IX. Poverty, Renunciation, Unification, Dependence

The stages of Poverty, of Asceticism or Renunciation, of the merging of the individual will in the Will of God, and of complete trust in and dependence upon Him, can be considered together. Poverty (faqr) is held in high estimation by the Sufi writers, but it is only poverty for the sake of God, which is meritorious. Those who are poor for His sake are promised entrance into Paradise five hundred years before the rich, even the virtuous rich. Such teaching of course is similar to that of the New Testament, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God ”. Again, al-Sarrāj says that the poor are the richest of God’s creation-they dispense with the gift for the sake of the Giver. Poverty he describes as a sea of tribulation, but all its tribulations mean glory. There are different grades of those who possess nothing and do not desire outwardly or inwardly anything from anyone (i.e. not only do they refrain from expressing desire, but they do not even feel it) and they do not expect anything from anyone, and if given anything, they refuse to receive it; this station belongs to those who are in proximity (to God). It is, indeed, the first of the stages (manāzil) of unification (tawhid). In a like spirit, St Francis embraced the Lady Poverty as his bride, for the love of God. Brother Giles gives an account of the Franciscan doctrine of Holy Poverty as… the immeasurable treasure of the most holy poverty, for it is a treasure so high excelling and so divine that we be not^1,2,3,4,5,6 worthy to lay it up in our vile vessels; since this is that celestial virtue whereby all earthly things and fleeting are trodden under foot, and whereby all hindrances are lifted from the soul, so that freely she may join herself to God Eternal. And this is the virtue that makes the soul, still tied to earth, hold converse with the angels in heaven… which also in this life grants to the souls that love it an easier flight to heaven; in that it guards the arms of true humility and love; and again St Francis speaks of the bread of poverty as “this it is that I account vast treasure, wherein is nothing at all prepared by human hands, but whatsoever we have is given by God’s own providence”. This was the spiritual poverty of the adept in Sufism, for which Rabi’a craved, while she was yet a novice, and incapable of understanding the depths of its meaning. ‘Attār tells the story of how on one occasion, when she was making the pilgrimage and had reached ‘Arafat, she heard the voice of God saying to her, “O you who invoke Me, what request have you to make of Me? If it is Myself that you desire, then I will shew you one flash of my glory (but in that) you will be absorbed and melt away. ” She said then, “ O Lord of Glory, Rabi’a has no means of attaining to that degree, but I desire one particle of (spiritual) Poverty”. The voice said: O Rabi’a, Poverty is the scourge (lit. the drought or famine, i.e. that which withers up and destroys life) of Our wrath, which we have placed in the way of men. When but a hair’s breadth remains between them and Union with Us, everything is changed and Union becomes separation. As for you, you are still within seventy veils of self-existence; until you have come forth from beneath those veils, and set forth on the way towards Us, and passed the seventy stations, you will not be fit even to speak of that Poverty.^7,8,9

Here Poverty (faqr) signifies the state of complete self-loss, exceedingly hard to attain, and not leading to Union, unless it is perfect, and even then the mystic may, in the good pleasure of God, be subject to a Dark Night of the Soul before attaining to Union. Such poverty could be attained only by the adept, divested of every attribute of “self”. Renunciation, or asceticism (zuhd), is to be considered side by side with this high conception of Poverty. The first stage of quhd, to the Sufi, is initiatory and represents the Purgative Life, through which the novice must pass before setting foot on the mystic Way. But when the soul has been purified from all sensual desires, and the mystic “pure from Self as flame from smoke” sets forth upon his journey towards God, then he passes beyond this early degree of zuhd and aims at the last stage, renunciation of all but God, attained only by the adept. This question of zuhd is of the greatest importance in the study of early Sufism, because at that stage Sufism consisted of asceticism carried to the point of quietism, rather than the acceptance of a theosophy or a mystical doctrine as the term is generally understood. The Way was the subject of study rather than the Goal. So the Sufi writers have much to say concerning zuhd. Al-Sarrāj states that love of the world is the root of all sin, and that renunciation of the world is the root of all good and obedience (to God). Abū Tālib says that the beginning of zuhd is concern for the next world, in the soul, and then the coming into existence of the sweetness of hope in God, and concern for the next world does not enter in until anxiety for this world goes out, nor does the sweetness of hope enter in until the sweetness of desire has^10,11,12,13 departed. True quhd means the thrusting out from the heart of all thought of worldly things and the counting of them as vanity and only so will zuhd become perfect. Zuhd leads ultimately to intimacy with God. Piety in the servants leads on to zuhd and zuhd to love of God, and these two states are the aim of those who seek to love God and to be intimate with Him and he is not truly a zahid who does not attain to the station of love or the mystic state of intimacy (uns). Al-Qushayri, in dealing with this subject, defines zuhd as leaving all that distracts the soul from God, freeing the hand from wealth and the heart from desire, and he quotes the misanthropic Hasan of Başra as saying that “ quhd in this world is to hate its people and all that is in it and to leave what is in this world to those who dwell in it “. Ahmad b. Hanbal distinguishes three kinds of zuhd; the renunciation of what is unlawful, which is common enough; the renunciation of what is lawful, which is a more special type; and, finally, the renunciation of all, whatever it may be, that distracts the servant from God Most High, and this is the quhd of the gnostics. The gnostic seeks to cut himself off from all else in order that, undistracted, he may obtain the Beatific Vision, and therefore he counts even the delights of Paradise as contemptible in comparison with the Beauty of God. Renunciation involves unification (tawhid). The doctrine of the Unity of God was from the first the central doctrine of Islām, and to Muslims the unpardonable sin was shirk, the admission by word or act that^{14,15,16,17,18,19} anything or anyone was worthy to share that which was due to God alone. Further, this doctrine meant that within the Godhead itself no duality could be admitted. God must be One in His Essence and One in His activity, and therefore must be the sole Cause of all that exists and all that comes to pass. To the Sufi, the doctrine of tawhid meant far more than the confession of God’s Unity; it was to him the sinking of the Self and the abnegation of the personal will, in the will of God. So the doctrine of the Unity for the Sufi was developed into the doctrine of Unification. This was expressed in the plainest terms by the Persian mystic Abū Sa’id b. Abi al-Khayr, who lays it down that… it is the vision of the heart that is of value, not the tongue’s speech… the (true servant) is he who fears the majesty of God and frees himself from carnal desires. Until you empty yourself of Self, you will not be able to escape from it. It is not enough for me to repeat, “There is no god but God”, to become a Muslim. (It is written) “Most of them have not believed in God, but are polytheists”, that is, they have made profession of faith with the tongue, but most of them in their hearts are polytheists. God has said, “I do not pardon the polytheist”, that is, God will not forgive one who gives Him a partner, but apart from that He will forgive whom He will. All the members of thy body are filled with doubt and polytheism. Thou must cast out this polytheism from thy heart that thou mayst have peace… thou canst not believe in God until thou dost deny thyself, that self which keeps thee far from God Most High and which says, “So and So has done thee an injury and such a one has treated thee well”. All this leads to dependence on creatures and all this is polytheism. The creatures are nothing, the Friend is everything. After this manner it must be known and declared and having been declared, it is necessary to abide by it and in it. And to abide by it means that when thou hast said, “One”, thou must not again say “Two” and the creature and the Creator are two. The right faith is to say God and therein to stand fast.

And to stand fast means that when thou hast said, “God”, thou shouldst no more speak of the creatures nor think upon them in thine heart, so that it is as if the creatures were not. Whatever thou dost see or say, see and say from what is existent, which will never cease to be. Love that One, Who, when thou shalt cease to be, will not Himself cease to be, that thou, too, mayst become one who will never cease to be. The older Sufi writers had expressed the same idea. Al-Sarrāj quotes a saying of Ruwaym b. Ahmad b. Yezid al-Baghdadi that tawhid is the effacement of human nature, and keeping separate that which is Divine, and explains the latter phrase as meaning the separation of what is eternal from that which has been brought into phenomenal existence and is therefore evanescent. Al-Hujwīrī also states that sharing in the Unity involves cessation of human volition and affirmation of the Divine Will so as to exclude all personal initiative. Al-Qushayri speaks of the servant being like a body in the hands of God, plunged in the depths of the ocean of His Unity, having passed away from his Self and from the claims of created things, so that at the last the servant returns to what he was at first, before he had begun to be. So also writes the Christian mystic: We ought to offer ourselves entirely to Him, studying only His good pleasure, not our own… O complete submission of a disinterested soul; most sweet and tender in that the soul’s whole feeling is divine! To attain to this, is for the soul to be deified;^20,21,22,23 as a small drop of water appears lost if mixed with wine, taking its taste and colour; and as, when plunged into a furnace, a bar of iron seems to lose its nature and assume that of fire; or as the air filled with the sun’s beams seems rather to become light than to be illuminated. So it is with the natural life of the Saints; they seem to melt and pass away into the Will of God. Here is the doctrine of tawhid stated quite plainly, but it is to be noted that it is only unification, not yet union. The drop of water may appear to be absorbed into the wine, yet the two are of different natures, the iron may take on the heat and colour of the fire and yet the two remain distinct substances, there is still duality, still “Thou” and “I”. Not yet has the mystic attained to complete union, when “Thou” and “I” cease to exist, the union symbolised rather by the drop of water merged in the ocean, the spark absorbed in the flame, when the part becomes one with the whole, not losing its identity, but returning to its source, the spirit of man made one with the Eternal Spirit. This stage involves also that of complete dependence upon God and trust in Him (tawakkul) which is the natural consequence of renunciation of this world and the abnegation of the individual will. Abū Tālib says of the people of tawakkul that they are the elect of God, whom He has chosen, and these put their trust in Him, and are contented with Him, and so they rest from the troubles of this world and the next. The true dependent is the one who knows that his Lord’s provision for him is better than his own for himself, and that his Lord can see him^24,25 (and know his needs) better than he can himself. Then he ceases to think of what is, or to be concerned with what shall be, and he takes no thought (for himself) for to God belong the results of our affairs, and in all cases He is worthy of praise and thanks. Al-Sarrāj gives a definition of the tawakkul of the chosen of God, which he attributes to al-Shibli, to the effect that “you should be to God as if you were not and God should be to you as One Who was and is and shall be to eternity,” and elsewhere he says the mutawakkil should put his trust in God as the birds do. Abū Nu’aym relates of Dhū al-Nūn that he was asked concerning tawakkul and he said that it meant getting rid of earthly masters and the removal of motives, i.e. true dependence on God means that we should no longer let earthly things or earthly influences weigh with us, nor let our actions be the result of interested motives, and he added that dependence meant bringing the Self into obedience to God and withdrawing it from the power of controlling its own destiny. The same writer tells of a woman among the devotees who said, “Verily God has bestowed on those who long to meet Him a state, which if they lost they would have lost eternal bliss”. They said to her, “What is that state?” She said, “Complete independence from their carnal selves”(and consequent dependence upon God), and those who heard were amazed at her, wondering how she had attained to such enlightenment. Al-Ghazālī holds that tawakkul is a question of faith in the Unity of God. Since God is the sole cause^{26,27,28,29,30,31} of all that exists or can exist, and all His acts are the result of His perfect goodness and wisdom, and all things depend on His power, then the servant can in perfect trust give up his will to the Divine Will and abandon himself to God, trusting in Him to provide for all needs. To him tawakkul is practically identical with the Sufi conception of tawhid. As the child knows only his mother’s breast, so the one who trusts in God knows only his Lord’s care and in His hands is as the dead body in the hands of those who prepare it for burial. So we reach the doctrine of quietism, very characteristic of the early Sufis, and very possibly founded on the teaching of the Christian Gospel. Rabi’a, who belonged to this early school, was an ascetic of extreme other-worldliness, as we have already noted in the account of her life and her relations with others. ‘Attār relates of her that she was asked, “Whence have you come?” She said, “From that world”. They asked her, “Whither are you going?” She replied, “To that world”. She was asked, “What are you doing in this world?” and she answered, “I am sorrowing”. “In what way?” they asked, and she said, “I am eating the bread of this world and doing the work of that world”. Then someone said, “One so persuasive in speech is worthy to keep a rest-house”, and she responded, “I myself am keeping a rest-house, whatever is within, I do not allow it to go out and whatever is without, I do not allow it to come in. If anyone comes in or goes out, he does not concern me, for I am contemplating my own heart, not mere clay”,^{32,33,34,35,36} i.e. she was concerned only with what belonged to God and was oblivious to all other thoughts and interests. Others might come and go, but she was occupied with the things of the spirit and was not to be distracted by what belonged to the things of sense. In this connection there is an interesting little anecdote related, so far as I know, only by Abū Tālib, since none of Rabi’a’s biographers include it. He says: They told us that Rabi’a al-‘Adawiyya, may God Almighty have mercy upon her, once said, “I praised God one night with the praises of dawn, then I slept and I saw a bright green tree, indescribable in its size and beauty, and lo, upon it were three kinds of fruit, unknown to me among the fruits of this world, like virgins ‘breasts, white, red and yellow, and they shone like spheres and suns in the green spaces of the tree, and I admired them and said, ‘Whose is this? ‘and one said to me, ‘This is yours, for your praises aforetime ’. Then I began to walk round it, and lo, under it were eighteen fruits on the ground, of the colour of gold, and I said, ‘If only these fruits were with the fruits on the tree, it would surely be better”. That personage said to me: ‘They would have been there, but that you, when you offered your praises, were thinking, “Is the dough leavened or not?” and this fruit fell off ’. This is a warning to those of insight and an exhortation to those who are pious and worship God. This feeling that even the most homely and necessary things in life might be a cause of separation from God was shewn in a story related of her by ‘Attār and already quoted. Abū Ja’far b. Sulayman relates how Sufyan al-Thawri once took him by the hand and said, “Come”^37,38 with us to that teacher, for I can find no refreshment in any but her “. And when they came in Sufyan lifted up his hands and said,” O God, I ask Thee for freedom from this world (earthly things) “, and Rabi’a wept, and he said to her,” Why do you weep? “and she said,” You are the cause of my weeping “. He said,” How is that? “She said,” Do you not know that freedom from this world comes only from renouncing what is in it and how can that be when you are defiled by it? “and she went on to say,” You have abundance of days, and when a day has passed part of you has passed away, and it must come to pass, when part has gone, that the whole will go. You are a teacher, therefore learn “. Among Rabi’a’s sayings it is reported that she said to some devotees,” Despise the world, for it is the pleasantest thing for you, when you look down upon it “. Jāmī tells how Sufyan once asked her,” What is the best thing for the servant to do, who desires proximity to his Lord? “She said,” That the servant should possess nothing in this world or the next, save Him “. In the same strain she once said,” If a man possessed the whole world, he would not be wealthy thereby “. They said to her” Why? “She said,” Because it perishes and passes away “. Here the Sufi view is in accordance with the Franciscan contempt of the world: Many sorrows and many woes will that wretched man have, who setteth his desire and his heart and his hope on earthly things, for which he abandons and loses the things of heaven, and at the last will also lose those things of earth. The eagle^{39,40,41,42,43} flieth high; but if she had a weight tied to her wings, she could no more fly high; so man for the weight of earthly things cannot fly high, to wit cannot attain to perfection. Al-Jāhiz notes that Rabi’a feared even the possession of the reputation of a saint, lest it should give her satisfaction in something other than her Lord’s service. He says, “Rabi’a al-Qaysiyya was asked, ‘Have you done any work at all that you can shew (i.e. any miracle) so that you may be accepted thereby (as a saint)? ‘and she replied, ‘If there were anything, I should fear that it might be a source of profit to me”. Among the sayings recorded of her is this to the same effect, “What appears of my (good) works, I count as nothing at all”, and among her counsels to those who asked her advice was this, “Conceal your good deeds as you conceal your evil deeds”, again with the desire to receive nothing, not even commendation, at the hands of mankind. The desire of these early Sufis to be free from all that concerned the phenomenal world, in order to be free for the world of spiritual things, is illustrated by a quaint story which finds a place in ‘Attār’s biography of Rabi’a. He relates that one day she gave three silver dirhams to a man to buy a garment (for her) because she was in need of it, and after he had started out, he turned back and said, “O lady, what colour shall I buy?” Rabi’a said, “Since it is a question of colour (i.e. something which belongs to this world of the senses) give me the money back”, and she threw it into the Tigris. That is to say, adds ‘Attār, that even a garment should not be a cause of separation (from God).^{44,45,46,47,48}

She gave a shrewd rebuke to certain visitors for their worldliness, according to a story which relates that some eminent men of Başra came and sat by her pillow (when she was ill) and reviled the things of this world, no doubt with a desire to please the saint. But Rabi’a, with her usual ability to perceive insincerity, said to them, “You must be very fond of this world: if you were not fond of it, you would not say so much about it. Who breaks the goods must have bought them. If you were detached from this world you would not speak of it, either good or ill — remember that ‘whoso loves a thing speaks much of it ’”. A story is told of how one day a rich merchant, having come to see Rabi’a, saw that her house was falling into ruin. He gave her a thousand pieces of gold, and made her a present of a house in good repair. Rabi’a came, and was no sooner installed than, seeing the paintings on this house, she became absorbed in contemplating them. At once, returning to the merchant the thousand pieces and the house, she said to him: “I fear lest my heart should become attached to this house, and it would be no longer possible to occupy myself with the works of the other world. My only desire is to consecrate myself to the service of the Most High Lord”. It was probably in this connection that, when asked why she had parted with her house, Rabi’a answered, “In order to leave what did not concern me and find fellowship with One who is Eternal”, that is, she turned her back on the transient that her face might be towards that which endures for ever. She might have said, with St Paul, “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the^49,50,51 things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal “. Many of the stories already quoted in the biographical section shew plainly that Rabi’a lived the life of the true ascetic, embracing Poverty for the love of God, choosing to live in a hut, provided only with the barest necessities of life, though she had rich and solicitous friends who would have surrounded her with comfort. She attained as much by her practice as her precepts to the Sufi ideal of the sincere zahid in turning aside from all things, lawful or unlawful, that might distract her from the service due to God alone: she indeed counted all things loss for the sake of her Lord. In verses already quoted in full, she says,” I have fled from the world and all that is within it. My hope is for union with Thyself: for that is the Goal of my desire “. As one of the” elect of the elect “among the mutawakkilin, she merges her will in the Divine Will and leaves all her needs in the hands of God. For thirty years, she says of herself, she had sought nothing save from Him and He had never failed her. From this stage, in which she casts behind all that is of this world, she passes on to the last stage of the mystic Way, that of Love with all that it includes, which leads on to the final state which is the Goal of the mystic’s quest, contemplation of the Vision of God, unveiled in all His Beauty, and the abiding Union of the lover with the Beloved.^52,53,54