Niche for Lights

excerpts from Al-Ghazzali's Interpretation of the Light Verse from the Koran, The Niche For Lights:



(ii) THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE HUMAN SOUL: ITS FIVE FACULTIES OR SPIRITS

The first of these is the sensory spirit. This is the recipient of the information brought in by the senses; for it is the root and origin of 'the animal spirit' and constitutes the differentia of the animal genus. It is found in the infant at the breast.



The second is the imaginative spirit. This is the recorder of the information conveyed by the senses. It keeps that information filed and ready to hand, so as to present it to the intelligential spirit above it, when the information is called for. It is not found in the infant at the beginning of its evolution. This is why an infant wants to get hold of a thing when he sees it, while he forgets about it when it is out of his sight. No conflict of desire arises in his soul for something out of sight until he gets a little older, when he begins to cry for it and asks to have it, because its image is still with him, preserved in his imagination.



 This faculty is possessed by some, but not all animals. It is not found, for example, in the moth which perishes in the flame.  The moth makes for the flame, because of its desire for the sunlight, and, thinking that the flame is a window opening to the sunlight, it hurries on to the flame, and injures itself. Yet, if it flies on into the dark, back it comes again, time after time. Now had it the mnemonic spirit, which gives permanence to the sensation of pain that is conveyed by the tactile sense, it would not return to the flame after being hurt once by it. On the other hand, the dog that has received one whipping runs away whenever it sees the stick again.



Third, the intelligential spirit. This apprehends ideas beyond the spheres of sense and imagination. It is the specifically human faculty. It is not found in the lower animals, nor yet in children. The objects of its apprehension are axioms of necessary and universal application, as we mentioned in the section in which the light of intelligence was given precedence over that of the eye.



Fourth, the discursive spirit. This takes the data of pure reason and combines them,  arranges them as premises, and deduces from them informing knowledge. Then it takes, for example, two conclusions thus learned, combines them again, and learns a fresh conclusion; and so goes on multiplying itself ad infinitum.



Fifth, the transcendental prophetic spirit. This is the property of prophets and some saints. By it the unseen tables and statutes of the Law are revealed from the other world, together with several of the sciences of the Realms Celestial and Terrestrial, and pre-eminently theology, the science of Deity, which the intelligential and discursive spirit cannot compass.



...  recluse in thy rational world of the intelligence! Why should it be impossible that beyond reason there should be a further plane, on which appear things which do not appear on the plane of the intelligence, just as it is possible for the intelligence itself to be a plane above the discriminating faculty and the senses; and for relations of wonders and marvels to be made to it that were beyond the reach of the senses and the discriminative faculty? 



Beware of making the ultimate perfection stop at thyself! Consider the intuitive faculty of poetry, if thou wilt have an example of everyday experience, taken from those special gifts which particularize some men. Behold how this gift, which is a sort of perceptive faculty, is the exclusive possession of some; while it is so completely denied to others that they cannot even distinguish the scansion of a typical measure from that of its several variations.



 Mark how extraordinary is this intuitive faculty in some others, insomuch that they produce music and melodies, and all the various grief-, delight-, slumber-, weeping-, madness-, murder-, and swoon-producing modes! Now these effects only occur strongly in one who has this original, intuitive sense. A person destitute of it hears the sounds just as much as the other, but the emotional effects are by him only very faintly experienced, and he exhibits surprise at those whom they send into raptures or swoons. And even were all the professors of music in the world to call a conference with a view of making him understand the meaning of this musical sense, they would be quite powerless to do so. Here, then, is an example taken from the gross phenomena which are easiest for you to understand. 



Apply this now to this peculiar prophetical sense. And strive earnestly to become one of those who experience mystically something of the prophetic spirit; for saints have a specially large portion thereof. If thou canst not compass this, then try, by the discipline of the syllogisms and analogies set forth or alluded to in a previous page, to be one of those 'who have knowledge of it scientifically. But if this, too, is beyond thy powers, then the least thou canst do is to become one of those who simply have faith in it ... Scientific knowledge is above faith, and mystic experience is above knowledge....




You now know the five human spirits. So we proceed: they are all of them Lights, for it is through their agency that every sort of existing thing is manifested, including objects of sense and imagination. For though it is true that the lower animals also perceive these said objects, mankind possesses a different, more refined, and higher species of those two faculties they having been created in man for a different, higher, and more noble end. In the lower animals they were only created as an instrument for acquiring food, and for subjecting them to mankind. But in mankind they were created to be a net to chase a noble quarry through all the present world; to wit, the first principles of the religious sciences....

EXPOSITION OF THE SYMBOLISM OF THE LIGHT-VERSE

We now come to what the symbolism of this Verse actually signifies: 

Allâh is the Light of the Heavens and of the Earth. The similitude of His Light is as it were a Niche wherein is a Lamp: the Lamp within a Glass: the Glass as it were a pearly Star. From a Tree right blessed is it lit, an Olive-tree neither of the East nor of the West, the Oil whereof were well-nigh luminous though Fire touched it not: Light upon Light! [Koran, Sura. 24: 35]

The full exposition of the parallelism between these five classes of Spirit, and the fivefold Niche; Glass, Lamp, Tree, and Oil, could be indefinitely prolonged. But we must be content with shortly indicating the method of the symbolism.


1. Consider the sensory spirit. Its lights, you observe, come through  several apertures, the eyes, ears, nostrils, etc. Now the aptest symbol for this, in our world of experience, is the Niche for a lamp in a wall.


2. Take next the imaginative spirit. It has three peculiarities: first, that it is of the stuff that this gross lower world is made of, for its objects have definite and limited size, and shape, and dimension, and are definitely related to the subject in respect of distance. 


Further, one of the properties of a gross substance whereof corporal attributes are predicated is to be opaque to the light of pure intelligence, which transcends these categories of direction, quantity, and distance. But, secondly, if that substance is clarified, refined, disciplined, and controlled, it attains to a correspondence with and a similarity to the ideas of the intelligence, and becomes transparent to light from them. 


Thirdly, the imagination is at first very much needed, in order that intelligential knowledge may be controlled by it, so that that knowledge be not disturbed, unsettled, and dissipated, and so get out of hand. The images supplied by the imagination hold together the knowledge supplied by the intellect. 



Now, in the world of everyday experience the sole object in which you will find these three peculiarities, in relation to physical lights, is Glass. For glass also is originally an opaque substance, but is clarified and refined until it becomes transparent to the light of a lamp, which indeed it transmits unaltered. Again, glass keeps the lamp from being put out by a draught or violent jerking. By what, then, could possibly the imagination be more aptly symbolized?



3. The intelligential spirit, which gives cognizance of the divine ideas. The point of the symbolism must be obvious to you. You know it already from our preceding explanation of the doctrine that the prophets are a "Light-giving lamp."



4. The ratiocinative spirit. Its peculiarity is to begin from one proposition, then to branch out into two, which two become four and so on, until by this process of logical division they become very numerous. It leads, finally, to conclusions which in their turn become germs producing like conclusions, these latter being also susceptible of continuation, each with each. The symbol which our world yields for this is a Tree.



 And when further we consider that the fruit of the discursive reason is material for this multiplying, establishing, and fixing of all knowledge, it will naturally not be typified by trees like quince, apple, pomegranate, nor, in brief, by any other tree whatever, except the Olive. For the quintessence of the fruit of the olive is its oil, which is the material which feeds the lamps, and has this peculiarity, as against all other oils, that it increases radiance. 



Again, if people give the adjective "blessed" to specially fruitful trees, surely the tree the fruitfulness whereof is absolutely infinite should be named Blessed! Finally, if the ramifications of those pure,  intellectual propositions do not admit of relation to direction and to distance, then may the antitypical tree will be said to be "Neither from the East nor from the West."



5. The transcendental prophetic spirit, which is possessed by saints  as well as prophets if it is absolutely luminous and clear. For the thought-spirit is divided into that which needs be instructed, advised, and supplied from without, if the acquisition of knowledge is to be continuous; while a portion of it is absolutely, clear, as though it were self-luminous, and had no external source of supply. Applying these, considerations, we see how justly this clear, strong natural faculty is described by the words, "Whose Oil were well-nigh luminant, though Fire touched it not;" for there be Saints whose light shines so bright that it is "well-nigh"' independent of that which Prophets supply, while there be Prophets whose light is "well-nigh" independent of that which Angels 'supply. Such is the symbolism, and aptly does it typify this class.


And inasmuch as the lights of the human spirit are graded rank on rank, then that of Sense comes first, the foundation and preparation for the Imagination (for the latter can only be conceived as superimposed after Sense); those of the Intelligence and Discursive Reason come thereafter.


 All which explains why the Glass is, as it were, the place for the Lamp's immanence; and the Niche, for the Glass: that is to say, the Lamp is within the Glass, and the Glass within the Niche. Finally, the existence, as we have seen, of a graded succession of Lights explains the words of the text "Light upon Light."

Epilogue: the Darkness Verse

But this symbolism holds only for the 'hearts of true believers, or of prophets and saints, but not for the hearts of misbelievers; 'for the term "light" is expressive of right-guidance alone. 



But as for the man who is turned from the path of guidance, he is false, he is darkness; nay, he is darker than darkness. For darkness is natural; it leads one neither one way nor the other; but the minds of misbelievers, and the whole of their perceptions, are perverse, and support each other mutually in the actual deluding of their owners. They are like a man "in some fathomless sea, overwhelmed by billow topped by billow topped by cloud; darkness on darkness piled!"


Now that fathomless sea is the World, this world of mortal dangers, of evil chances, of blinding trouble. 


[The following tripartite division of the soul, with its analogues, is Platonic (see Republic, bk. iv).]



 The first "billow" is the wave of lust, whereby souls acquire the bestial attributes, and are occupied with sensual pleasures, and the satisfaction of worldly ambitions, so that "they eat and luxuriate like cattle. Hell shall be their place of entertainment!" Well does this wave represent darkness, therefore; since love for the creature makes the soul both blind and deaf. 



The second "billow" is the wave of the ferocious attributes, which impel the soul to wrath, enmity, hatred, prejudice, envy, boastfulness, ostentation, pride. Well is this, too, the symbol of darkness, for wrath is the demon of man's intelligence; and well also is it the uppermost billow, for anger is mostly stronger even than lust; swelling wrath diverts the soul from lust and makes it oblivious of enjoyment; lust cannot for a moment stands up against anger at its height.



Finally, "the cloud" is rank beliefs, and lying heresies, and corrupt imaginings, which become so many veils veiling the misbeliever from the true faith, from knowledge of the Real, and from illumination by the sunlight of the Koran and human intelligence. 



For it is the property of a cloud to veil the shining of the sunlight. Now these things, being all of them darkness, are well called "darkness on darkness piled", shutting the soul out from the knowledge of things near...



 Finally, if all these Lights have, as we, saw, their source and origin in the great Primary, the One Real, then every Confessor of the Unity may well believe that "the man for whom Allâh doth not cause light, no light at all hath he."

from "THE NICHE FOR LIGHTS" by AL-GHAZZALI [1058-1111 C.E.] Translation and Introduction by W. H. T.  GAIRDNER (1924)

The Verse of light from the Koran (Sura 24, verse 35)

itself states that it is an allegory and that its inner meaning

must be understood metaphorically .

The idea of illuminism, and especially the analogy of the

Lamp in Sufism and its derivatives, comes from this verse .

It is the transmitting of the meaning of the Lamp allegory

which forms a part of Sufi esoteric development, because

the Lamp has to be experienced, as soon as the individual

consciousness is capable of perceiving it....

This mystical passage gives the essence of Sufism, and

conceals the nature of the cognition of the extra dimensions

of the human consciousness which comes beyond the

Intellect.

It is the subject of the great al-Ghazali's Niche for Lights,

a Sufi classic.

--Idries Shah, The Sufis (1964)