Veils

Some Stages of Religious Development
according to Al-Ghazzali (1058-1111 C.E.)


excerpt from  W. H. T.  GAIRDNER's 1924 Introduction to Al-Ghazzali's "THE NICHE FOR LIGHTS":


...[The Veils-Tradition] speaks of "Seventy Thousand Veils of Light and Darkness" which veil pure Godhead from the human soul....


According to Ghazzâlî, these Veils are various according to the varieties of the natures which they veil from the One Real. And it is the classification of these natures, which is thus involved, that supplies rich material for an unusually inside view of Ghazzâlî's real views concerning men, doctrines, religions, and sects.... 


He divides mankind into four classes: those veiled with veils of pure darkness; those veiled with veils of mixed darkness and light; those veiled with veils of pure light; and those who attain to the vision of the Unveiled. 



Every line of this part of the work merits and requires the closest study. It is not possible to give this detailed study here--it has been given elsewhere, and to that the reader must be referred. But a summary of Ghazzâlî's classification of souls and creeds may be given here, for thus, even more effectively than by an extended study, may a vivid preliminary appreciation be gained of the importance of this section for students...


He begins at the bottom and works up the light-ladder, rung by rung, to the very top, thus giving a gradation of human natures and human creeds in respect of their approach to absolute truth. 


Sometimes the grades are definitely identified by the author. In other cases they may be certainly, or nearly certainly, identified from the description he gives. 



In the following summary Ghazzâlî's own identifications are given between round brackets; inferred identifications certain or nearly certain, between square brackets.

Class I.--Those veiled with Veils of pure Darkness

Atheists--

(a) Naturist philosophers whose god is Nature,

(b) Egotists whose god is Self.
Subdivisions of (b):--

(1) Seekers after sensual pleasures (the bestial attributes).

(2) Seekers after dominion ("Arabs, some Kurds, and the very numerous Fools").

(3) Seekers after filthy lucre

(4) Seekers after vainglory
(2-4) (the ferocious attributes).

***********

Class II.--Those veiled with Veils of mixed Darkness and Light

A. THOSE WHOSE DARKNESS ORIGINATES IN THE SENSES


(1) Image-worshippers. [Polytheists of the Hellenic (? and Indian) type.]

(2) Worshippers of animate objects of physical beauty. (Some of the most remote Turkish tribes.)

(3) Fire-worshippers. [Magians.]

(4) Astrologizing Star-worshippers. [Star-worshippers of Harran: ?Sabîans.]

(5) Sun-worshippers.

(6) Light-worshippers, with their dualistic acknowledgement of a supreme correlative Darkness. (Zoroastrians of the cult of Ormuzd and Ahrimân.)

B. THOSE WHOSE DARKNESS ORIGINATES IN THE IMAGINATION

(who worship a One Being, sitting [spatially] on his throne).

(1) Corporealists.
[Extreme Hanbalites: Zâhirites.] (2) Karrâmites.

(3) Those who have eliminated all spatial ideas in regard to Allâh except the literal "up-above".
[Ibn Hanbal. Hanbalites.]

C. THOSE WHOSE DARKNESS ORIGINATES IN THE [DISCURSIVE] INTELLIGENCE

[Various sorts of Mutakallimîn]

(1) Anthropomorphists in respect of the Seven Attributes of Allah, "Hearing, Seeing," etc., and especially the "Word" of Allah.
(Those who said that the Word of Allah has letters and sounds like ours.) [Early literalists; Hanbalites: early Ash`arites.]

(2) Those who said that the word of Allah
is like our mental speech (hadith al-nafs.) [Later Ash`arites.]


           ***************

Class III.--Those veiled by pure Light

[i.e. purged of all anthropomorphism (tashbîh)]

(1) Those whose views about the Attributes were sound, but who refused to define Allah by means of them: replying to the question "What is the Lord of the World?" by saying, "The Lord, who transcends the ideas of those attributes; He, the Mover and Orderer of the Heavens."

[Hasan al-Basrî, al-Shâfi`î, and others of the bilâ kaifa school.]


(2) Those who mounted higher than the preceding, in declaring that Allah is the mover of only the primum mobile (the Ninth and outermost Heaven), which causes the movement of the other Eight, mediated by their respective Angels.

[Sûfî philosophers. (?) Al-Fârâbî.]

(3) Those who mount higher than these again, in putting a supreme Angel in place of Allah, Who now moves the heavens by commanding this supreme Angel, but not immediately by direct action.

[Sûfî philosophers. Al-Ghazzâlî himself when coram populo (Munqidh, p 11)!]


        *****************

Class IV.--The Unveiled who Attain

Those who will predicate nothing whatsoever of Allah, and refuse to allow that He even issues the order for the moving of the primum mobile. This Commander (Mutâ`) is now a Vicegerent, who is related to the Absolute Being as the sun to Essential Light or live coal to the Element of Fire.

(1) Adepts who preserve self-consciousness in their absorption in this Absolute, all else being effaced.

(2) Adepts whose self-consciousness is also effaced ("the Fewest of the Few") [al-Hallâj and the extreme Mystics],

(a) who attain to this State with a single leap--as Abraham "al-Khalîl" did, 

(b) who attain to it by stages,--as Mohammed "al-Habîb" did [at the Mi`râj].