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)

The Visionary Recital (II)

excerpts from the introduction to The Mystical and Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi,  by W.M. Thackston, Jr.:


THE INTERNAL JOURNEY THROUGH THE MICROCOSM:



The type of the internal quest into the self is best exemplified by Love's
allegory in Treatise VI. Here, in order for the seeker to reach the prime
intellect, called Jawed Khirad ("eternal wisdom") the "young old man" who
guards the City of the Soul, a journey through the various human faculties
is undertaken.



The seeker progresses from the highest faculties of sensorial perception
common to the animal kingdom back to the lowest faculties of basic
alimentation common to all organisms. Cast into this allegorical symbolic
type the seeker progressively gains conscious control over the faculties by retrogressing, so to speak, back to the most elementary of the life functions.



In the process he breaks the spell of amnesia, vis-a-vis his
origin into which he has fallen and thereby purifies the corporeal shell
that contains the divine spirit so that the nostalgic yearning for the
original abode, personified as his steed, can carry him across the
celestial barriers of the City of the Soul where he is bathed in the living
waters that confer the immortality of divine wisdom.




The vegetal faculties common to all life forms are necessary for the
maintenance and growth of the individual and reproduction of the species.
The three major faculties of the vegetal class which Suhrawardi, like
Avicenna, calls the faculties that are "to be served" are :

1) the Nutritive , the sine qua non of any living thing, the faculty that
obtains nutrition for the individual and without which the individuals
survival is impossible;

2) the Augmentive, the faculty that supervises growth of the organisms
various parts; and

3) the Generative, the faculty that ensures survival of the species through
reproduction of the individual



The minor, or subordinate faculties , all of which "serve" the Nutritive
faculty , which in turn serves the "growth" faculty and which in tandem
with the Augmentive serves the Generative, are:

1: the Attractive, by means of which the organism attracts itself to
nutrition, or nutrition to itself

2. the Retentive, by means of which what is deemed necessary and good for the individual's nutrition is retained

3. the Digestive, which breaks down raw nutritive material into an
acceptable, assimilable form

4. the Expulsive, which eliminates what is deemed unnecessary or harmful for nutritive purposes.




Next come the motor and sensory faculties that distinguish the Animal Soul from the Vegetal Soul. The motor faculty has two functions:


1: the Concupiscible, which stimulates motion towards things deemed
necessary and/or beneficial, i.e., the quest for pleasure


2) the Irascible, which stimulates motion away from what is deemed harmful or destructive, i.e. the quest for domination



The second part of the animal soul is the conglomerate of faculties that
constitutes sense perception...



It appears that [Surhawardi] follows the developed Avicennan approach to the categorization of the senses into the external five and internal five.



The external five are... sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch.



They provide the raw material for the first of the post-sensationary
internal senses, the senses communis, the immediate recipient and
integrator of the sensory perceptions of the external perceptions. [It]
enables an animal to know, for example, that a form visually perceived as
white and gustatorily perceived as sweet is one and the same.



The second sense is the retentive imagination that retains the common forms of the senses communis.


Third is the compositive-imaginative, which performs an unstructured and
disorderly analytical and /or synthetical function on sensibles.



When dealing with these analyzed/synthesized sensibles on the animal level, it is called the imaginative faculty. When it presents its analyzed/synthesized intelligibles to the rational faculty, it is called the cogitative.



The fourth faculty, the estimative, reduces perceived things to their
intangible intrinsic meanings to form a judgement, as a cat judges the
intrinsic meaning of a mouse-form to be something to chase, and the mouse judges the intrinsic meaning of a cat-form to be something to run away from.



In animals, this faculty is very strong, and is generally called instinct;
in humans, however, it is in constant contention with the rational faculty.



The estimative tends to draw man towards the material, while the rational
seeks to extricate him from the material toward the spiritual. By ascetic exercise and mortification, however, the estimative can be subordinated to the rational.



The fifth faculty is memory, which serves to retain the intrinsic meanings
of the estimative and compositive imagination, much as the retentive
imagination stores the forms of the sensus communis.



Suhrawardi's analysis of the senses is solidly based on Avicenna's
categorization, which in turn has as its starting point, the Peripatetic
view of sensation as modified and refined by Islamic thinkers like the
Ikhwan al -Safa and Alfarabi...



Suhrawardi... eludes to the senses in order to make the neophyte aware of the proper function of these senses, so that he may come to know their limitations and then elude their "shackles" thereby becoming receptive to the "dawning of the lights" of the soul's true realm.



Allegorical description of the vegetal and animal faculties


... these faculties are depicted as people gathered around a pot in
which something is being cooked, separated and distributed.



 The fire and pot over it represent the stomach, the cook is the attractive faculty; the fanner of the flames, the digestive; the one who waits patiently, the retentive; the one who separates the light from the heavy, the expulsive (the four minor faculties); the one who distributes the cooked victuals to the people represents the nutritive faculty; while the one who pulls up by the ears those who have finished eating is the augmentative faculty.



Nearby, in a "forest" are a lion, which rips and tears things and a boar
that pilfers, eats and drinks, and these two appear to represent fairly
clearly the motor functions of the irascible and concupiscible, since the
"seeker of the microcosm" lassoes them and binds them tightly, lest they
get out of control .



Since none of the vegetal faculties can very well be disrupted without the
destruction of the organism, it is upon precisely these two motor functions
of the animal soul that the Sufis tend to concentrate. For these functions
receive impulses for motion from the estimative faculty, the very one that
can be dominated through ascetic discipline by the rational faculty, which
man alone possesses.



Just as the seeker in Love's allegory [in Treatise II] proceeds in his
journey through the souls, notably from the highest, the internal senses,
back through the lower animal faculties and the vegetal soul to emerge
victorious from each encounter, so Suhrawardi postulates a ruling spirit,
the "animate spirit " (ruh-i hayawani) for the various faculties.



This spirit, a "subtle body" made of a subtle mixture of humours (much as
the physical organs are made of a gross mixture of humours) speads through the body from the left side of the heart. That part that goes to the liver, where it is called "the natural spirit" (ruh-i-tabi'i) rules over the locus of activity of the stomach, the digestive system, and the vegetal
functions.





The other part, which ascends through the arteries to the brain, is called
the "psychic spirit" (ruh-i-nafsani) and rules the locus of activity of the
animal functions.





Ten senses are represented in the treatises by the ten wardens set over the captive bird. When the prisoner realizes that they are not really paying any attention to him, he discovers how easily eluded they are...




[In another treatise] when sensory input is no longer allowed to interfere by providing its imperfect information on the world of gross materiality,
the [world-revealing cup] can be taken from the turner, removed from the
confines of the material cosmos, and allowed to glow with the brilliant rays
of reality and display the real world.



The purgative of Treatise IV has the effect of "opening the inner faculties"
so that the soul can see, hear, taste, feel and smell without recourse to the defective external senses, much as the soul, affected by music, overrides the external sense of hearing in order to listen directly for itself [Treatise V] and in consequence, moves the body upward.



The first step of the aspirant out of material bondage into the realm of the
soul is to "close the door to the city" and to "open the door to the
wilderness". It becomes a common place of Persian poetry... that the "city" is the realm of rationality, while the "wilderness" is the abode of the "mad"...or those who have transcended the boundaries of ratiocination and entered into the area of trans-rationalism, or intutive knowledge, knowledge "through the heart" rather than "through the intellect".



For this reason, the aspirant must leave the rational city and venture into
the metanoetic wilderness in order to encounter the "Archons" of the "other world."



In each of the treatises, the aspirant meets someone who acts as his guide or initiator into the process of material divestiture...



The master/guide is considered by the Islamic spiritual tradition to be
necessary for the neophyte, lest he lose his way or be tempted off the
right path toward the goal by any of the myriad distractions that present
themselves along the way.



The means for breaking out of the cage of time-space-matter are variously given...



When "warmed" by Illumination , i.e., the outpouring of the source of light
and luminosity, toward which the vertical orientation draws the aware soul, an intutive and experiential receptivity to the gravitational pull back towards its origin, the soul can pass easily out of the strictures of matter, time and space. A necessary concommitant to the passage of the spiritual nature out of its temporary boundary is the loss of ego identity, described in treatise VIII... in terms of the five-fold distinction of tawhid and in treatise VI in terms of the salughter of the yellow cow...



Both these vivid images deal with the hold the carnal soul maintains over
the individual so long as he remains in his amnesiac state vis a vis his
true origin.



The carnal soul is responsible for each individual's ego-identity, the
identification of the carnally dominated self as a discrete being,
possessed of an existence of his own.



... the loss of ego identity means that the stranglehold of the carnal self has been broken: It no longer dominates in the individual's conscious self-identification, and the mystic has been disindividuated into the consciousness of the Godhead.



The remaining state, the fifth and highest of all, is the ineffable mute
state wherein all connections with humanity have been severed and all
traces of temporal existence in the soul have been obliterated. To reach this state renders words meaningless and explanations useless.




[In Treatise VI] the carnal soul is explained as the unusual yellow cow
[described in sura 2 of the Quran] which was required to be slaughtered in order to identify a murderer.



The carnal cow, wandering capriciously through the city of the body, will
continue to wreak havoc unless it is slaughtered so that Love, portrayed as the policeman of this world and the next can enter the city and establish his reign of order.


Once the carnal cow of conscious identity is sacrificed to love, then one
can become like the polished mirror of the moon which reflects the splendor of the sun so faithfully that it can say "So close have I come that I imagine you are I."



Suhrawardi is careful to state explicitly that never, even in ecstatic
proximity, does substantial union occur between mortal and divine...
However... this did not save him from the wrath of the orthodox... for whom his ideas, like those of the martyred al-Hallaj before him, represented a dangerous espousal of immediate cognition of God, a doctrine they were not prepared to accept... like al-Hallaj, he paid for his conviction with his life.



Notes:




Senses communis is... quick to accept forms, but unable to retain them because its dominant humour is wetness, which readily accepts a shape but cannot maintain it in...


*****


The compositive-imagination or the imaginative faculty is so-called when it deals with the animal-sensibles and its locus of operation is the estimative faculty. When it deals with intelligibles and is localized in the rational faculty, it is called the cogitative and is inclined towards the deduction of sciences, crafts and the perception of intelligibles...


*****

Estimative faculty:... [gives] instinctive, intrinsic meanings, like the enmity and malice a sheep recognizes in a wolf. This sense is quite prone to error, says Avicenna. It was introduced explicitly into the system by Alfarabi.



*****

Correspondences [in the allegories]... were worked out by an anonymous Persian commentator.

*****


Sometimes Suhrawardi refers to all the animal and vegetal faculties together as the fourteen coffins, which the Persian commentary explains as:


the four major faculties of Avicenna's scheme in the cannon, the four subordinate faculties, the two motor faculties and the four humours  (hot, cold, wet and dry)


***** 
The rational faculty, the human intellect, is traditionally divided into the theoretical (speculative) and practical. Suhrawardi does not, oddly enough, elude to its divisions.



*****
The "amazing things" Love chooses not to tell Zulhaikha because she would not understand, in [Treatise VI], would all have to do with the realm of the intellect and beyond.




(from The Mystical and Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi,  translated and introduced by W.M. Thackston, Jr., Octagon Press, 1982.)

The Visionary Recital (I)

excerpts from the introduction to The Mystical and Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi,  by W.M. Thackston, Jr.:



...what the neophyte must achieve is a release of the soul from the material world of the senses, the "bottomless pit" of this temporal world, into which the soul of man has been cast and where his atemporal, spiritual nature is held captive, so trapped inside the strictures of gross matter, the stuff of which this world is made, that the soul becomes like the king's peacock in Treatise VII that was placed under a basket: it forgets entirely its original home and thinks that this world is all it has ever known.



While in this state of forgetfulness, the soul cannot extricate itself if
it is attached to any of the goods this world has to offer, be they
material like property and wealth or immaterial like position and renown.

The process of detaching oneself from the material... is often expressed as a journey or pilgrimage-quest, which can take the form either of an external journey out of the material world or of an internal journey into the self and thence out of this world.





THE EXTERNAL JOURNEY THROUGH THE MACROCOSM:



The external journey leads the pilgrim up through the celestial spheres
that encompass the totality of spatial and temporal creation. Everything
that is subject to human sensorial perception is contained within the
concavity of the celestial spheres. What lies outside them is, in terms of
created matter, nothingness. This "nothingness" which is beyond the
encompassment of created spatiality and temporality, is the spiritual realm,
the true home of the soul. From there, the atemporal world of eternality,
came the divine part of man's soul, and it is there that the aspirant seeks to return.



To effect this type of return, the seeker travels figuratively out of the
sublunar region , the earthly realm and across the celestial spheres of the
macrocosm ...



[Suhrawardi] is too subtle in his treatment to be interested in simple
cosmological allegory, for he constantly weaves his narrative fabric from
the warp of the external cosmos and the phenomena of the celestial spheres and from the weft of the internal cosmos, the microcosm of man's inner "celestial" configuration...



A brief survey of the physical cosmos as generally accepted by the
traditional Islamic world:



Suhrawardi's main allegorical descriptions of the heavens reflect the
standard Ptolemaic universe inherited by Islamic civilization from the
Hellenistic world. In this geostatic view of the celestial order, the earth
stands in the concavity of nearly immaterial spheres which contain the
heavenly bodies that revolve around the earth on the ecliptic.



The number of the spheres, though conceptually constant, is variously given by Suhrawardi, depending upon how he is considering them.



They are, from highest to lowest:

1. The Great Sphere of Diurnal Motion, the primum mobile of Latin
cosmography: it revolves westerly once every 24 hours and is responsible for the movement of all the other spheres.

2. The Sphere of Fixed Stars including the 12 Signs of the Zodiac..

3. Sphere of Saturn

4. Sphere of Jupiter

5. Sphere of Mars

6. Sphere of Sun

7. Sphere of Venus

8. Sphere of Mercury

9. Sphere of the Moon

10-11. Spheres of Ether and Zamharir, part of the sublunar realm of gross
materiality and properly reckoned as the boundary of Earth.



When Suhrawardi alludes to a cosmological 'eight', he means the spheres that contain one or more heavenly body (i.e., Fixed-Stars to the Moon); 'nine' spheres will include the Great Sphere; 'seven' is the number of planetary bodies plus the Moon; and 'eleven' is the total number, including the two sublunar spheres to balance the two highest non-planetary spheres.



The Sun is always said to be in the middle.



In the most cosmologically detailed of the treatises, he gives the allegorical number of the "old men"-- the Intellects of the spheres-- as ten, i.e., the nine upper spheres plus one for the sublunar region.



As Suhrawardi explains, the Great Sphere, represented by the first old man of Treatise II, is much too subtle materially to hold onto the light that emanates from the Creator from without the realm of temporal existence: this sphere is the intermediary or bordeline between being and non-being and thus has but a shadowy hold on materiality so that the emanating light passes through it without being captured.



The dual nature of this sphere is also expressed in terms of the
Suhrawardian symbol of Gabriel's wings: the right wing being an abstraction of the relation of the Prime Intellect (Gabriel) to God's being, is pure "light", i.e. without any taint of "darkness" or materiality, and it is divine in attribute, and represents absolute being.



The left wing, on the other hand, is the essential realization of non-being
as posited in the soul. Thus the Great Sphere (or right wing), with regard to form , is as near to "nothing" as anything can be and still be "something"; while in terms of attribute or predication of God, it is the most "something" that exists. In ontological terms, the Great Sphere is the intermediary between material, temporal and spatial existence and immaterial existence.



It is symbolically represented by Mount Qaf, the mythic mountain range that surrounds the earth.



As the light emanating from the Creator reaches the second sphere, it is
shattered into myriads of small bits, much as a globule of mercury breaks up on a large spinning plate. These small bits of light are the Fixed Stars of the Constellations and Signs of the Zodiac, the primal "workshops" of Treatise III.




Because this sphere is close to the first, it is still too diffuse in force
to capture much light, for which reason the stars of this sphere appear dim
in relation to the light of the planets, which, having much smaller spheres,
are made of coalesced fragments of the light that escape from the sphere
of the fixed stars.



The greatest amount of luminosity belongs to the Sun by virture of its
middle position, where the equilibrium provides the resistance necessary to generate the force to hold enormous luminosty.



From the Sun down to the Earth, the amount of luminosity decreases until
the Moon is reached. In its position as the farthest from the source of
light, and because it has no sphere in its convex, the Moon has no
luminosity of its own and merely reflects the light it receives from the
Sun...



The realm of temporality and spatiality, represented cosmollogically by
the celestial spheres, is finite in extent. Beyond the Great Sphere there is
nothing of matter; and it is this very immaterial, atemporal and non-spatial
realm that the soul must strive to attain in order to regain the original
homeland.



Thus the bird-soul of Treatise I crosses eight mountains to reach the court of the great king, so also must the hawk [Treatise III] traverse the eleven mountains of Qaf when delivered of its bondage.



In all cases, it is matter composed of the four elements (fire, water, earth
and air) and what is coincident with it, that have fettered the soul and
prevent it from escaping its temporary imprisonment.



That which is conjoined with the material, a divisible thing... necessarily
temporal, cannot by its nature comprehend the immaterial eternal.



If we think in Avicennan terms of a vertical orientation ...an orientation
such that "down here" (this corporeal world) is the "west" of this world and
"out there"(the spiritual realm beyond the senses) is the "east" (*mashriq,
lit. "the point whence the dawning rays of the sun emanate) of the "other
world", i.e., the world of the unseen from which the rays of the spiritual
sun arise, then the quest of the soul to regain that original "east" will be
expressed in an external , "vertical" pilgrimage up through the spheres and
ultimately out of the created universe.



In this manner the birds of Treatise I make their quest across the mountains, each representative of one of the celetial spheres, until they finally come to the cities atop the last mountain, where the [beautiful King] dwells... symbolic of the Prime Intellect. The king tells the birds that the remants of the fetters that have clung to their legs since they were trapped by the senses in the oblivion of the material world can be removed only by those who put them there in the first place.



The pilgrimage of the individual soul must inevitably end thus. Although
the soul may attain its goal of finding the "king",  it must return whence it
came and conquer the materiality that has ensared it from the beginning.



Note:  Suhrawardi uses the Arabic word latif to describe the substance of the spheres. In order to avoid the ambiguous term "immaterial", the word "subtle" has been used throughout the translation...




(from The Mystical and Visionary Treatises of Suhrawardi,  translated and introduced by W.M. Thackston, Jr., Octagon Press, 1982.)

Sufi Symbolism

an excerpt from Al-Ghazzali's Niche For Lights on

THE SCIENCE OF SYMBOLISM

The exposition of this symbolism involves, first of all, two cardinal considerations, which afford limitless scope for investigation, but to which I shall merely allude very briefly here.



First, the science and method of symbolism; the way in which the spirit of the ideal form[1] is captured by the mould of the symbol; the mutual relationship of the two; the inner nature of this correspondence between the world of Sense (which supplies the clay of the moulds, the material of the symbolism) and the world of the Realm Supernal from which the Ideas descend.[1]


Second, the gradations of the several spirits of our mortal clay, and the degree of light possessed by each. For we treat of this latter symbolism in order to explain the former.





[1. Or Idea = in practically the Platonic sense.]

(i) THE OUTWARD AND THE INWARD IN SYMBOLISM: TYPE AND ANTITYPE

The world is Two Worlds, spiritual and material, or, if you will, a World Sensual and a World Intelligential; or again, if you will, a World Supernal and a World Inferior. All these expressions are near each other, and the difference between them is merely one of viewpoint. If you regard the two worlds in themselves, you use the first expression; if in respect of the organ which apprehends them, the second; if in respect of their mutual relationship, the third. You may, perhaps, also term them the World of Dominance and Sense-perception, and, the World of the Unseen and the Realm Supernal.



It were no marvel if the students of the realities underlying the terminology were puzzled by the multiplicity of these terms, and imagined a corresponding multiplicity of ideas. But he to whom the realities beneath the terms are disclosed makes the ideas primary and the terms secondary: while inferior minds take the opposite course. To them the term is the source from which the reality proceeds. We have an allusion to these two types of mind in the Koran, "Whether is the more rightly guided, he who walks with his face bent down, or he who walks in a straight Way, erect?"



[In this Light-Verse, in Ibn Mas'ûd's reading, the words "in the heart of the believer, "follow the words "of His light". And Ubayy b. Ka`b's instead of "the similitude of His light", has "the similitude of the light of the heart of him who believes is like". etc.]

1. The two Worlds: their types and antitypes

Such is the idea of the Two Worlds. And the next thing for you to know is, that the supernal world of "the Realm" is a world invisible to the majority of men; and the world of our senses is the world of perception, because it is perceived of all. This World Sensual is the point from which we ascend to the world Intelligential: and, but for this connexion between the two, and their reciprocal relationship, the way upward to the higher sphere would be barred. And were this upward was impossible, then would the Progress to the Presence Dominical and the near approach to Allah be impossible too. For no man shall approach near unto Allah, unless his foot stand at the very centre of the Fold of the Divine Holiness.



Now by this World of the "Divine Holiness" we mean the world that transcends the apprehension of the senses and the imagination. And it is in respect of the law of that world--the law that the soul which is a stranger to it neither goeth out therefrom, nor entereth therein--that we call it the Fold of the Divine Holiness and Transcendence. And the human spirit, which is the channel of the manifestations of the Transcendence, may be perhaps called "the Holy Valley".



Again, this Fold comprises lesser folds, some of which penetrate more deeply than others into the ideas of the Divine Holiness.


But the term Fold embraces all the gradations of the lesser ones; for you must not suppose that these terms are enigmas, unintelligible to men of Insight. But I cannot pursue the subject further, for I see that my preoccupation with citing and explaining all this terminology is turning me from my theme. It is for you to apply yourself now to the study of the terms.


To return to the subject we were discussing: the visible world is, as we said, the point of departure up to the world of the Realm Supernal; and the "Pilgrim's Progress of the Straight Way" is an expression for that upward course, which may also be expressed by "The Faith," "the Mansions of Right Guidance."


Were there no relation between the two worlds, no inter-connexion at all, then all upward progress would be inconceivable from one to the other. Therefore, the divine mercy gave to the World Visible a correspondence with the World of the Realm Supernal, and for this reason there is not a single thing in this world of sense that is not a symbol of something in yonder one. It may well happen that some one thing in this world may symbolize several things in the World of the Realm Supernal, and equally well that some one thing in the latter may have several symbols in the World Visible. We call a thing typical or symbolic when it resembles and corresponds to its antitype under some aspect.



A complete enumeration of these symbols would involve our exhausting the whole of the existing things in both of the Two Worlds! Such a task our mortal powers can never fulfil; or human faculties have not sufficed to comprehend it in the past; and with our little lives we cannot expound it fully in the present. The utmost I can do is to explain to you a single example. The greater may then be inferred from the less; for the door of research into the mysteries of this knowledge will then lie open to you.

2. An Example of Symbolism, from the Story of Abraham in the Koran

Listen now. If the World of the Realm Supernal contains Light-substances, high and lofty, called "Angels", from which substances the various lights are effused upon the various mortal spirits, and by reason of which these angels are called "lords," then is Allah "Lord of lords," and these lords will have differing, grades of luminousness. The symbols, then, of these in the visible world will be, preeminently, the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars.



And the Pilgrim of the Way rises first of all to a degree corresponding to that of a star. The effulgence of that star's light appears to him. It is disclosed to him that the entire world beneath adores its influence and the effulgence of its light. And so, because of the very beauty and superbness of the thing, he is made aware of something which cries aloud saying, "This is my Lord?"  


He passes on; and as he becomes conscious of the light-degree next above it, namely, that symbolized by the moon, lo! in the aerial canopy he beholds that star set, to wit, in comparison with its superior; and he saith, "Nought that setteth do I adore!"



 And so he rises till he arrives at last at the degree symbolized by the sun. This, again, he sees is greater and higher than the former, but nevertheless admits of comparison therewith, in virtue of a relationship between the two. But to bear relationship to what is imperfect carries with it imperfection-the "setting" of our allegory. And by reason thereof he saith: "I have turned my face unto That Who made the heavens and the earth! I am a true believer, and, not of those who associate other gods with Allah!"



Now what is meant to be conveyed by this "THAT WHO" is the vaguest kind of indication, destitute of all relation or comparison. For, were anyone to ask, "What is the symbol comparable with or corresponding to this That?' no answer to the question could be conceived. Now He Who transcends all relations is ALLAH, the ONE REALITY. Thus, when certain Arabs once asked the Apostle of God, "To what may we relate Allah?' this reply was revealed, "Say, He, Allah is one! His days are neither ended nor begun; neither is He a father nor a son; and none is like unto Him, no not one; the meaning of which verse is simply that He transcends relation.



Again, when Pharaoh said to Moses: "What, pray, is the Lord of the Universe?" as though demanding to know His essence, Moses, in his reply, merely indicated His works, because these were clearer to the mind of his interrogator; and answered, "The Lord of the heavens and the earth." But Pharaoh said to his courtiers, "Ha! marked ye that!" as though objecting to Moses' evasion of his demand to be told Allah's essential nature. Then Moses said, "Your Lord, and your first fathers' Lord." Pharaoh then set him down as insane. He had demanded an analogue, for the description of the divine Essence, and Moses replied to him from His works. And so Pharaoh said, "Your prophet who has been sent you is insane."

3. Fundamental Examples of Symbolism especially from the Story of Moses in the Koran

Let us now return to the pattern we selected for illustrating the symbolic method. The science of the Interpretation of Visions determines for us the value of each kind of symbol; for "Vision is a part of Prophecy." It is clear, is it not, that the sun, when seen in a vision, must be interpreted as a Sovereign Monarch, because of their mutual resemblance and their share in a common spiritual idea, to wit, sovereignty over all, and the emanation or effusion of influence and light on to all.



The antitype of the moon will be that Sovereign's Minister; for it is through the moon that the sun sheds his light on the world in its own absence; and even so, it is through his own Minister that the Sovereign makes his influence felt by subjects who never beheld the royal person.



Again, the dreamer who sees himself with a ring on his finger with which he seals the mouths of men and the secrets of women, is told that the sign means the early Call to Prayer in the month of Ramadan. Again, for one who sees himself pouring olive oil into an olive-tree the interpretation is that the slave-girl he has wedded is his mother, unrecognized by him.



But it is impossible to exhaust the different ways by which symbols of this description may be interpreted, and I cannot set myself the task of enumerating them. I can merely say that just as certain beings of the Spirit-World Supernal are symbolized by Sun, Moon and Stars, others may be typified by different symbols when the Point of connexion is some characteristic other than light.



For example, if among those beings of that Spirit-World there be something that is fixed and unchangeable; great and never diminishing; from which the waters of knowledge, the excellencies of revelations, issue into the heart, even as waters well out into a valley; It would be symbolized by the Mountain.



 Further, if the beings that are the recipients of those excellencies are of diverse grades, they would be symbolized by the Valley; and if those excellencies, on reaching the hearts of men, pass from heart to heart, these hearts are also symbolized by Valleys. The head of the Valley will represent the hearts of Prophet, Saint, and Doctor, followed by those who come after them. So, then, if these valleys are lower than the first one, and are watered from it, then that first one will certainly be the "Right" Valley, because of its signal rightness and superiority. And finally will come the lowest valley which receives its water from the last and lowest level of that "Right" Valley, and is accordingly watered from "the margin of the Right Valley", not from its deepest part and centre.



But if the spirit of a prophet is typified by a lighted Lamp, lit by means of Inspiration ("We have inspired thee with [a] Spirit from Our power"),  then the symbol of the source of that kindling is Fire.



If some of those who derive knowledge from the prophets live by a merely traditional acceptance of what they are told, and others by a gift of insight, then the symbol for the former, who investigate nothing, is a Fire-brand or a Torch or a Meteor; while the man of spiritual experience, who has therefore something in some sort common with the prophets, is accordingly symbolized by the Warming of Fire, for a man is not warmed by hearing about fire but by being close to it.



If the first stage of prophets is their translation into the World of Holy Transcendence away from the disturbances of senses and imagination, that stage is symbolized by "the Holy Valley".


And if the Holy Valley may not be trodden save after the doffing of the Two Worlds (that is, this world and the world beyond) and the soul's turning of her face towards the One Real (for this world and the world beyond are co-relatives and both are accidentia of the human light-substance, and can be doffed at one time and donned at another), then the symbol of the putting-off of these Two Worlds is the doffing of his two sandals by the pilgrim to Mekka, what time he changes his worldly garments for the pilgrim's robe and faces towards the holy Kaaba.



Nay, but let us now translate ourselves to the Presence Dominical once more, and speak of its symbols. If that Presence hath something whereby the several divine sciences are engraven on the tablets of hearts susceptible to them, that something will be symbolized by the Pen.



That Within those hearts whereon those things are engraved will be typified by the Tablet,  Book, and Scroll.



If there be, above the pen that writes, something which constrains it to service, its type will be the Hand.



If the Presence which embraces Hand and Tablet, Pen and Book, is constituted according to a definite order, It will be typified by the Form or Image.



And if the human form has its definite order, after that likeness, then is it created "in the Image, the Form, of the Merciful One".



Now there is a difference between saying, "In the image of the Merciful One," and, "In the image of Allâh." For it was the Divine Mercy that caused the image of the Divine Presence to be in that "Image." And then Allâh, out of His grace and mercy, gave to Adam a summary "image" or "form," embracing every genus and species in the whole world, inasmuch that it was as if Adam were all that was in the world, or were the summarized copy of the world. And Adam's form--this summarized "image"--was inscribed in the handwriting of Allâh, so that Adam is the Divine handwriting, which is not the characters of letters (for His Handwriting transcends both characters and letters, even as His Word transcends sound and syllables, and His Pen transcends Reed and Steel, and His Hand transcends flesh and bone).



Now, but for this mercy, every son of Adam would have been powerless to know his Sovereign-Lord; for "only he who knows himself knows his Lord." This, then, being an effect of the divine mercy, it was "in the image of the Merciful One," not "in the image of Allâh," that Adam was created.



So, then, the Presence of the Godhead is not the same as the Presence of The Merciful One, nor as the Presence of The Kingship, nor as the Presence of the Sovereign-Lordship; for which reason He commanded us to invoke the protection of all these Presences severally. "Say, I invoke the protection of the Lord of mankind, the King of mankind, the Deity of mankind!" If this idea did not underlie the expression "Allâh created man in the image of the Merciful," the words would be linguistically incorrect; they should then have run, "after His image."' But the words, according to Bokhari, run, "After the image of the Merciful."



But as the distinction between the Presence of the Kingship and the Presence of the Lordship call for a long expression, we must pass on, and be content with the foregoing specimen of the symbolic method. For indeed it is a shoreless sea.


But if you are conscious of a certain repulsion from this symbolism, you may comfort yourself by the text, "He sent down from heaven rain, and it flowed in the valleys, according to their capacity;" for the commentaries on this text tell us that the Water here is knowledge, and the Valleys are the hearts of men.



(Translated by W.H.T. Gairdner; reprinted in Islamic Sufism by Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah).