The Sacred Knowledge (I)

excerpts from The Sacred Knowledge, by Shah Waliullah of Delhi (d. 1762); translated & edited by G.N. Jalbani and David Pendlebury (Octagon Press 1982)


The Sacred Knowledge of the Higher Functions of the Mind ... concerned with investigating the real nature of the following:

The Heart
The Intellect
The Self
The Spirit
The Secret
The Concealed
The Deeply Concealed
The Pure Intellect
The Ego

In addition, the correct method of refining each of the above is suggested.


.........

In many disciples, one faculty is by nature very strong, while the others
happen to be very weak. Now if such people blindly begin to carry out
exercises with the object of training and refining all the faculties
simultaneously, then an extremely long time will be required even for the
dominant faculty to be purified, regain strength, come to the boil, and show
manifest signs of its purification, thus enabling the seeker to reach the
desired stage.


But if the seeker were to strengthen the faculty which is
innately strong and purify the others only summarily, then the objective
could very quickly be achieved and he would the reach the desired stage
without delay.

The final goal, which is reached after passing through a number of stages
and undergoing a number of annihilations, is in fact attained thanks to the
faculty which is by nature very strong.

..............

The Nature of the Soul:

The exposition of the true nature and properties of the higher faculties
depends in turn on an understanding of the true nature of the soul. The
latter question belongs to the science of Reality [mysticism] rather than to
the science of behavior [the Law].

.....

By soul we mean that entity which, when it is associated with the body, is
the source of the latter's life, and when divorced from it is the cause of
its death.


Let us consider the real nature of the soul. It should be borne in mind that
it is composed of three parts.

First, there is the subtle substance arising from the fine vapors of the
various elements in digested food. It possesses the capacity for nutrition,
growth and sense perception. This is refered to as the breathing soul, the
natural soul, or the airy body. It permeates flesh and bones like the fire
in charcoal or the scent in a rose. It is by virtue of this part that the
soul is connected to the body. Just as the body tastes death when separated from the soul, the latter suffers a similar agony when separated from the body.

The original source of this subtle vapor is in the heart, brain and liver.
It arises from the agitation of the blood in the heart. Physicians observe
it when the blood becomes thick or thin, pure or impure, and increases or
decreases. Through experimentation they have discovered the effects of
these various states and proceed with treatment accordingly. Should the
connection be interrupted, death ensues. The dead man is then like a tree
which has been cut off from its roots: the systems of nutrition and renewal
have been destroyed. However, the dried body of the tree takes a long time to disintegrate and decompose. Similarly, the connection between the rational soul and this subtle vapor remains intact even after death, with the latter persisting unimpaired in the form of the physical body. With the passage of time, however, it begins to disintegrate little by little.

......

The Rational Soul

... when the male semen and female ovulation combine in the soul, then
the woman's soul begins to work on the mixture, until eventually the various organs, the heart, liver and brain, come into being, and finally the airy soul is breathed into it...  there are both visible and invisible processes at work...

There is a soul governing the human order which gives rise to such attributes in man as a universal outlook and the five faculties with all their ramifications. This is known as the rational soul.

Each individual soul-- and indeed, every soul in general-- is merely a
bubble on the ocean of the Universal Soul.... people of intuition have come
to realize that there is one soul in the universe which is absolute ruler of
all the universe comprises. Every single process in heaven and earth
takes place according to the requirements of that soul, which is known as
the universal soul. Seen in the perspective of the specific actions which it
initiates, it is called Universal Nature, and the organic structure which
this soul requires for itself is called the Universal Expediency .

The various elemental, vegetable, animal and cosmic souls in the universe
are all like the constituent organs and members of the body. All are
subsumed in one collective soul; all are subject to a single plan . It is
that very soul which is both manifest and hidden in all the multifarious
forms and states of creation. Gas becomes liquid, liquid becomes gas: in
either case the universal soul remains intact. It is merely that in one
state it is hidden while in the other it manifests itself.

This universal soul is the fundamental reality of the rational soul.
When conditions permit-- and indeed require it-- the rational soul and its individual manifestation firmly attaches itself to the universal soul. Then, as a result of losing itself in the universal soul, the rational soul achieves the annihilation of its spiritual existence.

The Angelic Soul

The third part is the angelic soul. Inherent in the universal soul are
faculties able to contain the form of everything that is to be, even before it actually comes into existence. This is just like the human capacity to visualize a desired action in the mind before that action is made manifest in the external world. In a sense, the square which exists in our mind is the same as the one which comes into existence in the outside world.

Similarly, it can be said that the form which lies hidden in the faculties of the universal soul is precisely the same form as that which is now to be
seen in the world of phenomena. Thus, long before the actual creation of
humanity, when god conceived the intention to create the human race, he
conceived the generalized form of the human species within the faculties of the universal soul. After the lapse of a lengthy period of time, that generalized form received fresh enhancement from the source of divine bounty ; in consequence of which that single form appeared in a multiplicty of forms . For the sake of analogy , let us suppose that the sun is reflected in a mirror, and that round that mirror a whole variety of mirrors of every size and color are placed. Clearly, the form of the sun will be reflected in each one of them. Thus, in one sense, all those forms have an independent existence, while in another sense, they all partake of existence solely by virture of the generalized form: for had it not been there neither would they have been.

We may thus compare each one of these reflective forms to the soul of a
single individual. And so much later, as a result of further enhancement, the archetypal form descends into lower levels of energies. When the airy soul is breathed into the human body, the universal soul disappears in one aspect, only to reappear in another, more limited aspect, which receives the name of 'rational soul'.

The two aspects are intimately united-- in the same way that a physical,
rectangular body is united with the conceptualized form of a rectangular
body. It is on account of [the angelic soul] that a man is able to be
present in the heavenly fold of the world to come and his deeds are
registered in the heavenly records. ...

In the next world, the body and its parallel form are united. One's bodily
form will clearly proclaim the record of one's deeds ...