ever any Messenger or Prophet before thee, but that Satan cast into his fancy, when he was fancying; but God annuls what Satan casts, then God confirms His signs—surely God is All-knowing, Allwise—that He may make what Satan casts a trial for those in whose hearts is sickness, and those whose hearts are hard; and surely the evildoers are in wide schism. Ibid., 22:53–52. 9. Ibid., 15:27. 10. Ibid., 55:15. 11. Ibid., 7:12. 12. Ibid., 114:1–6.

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PS

Index

Abraham, prophet, 129, 196, 213, 232n8 Abu Yazid, 118, 230n9 Adam, prophet, 120, 123, 124, 126, 128–30, 142, 148, 151, 165, 201–3, 231n3, 238n20 advocate, 225n3 ‘Ajlu¯nı´, al-, 224n5, 226n7 ‘Alı¯ ibn Abı¯ Ta¯lib, 24, 156, 211, 224n5, 226n1, 226n3 ancestors, 96, 107 anger, 18, 121, 141, 157, 197 Anointed. See Jesus Christ anointment, 10 Antichrist, 61 Apocalypse, 10, 27 apple, 87, 88 art, 4, 12, 13, 21, 41, 51, 90, 95, 173, 223n1 artist, 78 ascend, 15, 24, 37, 45, 46, 64, 90, 93, 109, 123, 124, 126, 132, 133, 136, 146, 149, 150, 153, 154, 158, 161, 175, 182, 184, 197, 214, 215, 228n1, 229n10

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attesting, 10, 175 Austro-Hungarians, 219n1 authenticity, 73 authority, 46, 55, 69, 76, 83 awakening, 28, 64, 115, 159 Ba’al, god, 54, 232n10 baptism: by the Book, 17; in the Christ, 17; of God, 17 barrier, 35, 39, 115, 135, 138, 163, 193 bearing witness, 16, 57, 96, 118, 126, 127, 140, 162, 228n1 beatitude, 41, 45, 53, 80, 83, 99 beauty, 37, 41, 51, 65, 66, 69, 83, 85, 87, 91, 96, 103, 114, 138, 149, 157, 172, 174, 181, 187, 193, 196 beggars, 133, 219n1 being born, 51 believing, 40, 119, 225n6, 232n10 Besˇlagic´, Sˇefik, 220n4, 224n4 blossom, 87, 88, 96 book, x, xi, 4, 11, 17, 18, 27, 32, 57, 61, 86, 89, 95–97, 99, 114, 118,

INDX

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248 / Index

119, 130, 131, 141, 142, 144, 160, 167, 180, 190, 193, 197, 198, 203, 210, 211, 213, 218n1, 221n10, 222n10, 223n3, 223n6, 223n1, 226n2, 227n9, 230n13, 238n20 Bosnia, ix, x, 5, 7, 8, 11, 16, 19, 54, 94, 219n1, 220n3, 220n4, 221n7, 221n10, 221n1 Bosˇnjani, 16 Bosnian: Church, the, 8, 16, 17, 54, 221n1, 222n7, 222n10, 223n3, 226n2; krstjani, 11, 17, 19, 31, 46, 224n7; literature, ix; manuscripts, 12; Muslims, 11, 17; Mystery, ix bounds/boundary, 9, 23, 24, 26, 83, 97, 108, 126, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 151, 151, 153, 163, 166, 180, 193, 195, 204, 210, 211, 223n1, 229n10, 235n3 brain, 23, 32, 33, 97, 136 bride, 17, 63 bridegroom, 64 Bukhari, Imam al-, 218n3, 226n2, 229n5, 229n7, 230n12, 231n18, 233n4, 234n11, 234n1, 238n16 Burckhardt, Titus, 218 burial ground, 27, 219n1 Buturovic´, Amila, 219n1, 220n3, 221n10 Cˇajnicˇe codex, 226n2 Campbell, David, 222n1 Catholicism, 16 center: of city, the, 55; of humanity, 60, 77, 82, 91, 114, 189; of world, the, 114 certainty, 21, 140, 144, 178, 223n1 chalice, 47 Charlemagne, 219n1 charters, 10 Chittick, William C., 218n1, 223n4, 223n8, 225n6, 230n18, 230n4,

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INDX

230n8, 230n9, 231n12, 231n13, 231n1, 234n3, 235n11, 235n2, 235n3, 235n8, 236n8, 237n7 choir, 48 Christianity, 15, 16, 219n1 C´irkovic´, Sima, 222n1 city, 18, 24, 25, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 61, 70, 71 City of Knowledge, 24, 25, 43, 70 cockerels, 159, 160–62 cognition, 210, 223n1 Cˇolakovic´, Zlatan, 221n7 Comforter, 18, 225n3 communism, x, 8 condemnation, 73 continuity, 17 conviction, 143 C´osˇkovic´, Pejo, 221n1 covenant, 18, 25, 39, 44, 50, 51, 54, 123, 125, 128, 129, 140, 178, 191, 236n4 creation, 10, 22–24, 35, 37, 39, 40, 59, 70, 91, 92, 100, 108, 119, 120, 125, 126, 134, 143, 144, 148, 160, 165–67, 174, 180, 185, 187, 195, 196, 200–3, 212, 213, 218n1 Croat, 221n10 cross, 17, 31, 37, 45–47 culture, 8, 9, 109, 221n10 Day: of Judgment, 8, 159; of Resurrection, 61, 164, 169 death, x, 5–7, 12, 21, 28–30, 36, 37, 40, 41, 45–47, 63, 64, 75, 83, 88–90, 97, 98, 107, 113, 115, 128, 133, 135, 147, 155, 159, 178, 186, 190, 191, 237n15 debt, xii, 16, 75, 76, 80, 99, 100, 102, 109, 110, 113–15, 128, 129, 141, 159, 185, 195, 196, 200, 212, 215, 229n10 descent, 4, 15, 31, 32, 49, 59, 72, 84, 90, 104, 109, 112–14, 122,

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Index / 249

124, 130, 147, 150, 166, 193, 195, 204, 221n10, 228n1, 232n8, 238n20 destruction, 9, 32, 57, 58, 60, 61, 94, 222n1 difference, 22, 23, 66, 73, 97, 107, 140, 145, 199, 207 differentiation, 5, 34–36, 41, 45, 46, 60, 99, 102, 121, 122, 129, 135, 141, 150, 153, 165, 166, 180, 193, 203, 210, 215, 216 disciples, 67, 142, 232n10 disorder, 51, 59–61, 184 distinction, 26, 44, 210, 211 diverter, 113, 161, 162, 209, 214, 215, 230n12 Divine Word, 24, 46 Dizdar: Mak, ix, xi, 7, 11, 29, 77, 109, 112, 219n1, 220n2, 220n3, 228n1, 229n11; Mehmed, 7; Mehmed Alija, xi, 7, 8, 25, 109; Muharem, 23, 25; Nezira (ne´e Babovic´), 7, 23, 25; Refika, 7 Djed, 17, 50 doctrine, 69, 90, 110, 115, 125, 129, 217n1, 221n1, 229n10 door, 4, 25, 43, 51, 56, 57, 58, 70, 71, 171 dream, 27, 30, 34, 71, 88, 94, 97, 111, 113, 183, 187 duality, 21, 32, 38, 57–59, 62, 80, 83, 93, 99, 101, 116, 126, 140, 154, 157, 165, 166, 172, 175, 180, 184, 193 Durakovic´, Enes, 223n9 dying, 51, 191 Eirenopoi, 11 Elijah, prophet, 132, 232n10 empire, 14, 219n1 end of history, 5, 8, 9, 218n1 enlightenment, 12 esotericism, 132 eternity, 12, 19, 32, 38, 60, 61, 73, 87, 88, 103, 150, 155, 238n15

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Europe, 219n1 evil, 47, 55, 76, 79, 85, 87, 96, 99, 103, 121, 129, 136, 140, 141, 150, 160, 161, 190, 191, 209, 210, 215, 216 exile, 37, 49 Face, 6, 13, 28, 36, 42, 44, 61, 62, 100, 103, 118, 125, 132, 135, 159, 168, 175, 184, 185, 196, 202, 212, 237n15 Face of: Beloved, the, 64, 175, 186; God, 130, 131, 215, 237n15, 238n15; Truth, 210, 213; Unity, 58, 80, 193 fairy tale, 71 faith, 12, 16, 17, 18, 30, 31, 69, 79, 91, 96, 103, 114, 121, 195, 196, 203, 229n10 faithful: God, 18, 60, 91, 92, 121, 140, 178, 184, 203; man, 52, 69, 92, 121, 140, 183, 203; Spirit, 113 false temples, 54 fascism, 8 fate, 44, 64, 220n6 fear, 37, 53, 67, 88, 96, 138, 142, 172 Fine, John, 222n1 finest example, 69, 202, 209, 213, 215 fire, 19, 78, 136, 138, 159, 216 Foley, John Miles, 224n2 forgetting, 6, 28, 50, 51, 63, 74, 79, 88, 147, 184, 185, 186, 219n1, 220n3 forgiveness, 134, 183, 238n15 fragrance, 103 free will, 9, 23, 30, 58, 89, 215 freedom, 4, 52, 89, 102, 218n1, 228n1 Friends of God/God’s friends, 88, 230n4

INDX

04-28-11 11:11:49

PS

250 / Index

Garden, 45, 48, 51, 53, 54, 70, 87, 88, 123, 124, 125, 135, 136, 149, 197 gate, 25, 36, 37, 38, 43, 47, 57, 59, 71, 75, 161 gates of heaven, the, 41, 44, 57, 146, 163 generosity, 5, 115 Ghazali, al-, 225n6, 231n12 God’s mercy, 61, 180, 181 Goisav, krstjanin, 222n10 good, 25, 50, 52, 54, 66, 70, 78, 82, 87, 140, 181, 200–4 Gospel, 17, 48, 69, 109, 119, 223n3, 225n3 grace, 28 Graham, William A., 236n18 Grandfathers’ house, 50, 55, 56, 65, 67, 76, 77 Gue´non, Rene´, 224n8 guest, 56, 175 guided, 13, 61, 62, 104, 187, 195 Hand, 6, 46, 52, 62, 155 happiness, 12, 77, 86, 102 harmony, 45, 85, 210, 225n8, 229n10 Hasan, 219n1 hatred, 18, 67, 87 height, 98, 110, 123, 124, 125, 128, 129, 132, 151, 152, 157, 162, 164, 181, 182, 194, 195, 208, 232n9 heir, 17 Hell, 46, 159, 185, 197, 216 Hinduism, 15 Holy Mosque, the, 125, 126 Holy Spirit, 4, 32, 40, 60, 113, 138, 142, 207, 208 honey, 238n15 hope, 5, 18, 31, 33, 34, 62, 152, 153 horn, 111, 159 hour, 61, 133, 175, 177, 185, 198, 219n1, 238n15

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INDX

house, 17, 41, 50–53, 55, 56, 60, 63, 65, 66, 67, 70, 76, 91, 103, 125, 129 House: of God, 50; of heart, the, 60; of mercy, 76; in Mile´, 18, 50, 54–56, 65–67, 69, 76, 90, 103; of Peace, 50, 53, 176; of Spirit, 60; of Truth, 79; of Unity, 69 humility, 25, 80, 115 Huxley, Aldous, 218n1 Ibn al-’Arabi, Muhyi al-Din, 230n18, 230n4, 230n8, 230n9, 231n13, 232n6, 233n13, 234n3, 234n7, 235n11, 235n13, 235n2, 235n8, 236n8, 238n20 Ibn Hanbal, Ahmad, 236n10 icon, 17, 173 identity, 219n1, 221n10 ideology, 8, 9, 15, 84, 98 ignorance, 5, 11, 14, 22, 72, 73, 74, 78, 82, 83, 87, 96 Ilarino da Milano, 222n5 illusion, 6, 18, 21, 28, 30, 38, 49, 58, 61, 85, 87, 95, 99, 110, 132, 160, 169, 181, 185, 190 imagination, 98, 219n1, 221n10 incompleteness, 86, 89, 227 injustice, 72, 73, 76 intellect, 20, 22–24, 30–33, 39, 40, 41, 45–48, 52, 55, 57, 60, 68, 72, 73, 75, 82–84, 90, 92, 93, 103, 136, 138, 164–66, 168, 170, 175, 179, 180, 189, 196, 224n8 Intellect: Cosmic, 23; Divine, 23; Human, 23 interpretations, ix, 16, 19, 22, 28, 223n4, 230n8 Islam, 15, 219n1 Israel, 232n9 Izutsu, Toshihiko, 234n7 Jasenovac, concentration camp, 7 Jesus Christ, ix, xi, xii, 12, 13, 16, 17, 24, 30, 34, 39, 40, 43, 46, 57,

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PS

Index / 251

61, 62, 67, 68, 70, 73, 80, 110, 134, 142, 162, 225n3, 225n8, 228n2 Jones, Francis R., xi, 219n1, 220n2, 228n3, 229n1, 229n2, 229n11 Judaism, 15, 219n1 judgment, 59, 72, 73, 75, 76, 85, 159, 187, 227, 232n11 Kazemi, Reza Shah, 218n1 Khidr, al-, prophet, 132, 232n11 king, 167, 181, 216, 232n8, 232n9 Kingdom of God, the, 13, 159; of heaven, the, 40, 44, 163 Kniewald, Dragutin, 224n7 kr’stijanice/kr’stijani, 17 krstjani, 8, 10, 11, 17, 18, 19, 21, 31, 46, 224n7 Kulin, ban, 109 Kuna, Herta, 220n5, 220n6, 226n2 Ladder, 26, 66, 92, 154, 155, 158, 161, 162, 181 Laibelman, Alan M., 218n1 lamp that shines, 59 language, xi, 9, 10, 12, 13, 23, 25, 30, 35, 36, 69, 84, 91, 101, 109, 113, 118, 133, 139, 141, 172, 207, 208, 210, 213, 217n1, 218n1, 223n1, 225n3, 232n9 Laude, Patrick, 228n2 lesser war, 55 liberalism, 8 Light of the Praised, the, 17, 33, 66, 91, 160, 166, 178, 201, 236n3, 239n8 Light-giving Lamp, 47, 125, 137 limestone, 27, 33, 34, 62 Lings, Martin, 218n1, 236n12 Loos, Milan, 222n1 Lord, Albert B., 221n7, 224n2 Lote-Tree of the Boundary, the, 136, 180, 195

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love, 3, 4, 37, 42, 52, 53, 69, 75, 82, 83, 87, 91, 92, 100, 108, 110, 120, 121, 162, 170, 182, 195, 196, 203, 217n1, 229n10, 238n15 Macrocosm, 40, 61 madness, 103, 164 Mahmutc´ehajic´, Rusmir, 229n11 Makki, Abu¯ Ta¯lib al-, 235n8 Malcolm, Noel, 219n1, 222n1 man of peace, 52, 59, 88 Mandic´, Dominik, 222n1 marketplace, 10, 43, 44, 60 Mary, Virgin, 13, 30, 40, 46, 67, 70, 73, 75, 134, 173 Ma¯sˇˆıa, 16 Ması¯h, al, 16 Mawhamana, 225n3 measure, 9, 24, 62, 80, 85, 173, 179, 213, 224n1 Melchizedek, priest, 132, 232n8 mercy, 45, 59, 63, 65, 66, 75, 83, 89, 96, 120, 121, 122, 125, 130, 135, 138, 141, 148, 157, 173, 188, 197, 203, 209, 232n11, 238n20 mercy: of the house, 76; and Peace, 34, 54; of the womb, 17; to the worlds, 47 Messenger, the. See Praised, the metaphor, 63 metaphysician, 110, 228n2 metaphysics, 217n1, 228n2 microcosm, 40 mighty morality, 47, 125, 137 mighty war, 11, 18, 54, 55, 98 milk, 238n15 miracle, 94, 98, 221n7 mirror, 23, 28, 66, 212 moon, 25, 32, 33, 40, 62, 91, 148, 160, 179, 189, 190, 195 Morellio, Jacobo, 222n2 Moses, prophet, 34, 62, 105, 187, 232n11

INDX

04-28-11 11:11:50

PS

252 / Index

mosques: false, 54; further, 126; Holy, 125, 126 Mufı¯d, Shaykh, al-, 223n6, 227n9 Muhammad, the Prophet, xi, xii, 23, 24, 113, 134, 162, 202, 231n1 Muhammad. See Praised, the Murata, Sachiko, 235n2, 236n13 music of speech, 41 Muslim, imam, 226n4, 227n10, 227n1, 229n5, 230n12, 231n21, 233n6, 234n10, 235n10, 237n1, 237n6, 237n9, 237n7, 238n17, 239n5 mystery, ix, 4, 7, 33, 37, 50, 52, 91, 95, 175, 228n2 Narrow passageway, the, 51 Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, 218n1 nationalism, x, 8 nature, xi, 12, 21, 23, 33, 34, 41, 53, 59, 60, 61, 62, 69, 70, 81, 83, 84, 86, 92, 93, 97, 98, 99, 115, 118, 133, 143, 149, 150, 166, 174, 192, 199, 202, 203, 213, 229n10 nature: of Christ, 16; of Praised, the, 24; of Spirit, 4 Nazism, 8 Nazor, Anica, 220n6, 222n10, 223n3 Obrednik Crkve bosanske, 222n10, 223n3 obscurity, 73, 103, 117, 119, 147, 148, 153, 156, 159, 178, 212 openness, 18, 19, 23, 67, 75, 77, 89, 92, 109, 154, 173, 179 oral: literature, x, 221n7, 224n2; poetry, 11; tradition, 29, 224n2 orthodoxy, 132 Ottomans, the, 219n1 Pain, 33, 34, 45, 53, 62, 66, 128, 135, 186, 188 Pallis, Marko, 218n1

................. 17932$

INDX

Paradise, 8, 9, 12, 26, 57, 148, 150, 151, 154, 175, 181, 185, 196, 197, 210, 237n15, 238n15 Para´kle¯tos/Perı´klytos, 225n3 Parry, Milman, 221n7, 224n2 passion, 13, 60, 83, 185 patarenes, 17 perception, 3, 108, 125, 126, 143 perennial: philosophy, ix, x, 97, 217n1; wisdom, x, 8, 14, 17, 29 Perfect Man, the, xi, xii, 25, 32, 38, 40, 52, 70, 84, 99, 123, 166, 168, 195, 197, 198, 200, 202, 203, 204, 230n9 Perry, Whitall N., 218n1 Philosophia perennis, 217n1 philosophy, 228n2 pillar of light, 31, 73 pleasure, 17, 135, 184, 197, 202 pluralism, 224n8 poet, 4, 5, 7, 13, 23, 27, 29, 33, 34, 73, 84, 86, 91, 103, 110, 112–14, 116, 117, 121, 136, 172, 187, 192, 207–10, 219n1, 225n12, 228n2, 228n1 poetry, ix, x, xi, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 23, 25, 29, 41, 88, 103, 109, 112, 113, 114, 207, 209, 210, 212, 213, 219n1, 228n2, 228n1 poetry: false, 4, 34, 104; folk, 30; true, 42 pontiff, 17 power, 5, 11, 15, 30, 61, 73, 83, 86, 102, 119, 154, 162, 180, 220n1 praise, xii, 24, 47, 48, 70, 117, 124, 137, 138, 166, 178, 195, 200, 201 Praised, the: God, 59, 137, 175, 191, 195; Prophet, xii, 10, 23, 24, 25, 33, 34, 39, 40, 43, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 66, 69, 70, 74, 78, 82, 88, 91, 102, 113, 114, 123, 134, 137, 138, 160, 162, 166, 175, 178, 191,

04-28-11 11:11:51

PS

Index / 253

195, 201, 202, 225n6, 226, 236n3, 238n20, 239n8 prayer, 37, 103, 119, 123, 196, 213, 231n4, 234n7 prophecy, x, 3, 4, 25, 34, 42, 59, 207, 210, 212, 213 prostration, 128, 172 Psalms, the, 119 Purity/purification, 10, 11, 17, 22, 57, 59, 88, 151, 210 Quality, 66 quantity, 5, 61 Radosav, krstjanin, 222n10 Razi, Fakhr al-Din al-, 235n2 realization, ix, 3, 5, 31, 34, 35, 37, 40, 43, 44, 48, 52, 60, 63, 68, 74, 75, 80, 83, 84, 85, 90, 91, 97, 121, 150, 170, 175, 191, 201, 203, 217n1, 218n1, 228n1, 239n8 reason, 5, 9, 23, 24, 33, 34, 83, 138, 163, 165, 166, 196, 224n8 recollection, 26, 63, 125, 147, 176, 196 reflection, xi, 34, 53, 91, 108, 168, 196, 210, 213 religion, ix, xii, 132, 190, 229n10 remembrance, 38, 53, 61, 207, 209, 213 revolutionaries, the, 12 rhyme, 41, 115, 207, 209 rhythm, 41, 115, 116, 207, 209 Riedlmayer, Andra´s J., 221n6 River of Life, the, 237n15, 238n20 Rome, 219n1, 222n7, 224n7 rope, 26, 238n20 round dance, 37, 38, 41, 91 rules, 21, 168 Rumi, Jalal ad-Din, 100, 185, 227n5, 236n7 Sacrament of baptism, 17 sacred: act, 114; art, 12, 13, 51, 95; science, 5, 12, 13, 21, 22, 25, 26,

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31, 51, 95; tradition, 4, 12, 13, 16, 22, 25, 32, 45, 46, 231n1 sacrifice, 59 Sˇanjek, Franjo, 221n1, 222n6, 222n7 scales, 59, 114 Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm, 218n1 Schmitt, Charles, 218n1 Schuon, Frithjof, 98, 132, 218n1, 223n1, 223n4, 226n1, 227n5, 227n4, 227n1, 232n7, 235n9 scientism, x Scribe, the, 175 Selimovic´, Mesˇa, 220n1 ⬍hac⬎ Sel⬍mac⬎om⬍mac⬎oh. See Solomon Serb, 221n10 sermon, 10 seventh: heaven, 32, 38, 125, 126, 136, 147; ray, 32, 38, 45 Sˇidak, Jaroslav, 222n1 silence, 4, 14, 27, 29, 63, 77, 81, 97, 115, 119, 126, 153, 154 sky, 54, 66, 111, 131, 132, 141, 146, 150, 151 Smith, Houston, 218n1 snow/snows, 88 Solomon, prophet, 132, 232n9 Solovjev, Aleksandar, 224n7 Sophia, 114, 217n1 Sophia perennis, 113, 224n1 spiritual chain, 53 standpoint, 81, 84, 86, 92, 93, 96, 98 ste⬍acute⬎cci/ste⬍acute⬎cak, 8, 10, 12, 23, 27, 29, 41, 77, 91, 94, 220n3, 221n10 Stolac, 7, 77, 224n2, 228n1 stonemasons, 29 strait gate, 38, 43, 47, 57, 59 stranger, 56, 133, 175 successor, 52 suffering, 11, 12, 38, 53, 60, 75, 83, 128, 135, 186, 187, 193

INDX

04-28-11 11:11:51

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254 / Index

sufi: authors, 231n13; texts, 225n6, 231n12; writers, 231n1 sun, 25, 27, 31, 32, 33, 40, 44, 45, 46, 47, 53, 57, 62, 66, 75, 77, 91, 97, 131, 136, 148, 160, 179 sword, 19, 78, 100, 177 symbols, 13, 18, 27, 91, 175, 224n8 synagogues of Sa¯’tan, 54 Tabarı¯, Abu Dja’far Muhammad, al, 234n2 teacher, 52, 53, 100 Temple, 25, 37, 48 temptation, 9, 215 testimony, 6, 9, 16, 38, 40, 46, 59, 60, 66, 67, 69, 74, 77, 80, 82, 83, 92, 95, 96, 99, 102, 126, 131, 156, 188, 192, 202, 228n1, 235n2, 239n8 Thibon, Gustave, 110, 228n2 thinking, 9, 25, 60, 82 Torah, 48, 69, 119 Torquemada, Johannes, 222n7 traces, 5, 10, 30, 32, 45 tradition, x, 4, 12, 13, 16, 17, 22, 24, 25, 26, 29, 32, 45, 46, 90, 102, 121, 132, 164, 197, 214, 224n2, 225n6, 226n7, 230n18, 231n13, 231n1, 232n8, 234n3, 234n2, 235n3, 236n8, 237n7 transmission, 29, 40, 224n2, 230n4, 232n8, 234n2 treasury, 24, 103, 135, 143, 144, 166 trickery, 103 Truhelka, C´iro, 222n4 trust, 47, 178, 236n4

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INDX

Ugliness, 70, 83, 87, 96 uncertainty, 123, 130, 185 unsleeping, 31, 58 upright path, 5, 17, 45, 46, 51, 52, 229n10 Vale/valley, 34, 38, 64, 88, 110, 112, 124, 128, 129, 132, 136, 152, 164, 178, 194, 195, 209 Vale of Tears, 125 Vatican library, 222n10 Vedantists, 27 Vego, Marko, 220n4 veil, 25, 27, 63, 92, 144, 160, 212– 14, 238n15 Veljacˇic´, Cˇedomil, 218n1 Vicar of Christ, 17 Vidan, Aida, 221n7 Vidosˇka, 77 vine, 38, 39, 44, 47, 57, 225n8 vineyard, 43, 44, 47 violence, x, 18, 72, 73, 85, 97, 138 Virgin. See Mary Wahid, al-, God’s name, 233n4 Warith, al-, God’s name, 234n8 Wenzel, Marian, 220n4 will, 3, 4, 9, 23, 26, 30, 46, 58, 69, 72, 75, 86, 89, 102, 115, 119, 122, 123, 125, 126, 130, 135, 144, 147, 160, 162, 197, 208, 209, 213, 215, 229n10, 232n9 wisdom, x, 13, 14, 29, 65, 113, 114, 129, 172, 198, 204, 217n1, 229n10, 232n9 working class, 9 World War II, 7, 8 wrath, 45, 63, 83, 96, 138

04-28-11 11:11:52

PS

Abrahamic Dialogues Moore, S.J., Martin Buber: Prophet of Religious Secularism James L. Heft, S.M., ed., Beyond Violence: Religious Sources of Social Transformation in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Rusmir Mahmutc´ehajic´, Learning from Bosnia: Approaching Tradition Rusmir Mahmutc´ehajic´, The Mosque: The Heart of Submission Alain Marchadour, A.A., and David Neuhaus, S.J., The Land, the Bible, and History: Toward the Land That I Will Show You James L. Heft, S.M., ed., Passing on the Faith: Transforming Traditions for the Next Generation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims Rusmir Mahmutc´ehajic´, On Love: In the Muslim Tradition Phil Huston, Martin Buber’s Journey to Presence Philip A. Cunningham, Norbert J. Hofmann, S.D.B., and Joseph Sievers, eds., The Catholic Church and the Jewish People: Recent Reflections from Rome Thomas Michel, S.J., ed., Friends on the Way: Jesuits Encounter Contemporary Judaism Rusmir Mahmutc´ehajic´, On the Other: A Muslim View. Translated by Desmond Maurer

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DIAL

04-28-11 11:11:44

PS