Reshism and Sufism in the Postmodern Age

By Dr. Maroof Shah - Greater Kashmir - Srinigar, India
Thursday, Rabi-Us-Sani 22 AH / May 10, 2007

Reshism and Sufism in the Postmodern Age - III

[To read # I and # II click on the link below, then scroll down:
http://sufinews.blogspot.com/search?q=silence+not+speech ]

God is Hidden treasure (this oft quoted Prophetic tradition even if not authentic expresses something which plainly follows from the Quranic emphasis on divine transcendence). And hidden He remains even now.

Absolute in itself has really never manifested and can’t manifest. It remains unknowable. The Absolute in its absoluteness is Nameless and It has no signs by which It can be approached. It is beyond all perception, conception and imagination.

No qualification or relation (even such a category as existence) can be attributed to It for It even transcends transcendence though that doesn’t reduce It to nullity or void as certain critics of mysticism like Jalalul Haq think). No linguistic category can describe It. It lives in permanent abysmal darkness and is ‘‘the most unknown of all the unknowns.” It is Gayyibul-gayyib. None can have, in principle, access to It.

No linguistic category can describe It. It lives in permanent abysmal darkness and is ‘‘the most unknown of all the unknowns.” It is Gayyibul-gayyib. None can have, in principle, access to It. The Pure Absolute or Essence (Dhat) in its fundamental aspect is beyond the insatiable human quest and all attempts to reach It, track it, pinpoint it, catch It in the net of language or realm of the finite or time, to conceptualize It, to imagine It, to speak about It, to affirm anything of It are doomed.

Before the Ipseity or Dhat one can only be bewildered as Khaja Gulam Farid says:

“Where to seek! Where to find You Friend. All the fiery creatures, human beings, forces of Nature and the entire world is amazingly drowned in the sea of bewilderment.

The Sufis, devotees, men of wisdom and learning have ultimately lost. Arshi and Bistami while embracing each other cry in vain…saints, prophets, mystics, poles and even messengers and deities incarnate proclaim weepingly that He is beyond the reach of vision.

Scientists, erudites, gnostics and professionals in all humility have admittedly resigned. Ask Farid naive and simple: where do you find.”

Absoluteness in its absolutenss, the highest metaphysical stage of Reality, is undifferentiated. It is Infinite. So nothing from the world of relativity, no categorization, no definition, no conceptualization is relevant. Wahdatul wajud (Oneness of Being, the most misunderstood doctrine of Sufism though almost all traditional authorities from Abdul Qadir Jeelani (whom Ibn Arabi translates in metaphysical terms) and Rumi to Shah Waliuallah and Maulana Thanvi subscribe to it.

Sheikh Sirhindi’s critique of it is well appropriated by Shah Waliuallah, Maulana Thanvi and others envisages the idea that the Supreme Reality is both absolute and infinite. The absolute allows of no augmentation or diminution or of reality or division. “The infinite as another fundamental aspect of the Real is limitless for it isn’t determined by any limiting factor. It has no boundary. The true infinite is the metaphysical “Whole” which can in no way be limited. There is nothing outside it for then it would not longer be the whole. The metaphysical “Whole” is “without parts” for these parts of necessity being relative and relative have no existence from its point of view. This true Infinite or the metaphysical “Whole” under a certain aspect is understood as universal possibility.

“There are no ‘distinctive’ or ‘multiple’ aspect existing really in the Infinite, it is our limited determinate and individual conception which makes us conceive like that.

That limitation comes from the human side to make the Infinite expressible. The imperfection of a definite and conditioned existence mustn’t be transferred to the unlimited domain of universal Possibility itself.”

Postmodernists are right in emphasizing these limitations and denying rational knowledge of the whole. In fact whole can’t be spoken at all. The doctrines of Infinite and universal possibility in Sufi metaphysics appropriate all postmodern critique. By definition they are all inclusive and totally total conceptions. The Sufi denies reason’s totalizing view and say that to intuition only is vision of God given and nothing, no linguistic formulation or conception, can problematize revelations of intuition because they aren’t of the order of finite, of relative, of time, of this world (or even in a way, of next world)”.

“Gnosis is the realization of thy ignorance when His knowledge comes” as Junaid has said.

Postmodernist only sees the fact of our ignorance and nothing dispels his darkness because he chooses to be blind by denying that we can go outside language and history or discourse and thus intuition is denied especially by Derrida. Since all contradictory truths are unified in the Truth as al-Jili says one needn’t despair and be a skeptic. Postmodernist rightly sees the fact that logic or reason (Aristotelian) is wooden legged and bedevilled by contradictions.

But the Sufi though acknowledges this would unify all contradictions in Truth and celebrate life’s contradictions, its mystery, its transcendence of logic and reason.

The Aarif sees by means of God Himself as Sarraj says and since God by definition is Truth so the Sufi sees Truth (or our inability from human perspective to see the Truth) and sees it whole, undiluted, directly.

The Quran denies man as long as he remains man true knowledge of Truth. Exclusivist totalizing attitude is thus rejected by the Quran.
“Over every possessor of knowledge is one more knowing.” So we must all acknowledge our ignorance and let other speak as postmodernists would have it.

Whoso sees God transcends both speech and silence, as Niffari has said.
Since “All are one, both the visible and the invisible” as Shabistari says charges of dualism, binary thinking, marginalization, exclusivism can’t be labelled on Sufism.

Oneness and undifferntiatedness of Being and emphasis on subject’s inability to know the highest Principle or Absolute appropriates all possible problematization by deconstructionist is taken care of. Sufi is one who has put dual way of seen two worlds as one.

One he seeks, knows, sees and calls as Rumi tells us.
Even binary of truth and falsehood, good and evil are transcended in Sufi vision.

“Since I have known God, neither truth nor falsehood has entered my heart” as Abu Hafs Haddad said.
This is because the Sufi is in a state where neither good nor evil entereth as Ba Yazid says.
This metaethical transcendence of mystic has been misunderstood by its critics as implying rejection of law and ethics while as the fact is that mystics alone in the history of religion have shown exemplary moral character as they have transcended desiring self or nafsi amara which incites one to evil.

Only good comes from the mystic because he has transcended the plane of mind, of desiring self which chooses and is caught up in the net of time or desires. His hands have become God’s hands and God acts through him, so to speak.
The binary of time and Eternity too is transcended as one term of the binary (time) though acknowledged at its own level is nevertheless transcended.

“Eternal and temporal are not separate from one another/For in that Being this non-existent has its being”.

The Sufi’s place is placeless and his trace traceless. So what can you say of him. “When contemplation is firmly established, there is no difference between this world and the next” as Hujwiri says.
The Sufi’s tongue flaggeth after irfan.
As Rumi says, “Be silent that the lord who gave thee language may speak”.
Bistami has made similar point “The furthest from God among the devotees are those who speak the most of him.”

The Sufi’s place is placeless and his trace traceless. So what can you say of him. “When contemplation is firmly established, there is no difference between this world and the next” as Hujwiri says. The Sufi’s tongue flaggeth after irfan. As Rumi says, “Be silent that the lord who gave thee language may speak”. Bistami has made similar point “The furthest from God among the devotees are those who speak the most of him.”

The Sufi is extraordinarily ordinary man and celebrates mystery of existence.
The concept of negative divine in mysticism is expression of the fact that Existence refuses to be demystified. God or existence can’t be known. Thus we see Sufism transcending postmodern position while appropriating its critique of philosophy, reason and the like. He sees God in an age where conventional theology knows nothing of Him and postmodern theology declares him dead.

Sufism and Reshism could be never be so relevant as now when finality of interpretation, intolerance, exclusivism, dogmatism, and totalizing metanarratives have plagued the world.

Because of the denial of intellectual intuition and revelation any nontextual supralinguistic knowledge postmodernists are unable to transcend the relativistic plane of language and thus be a mystic and thus are denied the deliverance by truth or self realization as understood in Sufism.

Postmodernists are unable to know or envision the possibility of that state where speech comes without words. Derrida rightly passes for an atheist so the station of a Sufi is not his prerogative.

The following prayer of Rumi is needed for postmodern man to proceed beyond skeptical nihilistic relativism. May God grant it for all those who are duped by secular or pagan deconstructionism.

O God grant me the station
where speech comes without words
with the soundless sound of existence
Ameen
that captures the silence that was before the Word

And with the following vakh of Lalla I conclude.

Search thy vain imaginings of thought:
let thy costly learning be destroyed:
meditating on the Self of Naught,
find the void that sinks, and lo! The Void
(Lalla)

--Concluded

(Dr M. Maroof Shah can be mailed at marooof123@yahoo.com)