Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Notes

1. On the meaning of this term see Nasr, Islamic Science-An Illustrated Study, London, 1976, p. 14.

2. “Toute connaissance est, par définition, celle de la Réalité absolue; c’est à dire que la Réalité est l’objet nécessaire, unique, essentiel de toute connaissance possible.” Schuon, L’Oeil du coeur, p. 20.

3. Islamic as well as Jewish and Christian philosophers of the medieval period distinguished between the Active Intellect (al-‘aql al-fa“al, intellectus agens, hasekhel hapo’et) which is the origin of knowledge and the potential or “material” intellect (al-‘aql al-hayulanı, intellectus materialis, ha-sekhel ha-hyula’ni) which receives knowledge, and emphasized the intellectual nature of what is received by the human mind from the Divine Intellect. On the doctrine of the intellect in Islam see Ibn Sına, Le Livre des directives et remarques, trans. A. M. Goichon, Paris-Beirut, 1951, pp. 324ff; al-Farabı, Epistola sull’intelletto, trans. F. Lucchetta, Padua, 1974; F. Rahman, Prophecy in Islam, Philosophy and Orthodoxy, Chicago, 1979; and J. Jolivet, L’Intellect selon Kindı, Leiden, 1971. As for the medieval Western world in general see E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, New York, 1955; also M. Shallo, Lessons in Scholastic Philosophy, Philadelphia, 1916, pp. 264ff; and R. P. de Angelis, Conoscenza dell’individuate e conoscenza dell’universale nel XIII e XIV secolo, Rome, 1922. H. A. Wolfson has also dealt with this issue in many of his writings including The Problem of the Soul of the Spheres, Washington, 1962; Essays in the History CHAPTER 4. SCIENTIA SACRA 137 of Philosophy and Religion, ed. I. Twersky and G. H. Williams, Cambridge, Mass., 1979; Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Cambridge, Mass., 1968; Christianity and Islam, Cambridge, 1948; and “Extradeical and Intradeical Interpretations of Platonic Ideas,” Journal of the History of Ideas 22/1 (Jan.-March 1961): 3-32.

4. The Platonic view which sees knowledge descending from the realm of the “ideas” to the world, or from the Principle to manifestation, is more akin to the sapiential perspective than the Aristotelian one which moves from manifestation to the Principle or from physics to metaphysics.

5. On the distinction between metaphysics and profane philosophy see Guénon, Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines, pp. 108ff; and idem, “Oriental Metaphysics,” in Needleman (ed.), Sword of Gnosis, pp. 40-56.

6. This issue has been discussed by T. Izutsu, among others, in his The Concept and Reality of Existence, Tokyo, 1971; also his Unicité de l’existence et création perpétuelle en mystique islamique, Paris, 1980.

7. The service rendered by traditional authors to French, English, and German, the primary languages employed by them, in reviving them as languages for metaphysical discourse and in resuscitating their symbolic quality is the very reverse of the process being carried out by many modern analytical philosophers and positivists to cleanse European languages of their metaphysical content, reducing them to unidimensional languages reflecting the unidimensional minds which use such forms of language.

The concern of certain traditional authors with etymology and the revival of the significance of the root meaning of words is closely linked with this need to bring to the fore once again the symbolic possibilities hidden in the very structure of words which were once used by human beings who lived in the world of the sacred and who possessed the “symbolist spirit” which was directly reflected in their language. The still extant sacred and archaic languages are a witness to the remarkable treasury of metaphysics embedded in the very structure of language itself. In fact, in certain societies to this day metaphysics is taught as a commentary upon a sacred or archaic language, for example, in certain schools of Sufism. As far as Sufism is concerned see J. L. Michon, Le Soufi marocain Ah. mad ibn ‘Ajıba et son mi‘aj. Glossaire de la mystique musulman, Paris, 1973, especially pp. 177ff.

See also E. Zolla, Language and Cosmogony, Ipswich, U.K., 1976; and J. Canteins, Phonèmes et archetypes, Paris, 1972.

8. This element comprises the heart of all traditional doctrine while the method concerns means of attaching oneself to the Real. On the relation between doctrine and method see M. Pallis, “The Marriage ofWisdom and Method,” Studies in Comparative Religion 6/2 (1972): 78-104.

9. Some contemporary scholars such as R. Panikkar (in his Inter-religious Dialogue, New York, 1978) have contrasted the Buddhist Shunyata and the Christian Pleroma but, metaphysically speaking, the concept of Ultimate Reality as emptiness and as fullness complement each other like the yin-yang symbol and both manifest themselves in every integral tradition. Even in Christianity where the symbolism of Divine Fullness is emphasized and developed with remarkable elaboration in Franciscan theology, esp. that of St. Bonaventure, the complementary vision of emptiness appears in the teachings of the Dominican Meister Eckhart who speaks of the “desert of the Godhead.”

10. In one of the most difficult verses to comprehend from the exoteric point of view the Quran states, “He is the First and the Last; the Outward and the Inward” (LVII; 3).

11. This is the view of the Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism and of the transcendent Unity of Being (wah. dat al-wujud) in Sufism which, because of the myopia of a reason divorced from the sanctifying rays of the Intellect, have been often mistaken for pantheism. SeeNasr, Three Muslim Sages, Cambridge, Mass., 1964, pp. 104-8; also T. Burckhardt, Introduction to Sufi Doctrine, pp. 28-30.

12. See Schuon, Du Divin à l’humain, pt. 2, “Ordre divin et universel.”

13. The point of view of Manichaeism which sees the world as evil rather than good is primarily initiatic and not metaphysical, that is, it begins not with the aim of understanding the nature of things but of providing a way for escaping from the prison of material existence. Buddhism possesses a similar practical perspective but, of course, with a different metaphysical background since it belongs to a different spiritual universe.

14. Islam and Hinduism join the Judeo-Christian tradition in confirming that it was by the Word that all things were made. The Quran asserts, “Verily, when He [Allah] intends a thing, His Command is, “Be” [kun] , and it is!” (XXXVI; 82-Yusuf Ali translation). Here the imperative form of the verb “to be,” namely kun, being identified with theWord or Logos.

15. One can interpret Thomistic metaphysics which begins and ends with esse as including the notion of the Real in its completely unconditioned and undetermined sense although this term could be complemented by the term posse to denote the All-Possibility of the Divine Principle. From this point of view one can assert that despite the sensualist epistemology of St. Thomas, criticized earlier because of its denial of the possibility of intellectual intuition, Thomism contains in its dogmatic content truths of a truly metaphysical nature which reflect knowledge of a principial order and which can serve as support for metaphysical contemplation.

In Islamic philosophy such a figure as Sadr al-Dın Shırazı speaks about wujud (which means literally “being”) in such a manner that it is definitely to be identified with the Supreme Principle rather than its first self-determination. The Supreme Name of God in Islam, namely, Allah, implies also both Being and Beyond Being, both the personal Deity and the Absolute and Infinite Reality, both God and the Godhead of Meister Eckhart.

16. See the introduction of Corbin to Sadr al-Dın Shırazı, Le Livre des pénétrations métaphysiques, Tehran-Paris, 1964, where he contrasts the destiny of ontology in the Islamic world ending with Sabziwari and his like and in theWest terminating with Heidegger, showing the chasm which distinguishes the Islamic theosophical and philosophical schools from Existenz philosophy. See also Izutsu, The Concept and Reality of Existence; and Nasr, “Mulla Sadra and the Doctrine of the Unity of Being,” Philosophical Forum, December 1973, pp. 153-61.

17. In Islam such a widespread theological school as Ash‘arism is characterized by its rejection of the hierarchy of existence in conformity with its atomistic and voluntatistic point of view.

18. On this question see Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, chap. 12, “The Anatomy of Being.” In Arabic “necessity” is wujub and “possibility” imkan, which in the context of Avicennan ontology we translate as “contingency.”

19. On the immutable essences see T. Burckhardt, Introduction to Sufi Doctrine, pp. 62-64.

20. “Nous pouvons discerner [dans l’absolument Réel] une tridirnensionalité, elle aussi intrinsèquement indifférenciée mais annonciatrice d’un déploiement possible; ces dimensions sont l’‘Être’, la ‘Conscience’, la ‘Félicité’. C’est en vertu du troisième élément-immuable en soi-que la Possibilité divine déborde et donne bien, ‘par amour’, à ce mystère

d’extériorisation qu’est le Voile universel, dont la chaine est faite des mondes, et la traine, des êtres.” Schuon, “Le problème de la possibilité,” in Du Divin à l’humain.

21. To which Islamic metaphysics refer as ma siwa’Llah, literally, “all that is other than Allah.”

22. “Maya is likened to a magic fabric woven from a warp that veils and a weft that unveils.” Schuon, “Atma-Maya,” p. 89. On the metaphysical significance of maya as both veil and principle of relativization and manifestation of the Absolute see, besides this article, the chap. “Maya” in Schuon’s Light on the Ancient Worlds, pp. 89-98.

23. On the Breath of the Compassionate see Ibn al-‘Arabı, The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. R. W. J. Austin, New York, 1980, “The Wisdom of Leadership in the Word of Aaron,” pp. 241ff. Also Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam, chap.13.

24. Called the hadıth of kanz al-makhfı (The Hidden Treasure).

25. See his “Atma-Maya.”

26. As far as the highest level is concerned, Islamic metaphysics calls the reverberation “the most sacred effusion” (al-fayd. al-aqdas) and the radii “the sacred effusion” (al-fayd. al-muqaddas), the first being the archetype of all things (al-a‘yan al-thabitah) and the second the Breath of the Compassionate which externalizes and existentiates them on various planes of reality.

27. “The desire to enclose universal Reality in an exclusive and exhaustive ‘explanation’ brings with it a permanent disequilibrium due to the interference of Maya.” Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds, p. 91.

28. The Quranic doctrine that Iblıs was a jinn and made of fire signifies that the presence of evil does not make itself felt on the cosmic plane until the descent reaches into the animic realm.

29. The Intellect as it operates in man does not begin with a knowledge of the world but with an a priori knowledge of the Divine Good which it perceives before it even comes to understand evil. That is why some metaphysicians, led through intellection to a direct understanding of the Good in itself, do not even have a desire to understand evil and pass it by as if it did not exist. There is, of course, also the experiential aspect to consider. A saint who has destroyed evil not in the whole world but around himself might be said to breathe already in the atmosphere of paradise and therefore be oblivious to the evils of terrestrial existence which do not exist as such for him. This attitude is to be found among certain of the great Sufis who assert that evil simply does not exist without bothering to provide the metaphysical evidence as to what one means by such a statement and from what point of view can one say that evil does not exist.

30. Cosmos literally means “order” in Greek. The opposite of cosmos is nothing but chaos.

31. The principle of adequation does not negate our earlier assertion that maya prevents containing and comprehending reality in a system derived from ratiocination, for we are speaking here of intellection and intelligence not ratiocination and thought of a purely human character.

32. Not only in the Islamic tradition whose spirituality is essentially sapiential is intelligence considered as God’s greatest gift to man (according to the wellknown saying attributed to ‘Alı ibn Abı Talib, “God did not bestow upon His servants anything more precious than intelligence”), but even in Christianity which is primarily a way of love the Hesychasts consider the essence of the prayer of Jesus itself to be the actualization and descent of intelligence into the human heart.

33. See Schuon, In the Tracks of Buddhism, p. 83.

34. “A point de vue doctrinal, ce qui importerait le plus, ce serait de retrouver la science spirituelle de l’exégèse, c’est-à-dire de l’interpretation métaphysique et mystique des Écritures; les principes de cette science, dont le maniement présuppose de toute evidence une haute intelligence intuitive et non une simple acuité mentale, ont été exposés par Origène et d’autres, et mis en pratique par les Pères et par les plus grands saints. En d’autres termes, ce qui manque en Occident, c’est une intellectualité fondé, non sur l’érudition et le scepticisme philosophique, mais sur l’intuition intellectuelle actualisée par le Saint-Esprit sur la base d’une exégèse tenant compte de tous les plans et de tous les niveaux de l’entendement; cette exégèse implique aussi la science du symbolisme, et celle-ci s’étend à tous les domaines de l’expression formelle, notamment à l’art sacré, qui, lui

englobe la liturgie, au sense le plus large, aussi bien que l’art proprement dit. L’Orient traditionel ne s’étant jamais éloigné de cette manière d’envisager des choses, la compréhension de ses métaphysiques, ses exégèses, ses symbolismes, et ses arts seraient pour l’Occident, d’un intérêt vital.” Schuon, “Que peut donner l’Orient à l’Occident?” France-Asie, no. 103 (Dec. 1954): 151.

35. There are in fact numerous works in Islamic languages on the “categories” of commentators usually called Tabaqat al-mufassirın, while a clear distinction is made between exoteric commentary (tafsır) and inner or esoteric commentary (ta’wıl).

36. Ta’wıl, which in Islamic esoterism means to reach the inner meaning of the sacred text and which should not be confused with the pejorative sense in which it is occasionally used as meaning individualistic interpretation of the sacred text, contains a profound metaphysical significance in its very etymology for it means, literally, “to take back to the beginning,” implying that to reach the inner meaning (batin) from the outward sense (zahir) is also to return to the origin or beginning of that truth whose very descent implies also externalization. On the question of ta’wıl see Corbin, En Islam iranien, vol. 3, pp. 222ff. and pp. 256ff., where it is discussed with reference to the Quran; and Nasr, Ideals and Realities of Islam, chap. 2.

37. The well-known Ta’wıl al-qur’an (The Spiritual or Hermeneutic Commentary upon the Quran) attributed to Ibn ‘Arabı is actually by a later member of his school, ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Kashanı, while Ibn ‘Arabı himself wrote a monumental commentary, discovered by O. Yahya, which, however, has not as yet been printed.

38. The major commentary of Qunyawı on the Surat al-fatihah, the opening chapter of the Quran, is being edited and translated byW. Chittick and is to appear soon.

39. See R. Guénon, “The Heart and the Cave,” in Studies in Comparative Religion 4 (Spring 1971): 69-72.

40. Hence ıman is often identified with knowledge and when God is referred to as al-mu’ mın, traditional commentators do not translate that Name as “He who has faith” as one would expect from the literal meaning but as “He who has knowledge which illuminates the creature and transforms him.”

41. See H. Köhler, ´Sraddha-In der Vedischen und Altbuddistischen Literatur, Wiesbaden, 1973. This issue has been dealt with in detail byW. C. Smith in his Faith and Belief. Smith draws attention quite rightly to the fact that, before modern times, belief as opinion was not a religious category and faith was related to knowledge not to belief in the tentative sense in which this term is used today. This does not mean that the more traditional sense of the term belief which is still alive cannot be fully resuscitated.

42. In traditional Islamic educational circles the ability to teach metaphysics is considered as the sign of the teacher’s complete assimilation of the subject in such a manner that his intellect has reached the level of al-‘aql bi’l-malakah (intellectus habitus) and the knowledge in question has become for him bi’l-malakah, that is, completely digested and assimilated.

43. What Islamic metaphysics calls al-jam‘ba‘d al-farq, 44. Some of the most profound metaphysical doctrines expounded in works of Islamic philosophy and theosophy are described under the title of al-waridat al-qalbiy-yah, literally, “that which has entered the heart.” In fact, one of the books of Sadr al-Dın Shırazı, one of the greatest of Islamic metaphysicians, bears such a title. See Nasr, The Transcendent Theosophy of Sadr al-Dın Shırazı, London, 1978, p. 49.

45.

46. This is the imagery of the famous poem of Shabistarı from the Gulshan-iraz;

There is many a fool who seeks the luminous sun

In the desert with a lamp in his hand.

47. On the meaning and science of symbols see L. Benoist, Signes, symboles et mythes, Paris, 1977; H. Sedlmayr, Verlust der Mitte, Salzburg, 1976; R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Symbol and the Symbolic, trans. R. and D. Lawlor, Brookline, Mass., 1978; G. Dumézil,

Mythe et épopée, 2 vols., Paris 1968-71 (dealing mostly with myths but of course also symbolism); H. Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, ed. J. Campbell, New York, 1963; M. Eliade, Images and Symbols, trans. Ph. Mairet, New York, 1961; R. Alleau, La Science des symboles, Paris, 1976; and J. C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols, London, 1978.

48. For primordial man the symbolized was in fact the symbol since he still lived in the unfragmented reality of the paradisal state. Something of this primordial point of view has survived among some of the so-called primitive peoples among whom the “symbolist spirit” is still alive and who identify in their perception of things the object symbolized and the symbol. This is the reverse of idolatry which reduces the symbol to the physical object which is supposed to symbolize it, while in the perspective in question the object symbolizing an archetypal reality is “elevated” to the level of that reality and becomes a transparent form through which that reality is reflected and manifested.

49. “Natural symbolism, which assimilates, for example, the sun to the divine Principle, derives from a ‘horizontal’ correspondence; revealed symbolism, which makes this assimilation spiritually effective-in ancient solar cults and before their ‘petrifaction’-derives from a ‘vertical’ correspondence; the same holds good for gnosis, which reduces phenomena to ‘ideas’ or archetypes. Much might be said here on the natural symbolism of bread and body-or of body and blood-and their ‘sacramentalisation’ by Christ; likewise the sign of the Cross, which expresses with its two dimensions the respective mysteries of the Body and Bread and the Blood and Wine, has, of course, always had its metaphysical sense but received its quasi-sacramental virtue-at least in its specifically Christian form-through the incarnatedWord, in other terms, it is necessary for the Avatara to ‘live’ a form in order to make it ‘effective’, and that is why sacred formulae or divine Names must come from Revelation in order to be capable of being ‘realised’.” Schuon, Stations of Wisdom, p. 97.

50.