Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Notes

1. F. Palmer, “Angelus Silesius: A Seventeenth Century Mystic,” Harvard Theological Review 11 (1918); 171-202.

2. Associated with the name of the British philosopher D. C.Williams.

3. This view is of importance for modern physics but cannot explain either the reason for our experience of time or its nature. This view has been discussed by such well-known philosophers of science as K. R. Popper, H. Reichenbach, and A. Grünbaum.

4. Such a point of view has always had supporters ranging from McTaggart to those Greek metaphysicians like Parmenides who, looking at things from the point of view of permanence or Being, denied to becoming any reality at all.

5. On works of modern philosophy, esp. the analytical school dealing with time, see the article of J. J. C. Smart on time in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 8, pp. 126-34.

6. On the Aristotelian notion of time and its medieval modifications and criticisms see H. A.Wolfson, Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle, Cambridge, Mass., 1929. As far as the concept of time among Islamic philosophers is concerned seeNasr, Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, chap. 13.

7.

Certain modern philosophers such as H. Bergson and following him the modernized Muslim poet and philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal, have made a clear distinction between external time always measured by comparing spatial positions and inward or subjective time which Bergson calls duration. But from the traditional point of view this distinction is hardly new.

8. See F. Schuon, Du Divin à l’humain.

9. “Everything God made six thousand years ago and more when He made the world, God makes now instantly (alzemâle). . He makes the world and all things in this present Now (gegen würtig nû).” Eckhart, quoted from the Pfeiffer edition by A. K. Coomaraswamy, Time and Eternity, p. 117. This work is an amazing study replete with numerous quotations from the Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Islamic traditions on the metaphysics of time and eternity with special emphasis upon the present now in its relation to eternity.

10. This well-known dictum means that the Sufi lives in the eternal present which is the only access to the Eternal. It is also an allusion to the Sufi practice of dhikr or invocation which is related to the eternal present and which transforms, sanctifies, and delivers man by saving him from both daydreaming about the future or the past and by facing Reality which resides in the present, the present that experimentally is alone real.

11. “Il punto a cui rutti li tempi son presenti” (Paradiso, 17.17-18).

12. Quoted by Coomaraswamy in Time and Eternity, pp. 43-44.

13. The Gulshan-i rÒz says

The Powerful One who in a blinking of an eye

Brought the two worlds into being through the k and n of kun

(the imperative of the verb “to be” in reference to Quran XXXVI; 82; see discussion in chap. 4, n. 14 above).

14. Nimisa, hence naimis.iyah. or “people of the moment” mentioned in the Chandogya Upanishad which corresponds almost exactly to the Sufi ibn al-waqt.

15. Variations of the myth of the “sleepers of the cave” abound among nearly all peoples. For the spiritual significance of this myth and the Quranic account as they affect the relation between Islam and Christianity see L. Massignon, “Recherche sur la valeur eschatologique de la Légende des VII Dormants chez les musulmans,” Actes 20e Congrès International des Orientalists, 1938, pp. 302-3; and Les Sept dormants d’Éphèse (Ahl al-kahf ) en Islam et en Chrétienteé, 3 vols., avec le concours d’Emile Dermenghem, Paris, 1955-57.

16. We do not of course want to deny other psychological factors which facilitate the rapid passage of time including dispersions of all kinds. But it is noteworthy to remember that even in such cases the person in question experiences a rapid passage of time only if he is enjoying the activity in question, even if that act be spiritually worthless or even harmful. No one sitting on a needle experiences the rapid passage of time unless he is an ascetic who no longer feels the pain and whose consciousness is not associated with the negative character of that sensation, even if physiologically one would expect him to experience the pain, 17. The Catholic prayer asking for the blessings and mercy of the Virgin Mary now and at the moment of death indicates clearly the rapport between these two moments.

18. The three terms sarmad, azal, and abad refer to the same reality, namely, the Eternal, but under three different rapports: sarmad being eternity in itself, abad eternity with respect to what stands “in front of” the present moment of experience, and azal what stands behind and before this moment. Azal is related to the Eternal from which man has come and abad to the Eternal to which he shall journey after death, while from the point of view of eternity itself there is no before or after, all being sarmad.

19. Hafiz. says,

May the pre-eternal [azal] grace be the guide of Hafiz,

20. See R. C, Zaehner, Zurvan, a Zoroastrian Dilemma, Oxford, 1955.

21. Quoted in Coomaraswamy, Time and Eternity, p. 15, where he has dealt fully with the distinction between time and Time, the second being none other than eternity,

22.Yikı bud yikı nabud; ghayr az khuda hıchkı nabud.

23. This doctrine has been expounded and explained in numerous works of both a traditional and nontraditional character during the past half century. See, for example, Guénon, Formes traditionnelles et cycles cosmiques, Paris, 1970; and M, Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (also published as Cosmos and History), trans. W. Trask, New York, 1974.

24. Considered by some to be 4,320,000,000 years.

25. This point is emphasized by Guénon in many of his works but overlooked by M. Eliade in his otherwise masterly study Cosmos and History or The Myth of Eternal Return.

26. On the symbolism of the hourglass see F. Schuon, “Some Observations on the Symbolism of the Hourglass,” in his Logic and Transcendence, pp, 165-72.

27. On the Zoroastrian concept of history and the 12,000 year period which ends with the victory of light over darkness see A. V. Jackson, Zoroastrian Studies, New York, 1938, pp. 110-15; and H. S. Nyberg, “Questions de cosmogonie et de cosmologie mazdéene,” Journal Asiatique 219 (1929): 2ff.

28. Many episodes of sacred history are found in both the Bible and the Quran although not always in the same versions. But the Quran seems to be much more interested in the transhistorical significance of these events for the soul of man and his entelechy rather than the understanding of God’s will in history or historical events themselves. There is in fact a singular lack of concern with time as a dimension of reality as it is found even in traditionalWestern thought of the type associated with St. Augustine.

29. According to ahadıth, “This world is the cultivating field for the other world,”

that is, the fruit of man’s actions in this world affect the state of his soul in the hereafter. It is perfectly possible to take the life of this world very seriously as it concerns man’s final end without taking history as seriously as most Western thinkers have taken it. The case of Islam is a perfect case in point that there are not just two possibilities as many modern scholars claim, either the West taking history and this world seriously or the Oriental, and esp. Hindu, view for which history is of no consequence. Such a reductionist view fails to distinguish between this world as the cultivating ground for eternity and history as determining the nature of Reality or affecting it in some final and fundamental way.

30. See Abu Bakr Siraj al-Dın, “The Islamic and Christian Conceptions of the March of Time,” The Islamic Quarterly 1 (1954): 179-93.

31. “The characteristic of the traditional solution of the space-time problem is that reality is both in and out of space, both in and out of time.” W. Urban, The Intelligible World, Metaphysics and Value, New York, 1929, p. 270.

32. This famous work opposed the Biblical doctrine of the creation of the world ex nihilo to the Greek doctrine of the “eternity” of the world and became the source and beginning for numerous discussions and treatises on the subject which in Islamic philosophy is called al-h. uduh tva’l-qidam. But the truth of this matter was not to be exhausted by its reduction to one of these categories, hence the incessant debate about the meaning of ex nihilo itself among Muslim, Jewish, and Christian authors to which Wolfson has devoted many studies, some of the most important of which have been assembled in his Essays in the History of Philosophy and Religion.

33. One of the most thorough philosophical discussions of this issue in Islamic philosophy during the past few decades is that of ‘Allamah Taba taba’ı in his Us.ul-i falsafah wa rawish-i ri’alizm, 5 vols., Qum, 1332-50 (A. H., solar).

34. Jalal al-Dın Rumı discusses the theme of huduth and qidam in both his poetical and prose works of which one of the most astonishing is in the Fıhi ma fıhi. See Discourses of Rumi, trans. A. J. Arberry, London, 1961, pp. 149-50.

35. That is why Coomaraswamy in his Time and Eternity deals so extensively with atomism, Hindu, Buddhist, and Islamic. He also discusses in detail why the now is ever-present and yet not “part” of time.

36. Lawa’ih, trans. E. H. Whinfield and M. M. Kazvını, London, 1978, pp. 42-45.

37. On the renewal of creation in Sufism see T. Izutsu, “The Concept of Perpetual Creation in Islamic Mysticism and Zen Buddhism,” in Nasr (ed.), Mélanges offerts à Henry Corbin, pp. 115-48; idem, “Creation and the Timeless Order of Things; A Study in the Mystical Philosophy of ‘Ayn al-Qud.at,” Philosophical Forum, no. 4 (1972): 124-40. We have also dealt with this issue in Science and Civilization in Islam, esp. chap. 13; and Burckhardt, Introduction to Sufi Doctrine, chap. 10.

38. If all of the ways in which Christianity has emphasized the significance of history be considered, even Judaism would have to be excluded leaving Christianity as the only religion with such a particular attitude toward history.

39. The Christian idea of kairos, a welcome time, the right and proper time, or the fullness of time, mentioned in the Gospel of Luke, contains the seed of that further theological elaboration of the meaning of history which is of concern here.

40. It is amazing how so many young people of the present day lack an awareness of or interest in history, seeking to live as if they had no history.

41. We use the term evolution here to mean the belief that through natural agencies and processes one species is transformed into another and not adaptations, modifications, and changes which do occur within a particular species in adapting itself to a changed set of natural conditions. Some scientists in fact distinguish between transformism implying change of one species into another and evolution as the biological transformations within a species. See M. Vernet, Vernet contre Teilhard de Chardin, Paris, 1965 p. 30. If we use evolution in the sense of transformism in biology it is because it contains a more general philosophical meaning outside the domain of biology not to be found in the more restricted term transformism.

42. “For in its turn Evolution has become the intolerant religion of nearly all educated Western men. It dominates their thinking, their speech and the hopes of their civilization.” E. Shute, Flaws in the Theory of Evolution, Nutley, N.J., 1976, p. 228.

43. In the late nineteenth century the president of the American Association and an avowed defender of “the scientific method,” Professor Marsh, said, “I need offer no argument for evolution, since to doubt evolution is to doubt science, and science is only another name for truth.” Quoted in D. Dewar, Difficulties of the Evolution Theory, London, 1931, p. 3. One wonders by what definition of science such a statement, which is so typical when the question of evolution is discussed, can be called scientific.

44. On this theme see Coomaraswamy, “Gradation, Evolution and Reincarnation,” in his Bugbear of Literacy, chap. 7. See also his Time and Eternity, pp.19-20, where he discusses traditional doctrine of gradation and the “seminal reason” of St. Augustine.

45. See, for example, al-Bırunı, Kitab al-jamahir fı ma‘rifat al-jawahir, Hyderabad, 1935, p. 80. This has led certain Western scholars to claim that such Muslim scientists were

exponents of Darwinism before Darwin. See J. Z. Wilczynski, “On the Presumed Darwinism of Alberuni Eight Hundred Years before Darwin,” Isis 50 (Dec. 1959): 459-66, which follows the earlier studies of Fr. Dieterici and others. But as we have sought to show in our Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, pp. 147-48, and elsewhere, the Muslim sources are referring to the traditional theory of gradation rather than the Darwinian theory of evolution.

46. This type of criticism has been developed extensively by A. E. Wilder Smith, who is a biochemist, pharmacologist, and mathematician. See his Man’s Origin, Man’s Destiny, Wheaton, 111., 1968; A Basis for a New Biology, Stuttgart, 1976;and Herkunft und Zukunft des Menschen, Basel, 1966.

47. An extensive argument concerning the difference between physical energy associated with inert matter and vital energy associated with living forms is given by M. Vernet in his La Grande illusion de Teilhard de Chardin, Paris, 1964.

48. See his Guide for the Perplexed, p. 133, where Schumacher writes, “Evolutionism is not science; it is science fiction, even a kind of hoax.”

49. Among the growing number of scientific works critical of the theory of evolution one can mention D, Dewar, The Transformist Illusion, Murfreesboro, 1955; his already cited Difficulties of the Evolution Theory; Shute, op. cit.; L. Bounoure, Déterminisme et finalité, Paris, 1957; E. L. Grant-Watson, Nature Abounding, London, 1941; and G. Sermonti and R. Fondi, Dopo Darwin, Milan, 1980.

During the past few years a number of works against the Darwinian theory of evolution have appeared from specifically Christian circles but from the scientific and not just theological or religious point of view. See, for example, D. Gish, Evolution, the Fossils Say No, San Diego, Calif., 1980; B. Davidheiser, Evolution and Christian Faith, Phillpsburg, N.J., 1978; H. Hiebert, Evolution: Its Collapse in View?. Beaveriedge, Alberta, Canada, 1979; and H. M. Morris, The Twilight of Evolution, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1978. Most of these works base the religious aspect of their criticism solely upon Christian sources without reference to other traditions, but they also all rely upon scientific criticism of the theory of evolution and not just “Biblical evidence”.

50. “Some biologists appreciate the fact that the lack of fossils intermediate between the great groups requires explanation unless the doctrine of evolution in any of its present forms is to be abandoned.” Dewar, Difficulties of Evolution Theory, p. 141.

51. Ibid., pp. 142ff.

52. In the case of plants, “geological problems raised by paleo-botany are so great that a botanist must question the evolutionary sequence of plant forms.” Shute, op. cit., p. 14.

53. Referring to the lack of a trace of life in the pre-Cambrian, Shute writes, “These despairing suggestions point up the remarkable dilemma of the evolutionist who leans on Palaeontology for its customary support. What greater degree of disproof could Palaeontology provide? Millions of years of ‘NO’ is indeed a resounding ‘NO’!” Shute, op. cit., p. 6.

54. “Every text on Evolution or on Biology is replete with illustrations of adaptation. I do not wish to repeat too many of these, but to adduce a few of the little-known and more extraordinary adaptations-adaptations so complex and refined that evolutionary theory must be very hard pressed to explain them.

The notion of a designing, all-wise Creator fits them much better.” Shute, Flam in the Theory of Evolution, pp. 122-23.

55. One of the leading biologists of France, J. Rostand, writes, “The world postulated by transformism is a fairy world, phantasmagoric, surrealistic. The chief point, to which one always returns, is that we have never been present even in a small way at one authentic phenomenon of evolution.” Yet he adds, “I firmly believe-because I see no means of doing otherwise-that mammals have come from lizards, and lizards from fish; but when I declare and when 1 think such a thing, I try not to avoid seeing its indigestible enormity and I prefer to leave vague the origin of these scandalous metamorphoses rather than add to their improbability that of a ludicrous interpretation.” Quoted in Burckhardt, op.at, p. 143.

56. It is amazing that two of the leading biologists of Italy should write at the end of a major criticism of Darwinism, “Il risultato a cui crediamo di dover condurre non púo essere, pertanto, che il sequente: la biologia non ricaverà alcun vantaggio nel sequire gli orientamenti di Lamarck, di Darwin e degli iperdarwinisti moderni; al contrario, essa dere

allontanarsi quanto prima della strettoie e dai vicoli ciechi del mito evoluzionistico, per riprendere il suo cammino sicuro lungo le strade aperte e fuminose della Tradizione.” G. Sermonti and R.

Fondi, Dopo Darwin, pp. 334-35. This work contains a wealth of scientific arguments drawn all the way from biochemistry through paleontology against the evolutionary theory of Darwin.

57. “The speculations of Teilhard de Chardin provide a striking example of a theology that has succumbed to microscopes and telescopes, to machines and to their philosophical and social consequences, a ‘fall’ that would have been unthinkable had there been here the slightest direct intellective knowledge of the immaterial realities. The ‘inhuman’ side of the doctrine in question is highly significant.” Schuon, Understanding Islam, p. 32.

58. On ´Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin and their “evolutionary religion” see R. C. Zaehner, Evolution in Religion: A Study in ´Sri Aurobindo and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Oxford, 1971; also his Matter and Spirit, Their Convergence in Eastern Religions, Marx, and Teilhard de Chardin, New York, 1963, which is a study of religion from the Teilhardian perspective. As Zaehner points out, in the case of both ´Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin, there is a passionate belief in evolution and the salvation of the whole of humanity in the Marxist sense along with the “mystical” vision of the spiritual world which Zaehner interprets as a new synthesis but which from the traditional point of view cannot but be the eclipse of  Atman by maya to such a degree that it can only occur in the deep twilight of a human cycle before the blinding Sun of the Self lifts once again all veils of illusion, evaporates all clouds of doubt, and melts all those idols of perversion and inversion of the truth.

59. See P. Chanchard, Man and Cosmos-Scientific Phenomenology in Teilhard de Chardin, New York, 1965, whose chap. 8 is entitled “The Resacralization of the ProfaneWorld.” He writes, “Here is the real meaning of Teilhard’s work … It is a matter of resacralizing a profane world by giving even the profane its own sacred character” (p. 170).

60. On Teilhard de Chardin see P. Smulders, Theologie und Evolution, Versuch über Teilhard de Chardin, Essen, 1963; E. Rideau, Teilhard de Chardin: a Guide to His Thought, trans. R. Hague, London, 1967; H. de Lubac, The Eternal Feminine, trans. R. Hague, London, 1971; H. de Lubac, The Faith of Teilhard de Chardin, trans. R. Hague, London, 1965; C. Cuénot, Teilhard de Chardin et la pensée catholique, Paris, 1965; and M. Bar-thélemy-Madaule, Bergson et Teilhard de Chardin, Paris, 1963. There is a veritable flood of writings on him mostly by admirers or apologists while the most acute criticisms of a scientific nature have come from such French scientists as M. Vernet.

61. “The modern psyche is dominated by time, matter, change and is relatively blind to space, Substance and Eternity. To oppose one’s thoughts to the Theory of Evolution is to think in a way which is contrary to the common tendency of the modern psyche.” M. Negus, “Reactions to the Theory of Evolution,” in Studies in Comparative Religion, Summer-Autumn 1978, p. 191.

62. Teilhard’s type of pseudospiritual evolutionism could not in fact have gained wide support without that psychological attitude that has been already molded by the influence of the ideas of progress and evolution.

63. This being metaphysically a caricature and parody of “O Holy Mother,” for the Virgin represents esoterically the maternal and expansive element of the Divine, the feminine materia in divinis which generates the Logos.

64. From his L’Énergie humaine, Paris, 1962, p. 74 and p. 125. On Teilhardian idolatry see K. Almquist, “Aspects of Teilhardian Idolatry,” Studies in Comparative Religion, Summer-Autumn, 1978, pp. 195-203.

65. The prevalent error of orientalists in identifying such doctrines as wahdat alwuj ud in Sufism with pantheism originates from the same error that lies at the origin of Teilhardian pantheism, except that the orientalists at least do not pretend to speak for Catholic theology.

66. “All errors concerning the world and God consist either in a ‘naturalistic’ denial of the discontinuity and so also of transcendence-whereas it is on the basis of this transcendence that the whole edifice of science should have been raised-or else in a failure to understand the metaphysical and ‘descending’ continuity which in no way abolishes the discontinuity starting from the relative.” Schuon, Understanding Islam, pp. 108-9.

67. See Almquist, op. cit., p. 201, where the spiritual substance which through coagulation finally produces matter is discussed in the light of the primacy of consciousness and subjectivity with which all knowing of necessity begins.

68. Quoted in Almquist, op. cit., pp. 202-3.

69. “Teilhard n’était pas un biologiste; la physiologie géneérale en particulier lui était étrangère. Il en résulte que les déductions qu’il tire des perspectives qu’il prend sur le plan philosophique et religieux se trouvent faussées, dès lors que les bases elles-mêmes sur lesquelles il entendait se fonder, s’effondrent.” Vernet, La Grande illusion de Teilhard de Chardin, p. 107.

70. On finality in this sense see L. Bounoure, Déterminisme et finalité.

71. “Certains font honneur à Teilhard d’avoir coçcu une unité cosmique; or, cette unité est fausse. Tout réquire à une seule et même énergie physique d’où découleraient tous les phénomènes, selon des processus purement matériels, ne répond pas, nous venons de le voir, à la realité du monde et de la vie. Telle a été l’immense illusion de Teilhard.” Vernet, op. cit., p. 123.

72. “La nature est plus platonicienne que ne le croit le P. Teilhard et pas du tout marxiste.” R. Johannet, introd. to Vernet contre Teilhard de Chardin, p. 22, n. 2, 73. T. Burckhardt, “Cosmology and Modern Science,” in J. Needleman (ed.), The Sword of Gnosis, p. 153.

74. The doctrine of transubstantial motion presents, within the cadre of traditional teachings, one of the most systematically exposed and logically appealing formulations of the meaning of change in the light of permanence. It is associated with the school of Sadr al-Dın Shırazı, who instead of limiting motion to the four accidents of quality, quantity, position, and place as did the Peripatetics, also accepts motion in the category of substance without in any way denying the reality of the immutable archetypes or essences. For an explanation of this difficult doctrine see the articles of Sayyid Abu’l-H. asan Qazwını and ‘Allamah T.abataba’ı in S. H. Nasr (ed.), Mulla Sadra Commemoration Volume, Tehran, 1380 (A. H., solar); also, S. H. Nasr, Islamic Life and Thought, pt. 3, pp. 158ff.;and idem, Sadr al-Dın Shırazı, pp. 932-61.

75. It is this fact that has caused certain modern Marxists in the Islamic world to claim Mawlana Jalal al-Dın Rumı as their ancestor, misinterpreting completely the dialectic of RumÒ with its vertical and transcendent dimension to make it conform to the Hegelian-Marxist one.

76. It is interesting to note that if such movements in Hinduism and Christianity have resulted in figures like ´Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin, in Buddhism and Islam they have given rise to that unholy wedding of ideas taken from these religions and Marxism by those who have called themselves Buddhist Marxists and Islamic Marxists. The political consequences of the thought of the first group should at least cause a moment of pause for those who hoist the banner of Islamic Marxism.

77. For example, in Sufism certain authorities distinguish between external time (zamÒn-i afaqı, literally “time of the horizons”) and inward time (zaman-i anfus ı, literally “time of the souls”) in reference to the Quranic verse already cited concerning the manifestation of the portents (ayat) of God “upon the horizons (afaq) and within themselves (anfus).” They also state that each world through which the spiritual adept journeys has its own “time.” On zaman-i afaqı and zaman-i anfusı see H. Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 1, pp. 177ff.

78. No exposition of traditional doctrines would be complete without a discussion of eschatology which constitutes an essential teaching of every religion and whose full significance can only be grasped through the esoteric dimension of tradition and the scientia sacra which provides the necessary metaphysical knowledge for the treatment of the subject. The bewildering complexity of eschatological realities which lie beyond the ken of man’s earthly imagination can only be grasped through the revealed truths as they are elucidated and elaborated by an intelligence imbued with the sense of the sacred, but even in this case it is not possible to say the last word about them.

Trans. R. A. Nicholson, in Selected Poems from the Dıvanı Shamsi Tabrız, Cambridge, 1898, pp. 141-43 (revised).

It is so significant that Zaehner in his already citedwork on Teilhard de Chardin and ´Sri Aurobindo quotes from this poem as an affirmation of the evolution of spirit from matter,

whereas this whole poem is about the death of the saint himself, that is Rumı, and the miracle of the return of the purified and sanctified soul which has itself descended from the realm of the Eternal into the stream of becoming back to the abode of the Beloved.

79.