Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Notes

1. See Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, trans. with a commentary by C. S. Singleton, Princeton, 1975, p. 377. Singleton explains (pp. 576-77) some of the symbolism of this remarkable passage including the reference of squaderna to the number four and the verb s’interna to the triune God.

2. In contrast to those who have spoken of Eastern wisdom and Western science and have tried to pay tribute to the East by exalting its wisdom and belittling its “science” which is then considered to be the crowning achievement of theWest, we believe that besides Eastern wisdom, which of course possesses an exalted nature and is of inestimable value, the sciences of the Oriental civilizations are also of much significance in making available alternative sciences and philosophies of nature to those prevalent in the West. It is of much interest to note that in contrast to this juxtaposing of Eastern wisdom and Western science of the early part of this century, many seekers of authentic knowledge today are practically as much interested in Eastern sciences as in Eastern wisdom. We do not of course want to depreciate in any way Eastern wisdom without whose knowledge the traditional sciences would become meaningless. But we wish to defend the significance of the traditional sciences against those who would claim that the Oriental civilizations may have contributed something to philosophy or religion but little of consequence to the study of nature. Despite the presence of practitioners of acupuncture and Hatha Yoga in practically every European and American city and the appearance of a whole library of popular works on the Oriental sciences, one still encounters such a point of view rather extensively.

3. On the traditional meaning and significance of cosmology see T. Burckhardt, “Nature de la perspective cosmologique,” Études Traditionnelles 49 (1948): 216-19;also his “Cosmology and Modern Science,” in J. Needleman (ed.), The Sword of Gnosis, esp. pp. 122-32. As far as Islamic cosmology is concerned see Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines.

4. The modern discipline of the history of science, with a few notable exceptions, is able to trace the historical link between the traditional sciences and the modern ones but is not capable of unraveling their symbolic and metaphysical significance precisely because of its own philosophical limitations and its totally secularized conception of knowledge. On the difference between traditional and modern science see R. Guénon, “Sacred and Profane Science,” in his Crisis of the Modern World, pp. 37-50; and Nasr, “Traditional Science,” in R. Fernando (ed.), vol. dedicated to A. K. Coomaraswamy (in press).

5. On the theme of seeing the Divine Presence in all things see Schuon, “Seeing God Everywhere,” in his Gnosis, Divine Wisdom, pp. 106-21.

6. Theophany, literally, “to show God,” does not mean the incarnation of God in things but the reflection of the Divinity in the mirror of created forms.

7.

8. We have developed this idea extensively in our various works on the Islamic sciences esp. An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, prologue; Science and Civilization in Islam, p. 24; and Ideals and Realities of Islam, pp. 54ff.

9. According to a famous Persian Sufi poem, Upon the face of every green leaf is inscribed For the people of perspicacity, the wisdom of the Creator.

10. On the spiritual significance of the identification of the American Indian with the spirit of a particular animal see J. Brown, The Sacred Pipe, Brown, Okla., 1967, esp. pp. 44ff., “Crying for a Vision”; C. Martin, Keepers of the Game, Los Angeles, 1980; A. I. Hallowell, “Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere,” American Anthropologist 28/1 (1926): 1-175; and Artscanada nos. 184-87 (Dec. 1973-Jan. 1974), which contains much documentation of interest concerning the relation between American Indians and the animal world.

11. This does not mean that the significance of miracles is to be denied or belittled in any way. Even Islam, which emphasizes the order in the universe as the most evident proof of the power and wisdom of the One, asserts that there cannot be prophecy without miracles (i‘jaz), which in fact occupies an important position in Islamic theological discussions.

12. For the meaning of the Shari‘ah and its significance for Muslims seeNasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, chap. 4.

13. Works on Islamic natural history take this practically for granted; in Arabic various species are often referred to as ummah which means a religious community bound by a particular Divine Law such as the ummah of Islam or Judaism. On the spiritual meaning of the animal kingdom having its own laws and religious significance see Ikhwan al-Safa’, Der Streit zwischen Mensch und Tier, trans. F. Dieterici, 1969, 1969; and into English by J. Platts as Dispute between Man and the Animals, London, 1869.

14. See al-Farabı, Idées des habitants de la cite vertueuse, trans. R. P. Janssen, Cairo, 1949. An English translation with commentary and annotations was completed by R.Walzer before his death and is to be published soon by the Oxford University Press.

15. The Ash‘arites reject the idea of the “nature” of things and laws relating to these “natures.” But they do so in the name of an all-embracing voluntarism which transforms these “laws” into the direct expressions of the Will of God. Although this kind of totalitarian voluntarism is opposed to the sapiential perspective which is based on the integral nature of the Godhead including both His Wisdom and Power and not just His Power or Will, as far as the present argument is concerned, even the Ash‘arite position would be included by the thesis here presented. They, too, like other schools of Islamic thought, see all laws governing both the human and the nonhuman world as expressions of the Divine Will even if they do not distinguish between what God wills and what reflects His Nature which cannot not be.

16. On the metaphysical relation between a particular being and the milieu in which it exists see Guénon, Les États multiples de l’être.

17. On the chain of being see the still valuablework ofA. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge, Mass., 1961.

18. For Islamic sources on the chain of being (maratib al-mawjudat) see Nasr, Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, pp. 202ff.

19. On the “Five Divine Presences” see F. Schuon, Dimensions of Islam, pp. 142-58.

20. The last three worlds have their own subdivisions, the malakut including also the lower angels, and being identified with the soul which has the possibility of journeying to and through the other realms or presences.

21. There is as yet no exhaustive work which would embrace all the different kinds of cosmology developed in Islamic thought. We have dealt with some of the most important ones in our Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines.

It should be remembered that in Islam as in other traditions the whole of cosmology has also been expounded in terms of music since traditional music has a cosmic dimension and corresponds to the structure, rhythms, and modalities of the cosmos. That is why traditional sciences of music emphasize so much the cosmic and metacosmic correspondences of musical modes, melodies, and rhythms.

On the correspondence between music and the cosmos in Islam see R. D’Erlanger, La Musiaue arabe, 5 vols., Paris, 1930-1939; N. Caron and D. Safvat, Les Traditions musicales, vol. 2, Iran, Paris, 1966; Ibn ‘Alı al-Katib, La Perfection des connaissances musicales, trans. A. Shiloah, Paris, 1972; A. Shiloah, “L’Epître sur la musique des Ikhwan al-Safa,”; Revue des Études Islamiques, 1965, pp. 125-62, and 1967, pp. 159-93; and J. During, “Elements spirituels dans la musique traditionnelle iranienne contemporaine,” Sophia Perennis 1/2 (1975): 129-54 (which deals with the spiritual and initiatic rather than cosmological aspect of traditional music).

See also the classical work of A. Daniélou, Introduction to the Study of Musical Scales, London, 1943, which deals with the metaphysical and cosmological foundations of Indian music. This correspondence between cosmology and music is to be found wherever traditional music has survived along with the intellectual and spiritual tradition which has given birth to it.

22. On various cosmologies in the ancient world see C. Blacker and M. Loewe (eds.), Ancient Cosmologies, London, 1975. The essays in this volume having been written by different authors, although all informative, do not all possess the same point of view as far as their evaluation of the meaning of the traditional cosmological schemes is concerned.

23. On the gnostic journey through the cosmos in the Islamic tradition see Nasr, Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, chap. 15.

24. Many traditional myths deal with the precarious and dangerous act of escaping from the prison of cosmic existence considered in its aspect of limitation. See, for example, Coomaraswamy, “Symplygades,” in Lipsey (ed.), Coomaraswamy, vol. 1, pp. 521-44.

25. Some traditions envisage this labyrinth as so many dangerous mountains and valleys, dark forests and the like. The journey of Dante up the mountain of purgatory is a symbol of the journey through the cosmos seen as a mountain, a symbolism also found in ‘Attar’s Conference of the Birds (Mantiq al-t.ayr) and in many other traditions. The symbolism of the cosmic mountain (the Mount Meru of Hinduism, Alborz of the Zoroastrians, the Qaf of Islam, etc.) is one of the most universal symbols to be found in various traditions. On the symbolism of mountain climbing as related to journeying through the cosmos see M. Pallis, “The Way and the Mountain,” in his The Way and the Mountain, pp.13-35.

26. The maze of such cathedrals as Chartres relate to this same principle and is based on exact knowledge of the traditional cosmological sciences. See K., C., and V. Critchlow, Chartre Maze, A Model of the Universe, London, 1976.

27. The Prophet of Islam has said, “Die before you die.” It is the person who has followed this injunction who is able to contemplate cosmic forms as reflections of Divine Qualities rather than opaque veils which hide the splendor of their Source.

28. This is essentially the perspective of Zen which does not mean that one can experience the Divine in things by some form of naturalism which for many Western adepts of Zen is almost a carry over from a kind of sentimental nature mysticism into the world of Zen. Such people, in a sense, wish to experience Heaven without either faith in God or virtue which would qualify a being for the paradisal state, for what is the contemplation of natural forms in divinis except an experience of the paradisal state? In any case, there is no such thing as naturalmysticism from the traditional point of view; in practice man cannot experience God as the immanent before experiencing Him as the transcendent, however these concepts are translated in different traditional languages. One could also say that man can realize the identity of nirvana with samsara provided he has already gone beyond samsara and reached nirvana.

29. That is why tajallı is translated as theophany. In his incomparable Gulshan-i raz, Shabistarı says,

Non-being is a mirror, the world the image [of the Universal Man], and man

Is the eye of the image, in which the person is hidden.

See Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam, p. 345.

30. We are not using matter here in its Aristotelian but in its everyday sense as the “stuff” or “substance” of which things are made.

31. During the last few years much interest has been shown in the West in the rediscovery of the meaning of sacred geometry. See, for example, K. Critchlow, Time Stands Still; idem, Islamic Patterns; and the various publications of the Lindesfarne Association including the Lindesfarne Letters, esp. no. 10 (1980), dealing with geometry and architecture.

32. See Proclus Lycius, The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus, on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements, trans. with commentary by Th. Taylor, London, 1792. This fundamental work elucidated by Taylor’s important commentaries, contains the basis for the understanding of the relation of geometry to first principles. Of course although geometry is an ancillary to metaphysics, it is not only an ancillary. Rather, it is one of the most important of the traditional sciences in its own right and as these sciences are related to art.

33. It is really only since the early decades of the nineteenth century that technology in theWest has become wed closely to modern science and has constituted its direct application. Before this relatively recent past, science and technology followed two very different courses with few significant reactions between them.

34. For traditional critiques of modern science see Guénon, “Sacred and Profane Science”; Schuon, Language of the Self, chap. 10; idem, In the Tracks of Buddhism, chap. 5; Lord Northbourne, Religion in the Modern World, London, 1963, esp. chap. 5; and F. Brunner, Science et réalité, Paris, 1954.

35. You’ve managed to get to a note that doesn’t exist.

36. “Modern man was not-and is not-“intelligent” enough to offer intellectual resistance to such specious suggestions as are liable to follow from contact with facts which, though natural, normally lie beyond the range of common experience;in order to combine, in one and the same consciousness, both the religious symbolism of the sky and the astronomical fact of the MilkyWay, an intelligence is required that is more than just rational, and this brings us back to the crucial problem of intellection and, as a further consequence, to the problem of gnosis and esoterism.. . Howbeit, the tragic dilemma of the modern mind results from the fact that the majority of men are not capable of grasping a priori the compatibility of the symbolic expressions of tradition with the material observations of science; these observations incite modern man to want to understand the ‘why and where’ of all things, but he wishes this ‘wherefore’ to remain as external and easy as scientific phenomena themselves, or in other words, he wants all the answers to be on the level of his own experiences: and as these are purely material ones, his consciousness closes itself in advance against all that might transcend them.” Schuon, Language of the Self, pp. 226-27.

37. You’ve managed to get to a note that doesn’t exist.

38. The attraction toward Oriental teachings about nature alluded to above is related to this same phenomenon. On the interest of contemporary physics in the traditional esoteric and mystical views of the universe see M. Talbot, Mysticism and the New Physics, New York, 1981.

39. “L’Ame du Monde est donc bien typiftée par la Vièrge Marie du Christianisme.” J. Brun, “Qu’est devenu L’Ame due Monde?” Cahiers de l’Université Saint Jean de Jérusalem, no. 6, Le Combat pour l’Ame du Monde, Paris, 1980, pp. 164-65. This essay traces the steps by which the world as seen by modern man lost its soul.

On the relation of the Virgin Mary to theWorld Soul see the article of G. Durand, “La Vièrge Marie et l’Ame du Monde,” in the same volume, pp. 135-67.

40. For example, among all the later Islamic philosophers who followed the Avicennan and Suhrawardian cosmologies such asQad.ı Sa‘ıdQummı, whose Glosses upon the “Theology of Aristotle”, containing an elaborate discussion of this subject, has been analyzed by C. Jambet in his “L’Ame du Monde et l’amour sophianique,” in Cahiers de l’Université Saint Jean de Jérusalem, no. 6, Le Combat pour l’Ame du Monde, pp. 52ff.

41. On the meaning of these cities which appear in folk tales, poetry such as that of Niz.amı as well as texts of philosophy and metaphysics see Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 2, p. 59.

42. It is the allure of empiricism which draws so many people to various kinds of spiritualism, magnetism, occultism, etc., where the supernatural is “proven” through phenomenal evidence. Although certain experiments in parapsychology have certainly demonstrated that there is more to reality than meets the eye and that the so-called scientific world view of a limited material-energy complex as the ultimate ground of all that constitutes reality cannot be sustained, no phenomenal evidence can prove the reality of the Spirit which lies beyond all phenomena and belongs to the realm of the noumena.

43. See his Universe of Experience, New York, 1974.

44. His numerous articles and essays in the Eranos-Jahrbuch over the years comprise a major statement of a nonreductionist “philosophy of nature” by a contemporary biologist. On Portmann see also M. Grene, Approaches to a Philosophical Biology, New York, 1965.

For a philosophy of science opposed to reductionism see also the works of M. Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, New York, 1966; Science, Faith and Society, London, 1946; and Knowing and Being, London, 1969. His works have attracted during the past few years the attention of many students of science opposed to the reductionism inherent in the current scientific world view.

45. During the past few years much activity has taken place in Germany to criticize the segmented approach of modern science in the name of a more wholistic way of studying nature. There is even a review devoted to this subject with numerous articles by both scientists and philosophers who deal with this theme and its ramifications. See the Zeitschrift für Ganzheitsforschung (1957-).

On the criticism of modern science from this perspective see also W. Heitler, Naturphilosophische Streifzüge, Braunschweig, 1970; and his Der Mensch und die naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnis, Braunschweig, 1970.

46. “Fondée non pas sur la considération de Dieu, mais sur une technique particulière, la science moderne cache Dieu et l’enveloppe au bien de s’ouvrir à la connaissance universelle et transcendante. . ; elle n’est proprement ni divine ni révélatrice de Dieu et ne peut definir la réalité véritable du monde.” F. Brunner, Science et réalité, p, 205. This work contains one of the most thorough intellectual criticisms of modern science by a contemporary European philosopher.

47. “Symbolic thought is gnostic, while scientific thought is agnostic; it believes that ‘two and two make four’ or it believes only what it sees, which amounts to the same thing.” G. Durand, On the Disfiguration of the Image of Man in the West, Ipswich, U.K., 1977, p. 15.

48. St. Bonaventure could write concerning the beauties of nature as the reflection of God’s beauty and wisdom:

Whoever, therefore, is not enlightened

by such splendor of created things

is blind;

whoever is not awakened by such outcries

is deaf;

whoever does not praise God because of all these effects

is dumb;

whoever does not discover the First Principle from such clear signs

is a fool.

From E. Cousins (trans.), Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey unto God, p. 67. But it seems that many of those who followed him after the Middle Ages, even among theologians dominated to a great extent by nominalism, would have been classified by him according to the above definitions as blind, deaf, dumb, or fools.

49. “Il nous semble que la pensée occidentale, traditionnelle ou moderne, religieuse ou atftée, propose de la Nature une notion ‘mutilée’ ou limitée, corrélative d’une attitude passionnelle ou polémique.” G. Vallin, “Nature intégrate et Nature mutitée,” Revue philosophique, no. 1 (Jan.-Mars 1974): 77.

50. “La pensée occidentale nous offre, notamment dans le Néoplatonisme, dans l’Hermétisme ou l’alchimie, ou chez un Scot Erigène, une approache ou un équivalent de ces que nous proposons d’appeler la ‘Nature intégral’; mais c’est dans le cadre de la pensée orientale, et notamment de la métaphysique hindouiste du Védanta que cette ‘structure’ à la fois cosmologique et théologique nous paraît présenter toute son ampleur et sa richesse.” Ibid., p. 84.

We have also dealt with this question in our Man and Nature.

51. “C’est pourquoi il faut qu’il existe une autre science que la science moderne. Cet autre type de connaissance du monde n’exclut pas la science sous sa forme actuelle, si l’on envisage la perfection pour qui sous-tend et justifie dans une certaine mesure la pensée technique elle-même: la science véritable laisse subsister la science moderne comme une manifestation possible de l’esprit en nous.” Brunner, op. cit., p. 208-9.

52. Through such a science “l’ordre sensible, après celui de l’ême, exprime finalement l’ordre de l’intelligence auquel appartiennent les lois suprêmes de la production du monde, de la vie spirituelle et du retour des êtres à Dieu.” Brunner, op. cit., p. 215.

53. It is important to note that the founders of the discipline of the history of science, who were all either outstanding historians of thought or philosophers of science, were, with the exception of the much neglected P. Duhem, positivists. As a result, an invisible positivist air still dominates the minds of the scholars of this discipline despite several important exceptions such as A. Koyré, G. Di Santillana and, among the younger generation, N. Sivan and A. Debus. What is of special interest is that this positivism becomes rather aggressive when the question of the Oriental sciences and their metaphysical significance comes to the fore. That is why so few studies of the Oriental sciences which would reveal their significance as being anything more than quaint errors on the path of human progress have come out of those dominated by the tacit positivism of this discipline, no matter how learned they might be. S. Jaki in his The Road of Science and the Ways to God, Chicago, 1978, has referred to this positivism in connection with its neglect of the role of Christian elements such as a Creator whose will rules over an orderly universe. Although we do not agree with his appreciation ofWestern science as a positive

result of the particular characteristics of Christianity, we certainly share his concern for the limitations imposed upon the discipline of the history of science by the positivism of its founders.

54. The recent work, R. Ruyer, La Gnose de Princeton: des savants à la recherche d’une religion, Paris, 1974, supposedly by the group of scientists at Princeton interested in gnosis but most likely the thoughts of one person using a fictitious group, is an example of this kind of phenomenon. The thirst for sacred knowledge in the contemporary world is such that this work became popular in France where, during recent years, many pseudognostic and pseudoesoteric works by scientists have seen the light of day.

55. Traditions emphasize that this knowledge, although attainable, is not attainable by everyone because not only does it need preparation but can be taught only to the person who possesses the capability and nature to “inherit” such a knowledge. That is why some of the Muslim authorities like Sayyid Haydar Amulı refer to it as inherited knowledge (al-‘ilm al-mawruthı) which they contrast with acquired knowledge (al-‘ilm al-iktisabı). See Corbin, “Science traditionnelle et renaissance spirituelle,” Cahiers de l’Université Saint Jean de Jérusalem 1 (1974): 39ff.

56. “Nature. . which is at the same time their sanctuary [of the American Indians ], will end by conquering this artificial and sacreligious world, for it is the Garment, the Breath, the very Hand of the Great Spirit.” Schuon, Language of the Self, p. 224.