Like Jacob Böhme, Jílí sets out from the principle that “in order that the truth may be manifested as a Something, there must be a contrary therein.” He finds the ground of existence in a Being which, though essentially One, is of threefold nature, since it knows itself as the Creator (al-Ḥaqq) and the creatures (al-khalq).
“The Essence,” he says, “is ‘Thou’ and ‘I’—‘Thou’ in respect of thy deepest self (huwiyya, He-ness), not in respect of the human attributes which the notion ‘Thou’ admits; and ‘I’ in respect of my individual self, not in respect of the Divine attributes which the notion ‘I’ admits. That is what is signified by the Essence (al-Dhát). ‘I,’ in respect of my ‘I’-ness’ (aniyya), viewed in relation to the judgments which the notion ‘I’ is capable of, is God; and ‘Thou,’ in the creaturely aspect, is Man. Therefore consider your essence, if you will, as ‘I,’ or if you will, as ‘Thou,’ for there is nothing besides the universal reality.…
If you say, that it (the Essence) is One, you are right; or if you say that it is Two, it is in fact Two.
Or if you say, ‘No, it is Three,’ you are right, for that is the real nature of Man.
Regard the Oneness (aḥadiyya) which is his essence: say, ‘He is One relatively (wáḥid), One absolutely (aḥad), unique in glory.’
But if the two essences are considered, you will say that he is Two, because he is a slave (‘abd) and a Lord (rabb).
And if you examine his real nature and what is united therein, namely, two things deemed to be contrary,
You will contemplate him with amazement: his lowness is such that you will not call him lofty, and his loftiness is such that you will not call him low.
Nay, name that (Man) a Third, because of a reality having two attributes inherent in the realities of its essence.
It (that reality) is he named Aḥmad as being that (Man), and Mohammed as being the true idea (ḥaqíqa) of all things that exist.”
As an introduction to the Logos doctrine foreshadowed here, which is interwoven with a mystical scheme of cosmology, I will translate part of the 60th chapter, “Of the Perfect Man: showing that he is our Lord Mohammed, and that he stands over against the Creator (al-Ḥaqq) and the creatures (al-khalq).”
The Perfect Man is the Quṭb (axis) on which the spheres of existence revolve from first to last, and since things came into being he is one (wáḥid) for ever and ever. He hath various guises and appears in diverse bodily tabernacles (kaná’is): in respect of some of these his name is given to him, while in respect of others it is not given to him. His own original name is Mohammed, his name of honour Abú ’l-Qásim, his description ‘Abdullah, and his title Shamsu’ddín. In every age he bears a name suitable to his guise (libás) in that age. I once met him in the form of my Shaykh, Sharafu’ddín Ismá‘íl al-Jabartí, but I did not know that he (the Shaykh) was the Prophet, although I knew that he (the Prophet) was the Shaykh. This was one of the visions in which I beheld him at Zabíd in a.h. 796. The real meaning of this matter is that the Prophet has the power of assuming every form. When the adept (adíb) sees him in the form of Mohammed which he wore during his life, he names him by that name, but when he sees him in another form and knows him to be Mohammed, he names him by the name of the form in which he appears. The name Mohammed is not applied except to the Idea of Mohammed (al-Ḥaqíqatu ’l-Muḥammadiyya). Thus, when he appeared in the form of Shiblí, Shiblí said to his disciple, “Bear witness that I am the Apostle of God”; and the disciple, being one of the illuminated, recognised the Prophet and said, “I bear witness that thou art the Apostle of God.” No objection can be taken to this: it is like what happens when a dreamer sees some one in the form of another; but there is a difference between dreaming and mystical revelation, viz., that the name of the form in which Mohammed appears to the dreamer is not bestowed in hours of waking upon the Ḥaqíqatu ’l-Muḥammadiyya, because interpretation is applicable to the World of Similitudes: accordingly, when the dreamer wakes he interprets the ḥaqíqa of Mohammed as being the ḥaqíqa of the dream-form. In mystical revelation it is otherwise, for if you perceive mystically that the ḥaqíqa of Mohammed is displayed in any human form, you must bestow upon the ḥaqíqa of Mohammed the name of that form and regard its owner with no less reverence than you would show to our Lord Mohammed, and after having seen him therein you may not behave towards it in the same manner as before. Do not imagine that my words contain any tincture of the doctrine of metempsychosis. God forbid! I mean that the Prophet is able to assume whatever form he wishes, and the Sunna declares that in every age he assumes the form of the most perfect men, in order to exalt their dignity and correct their deviation (from the truth): they are his vicegerents outwardly, and he is their spiritual essence (ḥaqíqa) inwardly.
The Perfect Man in himself stands over against all the individualisations of existence. With his spirituality he stands over against the higher individualisations, with his corporeality over against the lower. His heart stands over against the Throne of God (al-‘Arsh), his mind over against the Pen (al-Qalam), his soul over against the Guarded Tablet (al-Lawḥu ’l-maḥfúẓ), his nature over against the elements, his capability (of receiving forms) over against matter (hayúlá).…He stands over against the angels with his good thoughts, over against the genies and devils with the doubts which beset him, over against the beasts with his animality.…To every type of existence he furnishes from himself an anti-type. We have already explained that every one of the Cherubim is created from an analogous faculty of the Perfect Man. It only remains to speak of his correspondence with the Divine names and attributes.
You must know that the Perfect Man is a copy (nuskha) of God, according to the saying of the Prophet, “God created Adam in the image of the Merciful,” and in another ḥadíth, “God created Adam in His own image.” That is so, because God is Living, Knowing, Mighty, Willing, Hearing, Seeing, and Speaking, and Man too is all these. Then he confronts the Divine huwiyya with his huwiyya, the Divine aniyya with his aniyya, and the Divine dhát (essence) with his dhát—he is the whole against the whole, the universal against the universal, the particular against the particular.…Further, you must know that the Essential names and the Divine attributes belong to the Perfect Man by fundamental and sovereign right in virtue of a necessity inherent in his essence, for it is he whose “truth” (ḥaqíqa) is signified by those expressions and whose spirituality (laṭífa) is indicated by those symbols: they have no subject in existence (whereto they should be attached) except the Perfect Man. As a mirror in which a person sees the form of himself and cannot see it without the mirror, such is the relation of God to the Perfect Man, who cannot possibly see his own form but in the mirror of the name Allah; and he is also a mirror to God, for God laid upon Himself the necessity that His names and attributes should not be seen save in the Perfect Man. This obligation to display the Divine attributes is the “trust” (amána) which God offered to the heavens and the earth: they were afraid to accept it, “but Man accepted it; verily he is unjust and ignorant” (Kor. 33, 72), i.e., unjust to his own soul in letting it suffer degradation (from the things of this world) and ignorant of his real worth, because he is unaware of that with which he has been entrusted.…Beyond the plane of the Names and Attributes, which are ranged on the right and left of him according to their kind, the Perfect Man feels through his whole being “a pervasive delight, which is named the delight of the Godhead” (ladhdhatu ’l-iláhiyya).…Here he is independent of his modes, i.e., the Names and Attributes, and regards them not at all. He knows nothing in existence save his own nature (huwiyya), contemplates the emanation (ṣudúr) from himself of all that exists, and beholds the Many in his essence, even as ordinary men are conscious of their own thoughts and qualities; but the Perfect Man is able to keep every thought, great or small, far from himself: his power over things does not proceed from any secondary cause but is exercised freely, like other men’s power of speaking, eating, and drinking.
These extracts bring out the germinal idea which is developed by Jílí into a psychological and cosmological system. The Perfect Man, as the copy of God and the archetype of Nature, unites the creative and creaturely aspects of the Essence and manifests the oneness of Thought with things. “He is the heaven and the earth and the length and the breadth.”
Mine is the kingdom in both worlds: I saw therein none but myself, that I should hope for his favour or fear him.
Before me is no “before,” that I should follow its condition, and after me is no “after,” that I should precede its notion. I have made all kinds of perfection mine own, and lo, I am the beauty of the majesty of the Whole: I am naught but It.
Whatsoever thou seest of minerals and plants and animals, together with Man and his qualities,
And whatsoever thou seest of elements and nature and original atoms (haba’) whereof the substance is (ethereal as) a perfume,
And whatsoever thou seest of seas and deserts and trees and high-topped mountains,
And whatsoever thou seest of spiritual forms and of things visible whose countenance is goodly to behold,
And whatsoever thou seest of thought and imagination and intelligence and soul, and heart with its inwards,
And whatsoever thou seest of angelic aspect, or of phenomena whereof Satan is the spirit,
* * * * *
Lo, I am that whole, and that whole is my theatre: ’tis I, not it, that is displayed in its reality.
Verily, I am a Providence and Prince to mankind: the entire creation is a name, and my essence is the object named.
The sensible world is mine and the angel-world is of my weaving and fashioning; the unseen world is mine and the world of omnipotence springs from me.
And mark! In all that I have mentioned I am a slave returning from the Essence to his Lord—
Poor, despised, lowly, self-abasing, sin’s captive, in the bonds of his trespasses.
The concluding verses only say what Jílí repeats in many places, that while at supreme moments a man may lose himself in God, he can never be identified with God absolutely.
In the second part of his work the author treats of the Perfect Man as the Spirit whence all things have their origin. Accordingly he devotes successive chapters to the organs and faculties which make up the psychological and intellectual constitution of the Perfect Man—spirit, heart, intelligence, reflection, etc., with the corresponding celestial beings which are said to be “created” from them. The highest hypostases of his psychology are the Holy Spirit (Rúḥu ’l-Quds) and the Spirit (al-Rúḥ); the latter is also described as “the angel named al-Rúḥ” and, in the technical language of the Sufis, as “the ḥaqq by means of which the world is created” (al-ḥaqqu ’l-makhlúq bihi) and “the Idea of Mohammed” (al-Ḥaqíqatu ’l-Muḥammadiyya). How these two Spirits are related to each other is indicated in the following passage:
You must know that every sensible object has a created spirit which constitutes its form, and the spirit is to the form as the meaning to the word. The created spirit has a Divine spirit which constitutes it, and that Divine spirit is the Rúḥu ’l-Quds. Those who regard the Rúḥu ’l-Quds in man deem it created, because two eternal substances cannot exist: eternity belongs to God alone, whose names and attributes inhere in His essence because of the impossibility of their being detached; all else is created and originated. Man, for example, has a body, which is his form, and a spirit, which is his meaning, and a consciousness (sirr), which is al-Rúḥ, and an essential aspect (wajh), which is denoted by the terms Rúḥu ’l-Quds (the Holy Spirit), al-sirru ’l-iláhí (the Divine consciousness) and al-wujúdu ’l-sárí (the all-pervading Being).
The Rúḥu ’l-Quds and the Rúḥ are one Spirit viewed as eternal in relation to God and non-eternal in relation to Man; as the inmost essence of things or as their form of existence. The uncreated Spirit of God, sanctified above all phenomenal imperfections, is referred to in the verse, “I breathed of My Spirit into Adam” (Kor. 15, 29; 38, 72), and in the verse, “Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face (wajh) of Allah” (Kor. 2, 109), i.e., the Rúḥu ’l-Quds exists, “individualised by its perfection,” in every object of sense or thought. Jílí adds that inasmuch as the spirit of a thing is its self (nafs), existence is constituted by the “self” of God; and His “self” is His essence. Union with the Rúḥu ’l-Quds comes only as the crown and consummation of the mystical life to “the holy one” (qudsí) who unceasingly contemplates the Divine consciousness (sirr) which is his origin, so that its laws are made manifest in him and God becomes his ear, eye, hand and tongue: he touches the sick and they are healed, he bids a thing be and it is, for he has been strengthened with the Holy Spirit, even as Jesus was (Kor. 2, 81).
It will now be seen that Jílí considers the created Rúḥ or the archetypal Spirit of Mohammed as a mode of the uncreated Holy Divine Spirit and as the medium through which God becomes conscious of Himself in creation.
God created the angel named Rúḥ from His own light, and from him He created the world and made him His organ of vision in the world. One of his names is the Word of Allah (Amr Allah). He is the noblest and most exalted of existent beings: there is no angel above him, and he is the chief of the Cherubim. God caused the mill-stone of existent beings to turn on him, and made him the axis (quṭb) of the sphere of created things. Towards every thing that God created he has a special aspect (wajh), in virtue of which he regards it and preserves it in its appointed place in the order of existence. He has eight forms, which are the bearers of the Divine Throne (al-‘Arsh). From him were created all the angels, both the sublime and the elemental. The angels stand to him in the relation of drops of water to the sea, and the eight bearers of the ‘Arsh stand in the same relation to him as the eight faculties which constitute human existence to the spirit of man. These faculties are intelligence (‘aql), judgment (wahm), reflection (fikr), phantasy (khayál), imagination (al-muṣawwira), memory (al-ḥáfiẓa), perception (al-mudrika), and the soul (nafs). The Rúḥ exercises a Divine guardianship, created in him by God, over the whole universe. He manifests himself in his perfection in the Ḥaqíqatu ’l-Muḥammadiyya: therefore the Prophet is the most excellent of mankind. While God manifests Himself in His attributes to all other created beings, He manifests Himself in His essence to this angel alone. Accordingly the Rúḥ is the Quṭb of the present world and of the world to come. He does not make himself known to any creature of God but to the Perfect Man. When the saint (walí) knows him and truly understands the things which the Rúḥ teaches him, he becomes a pole (quṭb) on which the entire universe revolves; but the Poleship (Quṭbiyya) belongs fundamentally to the Rúḥ, and if others hold it, they are only his delegates. He is the first to receive the Divine command, which he then delivers to the angels; and whenever a command is to be executed in the universe, God creates from him an angel suitable to that command, and the Rúḥ sends him to carry it out. All the Cherubim are created from him, e.g., Seraphiel, Gabriel, Michael, and Azrael, and those above them, such as the angel named al-Nún, who is stationed beneath the Guarded Tablet, and the angel named the Pen (al-Qalam), and the angel named al-Mudabbir, whose station is beneath the Kursí, and the angel named al-Mufaṣṣil, who stands beneath the Imámu ’l-Mubín: these are the Sublime Angels, who were not commanded to worship Adam. God in His wisdom did not command them, for had they been commanded to worship, every one of Adam’s descendants would have known them. Consider how, inasmuch as the angels were commanded to worship Adam, they appear to men in the forms of the Divine similitudes whereby God reveals Himself to the dreamer. All those forms are angels, who descend in diverse shapes by command of the angel entrusted with the making of similitudes. For this reason a man dreams that lifeless things speak to him: unless they were really spirits assuming the form of lifelessness, they would not have spoken. The Prophet said that a true dream is an inspiration from God—because an angel brings it—and also that a true dream is one of the forty-six parts of prophecy. Since Iblís, though he did not worship Adam, was amongst those commanded to worship, the devils who are his offspring were commanded to appear to the dreamer in the same forms as the angels: hence false dreams. According to this argument, the Sublime Angels are unknowable except by “the divine men” (al-iláhiyyún), on whom God bestows such knowledge as a gift after their release from the limitations of humanity.
The Rúḥ has many names according to the number of his aspects. He is named “The Most Exalted Pen” and “The Spirit of Mohammed” and “The First Intelligence” and “The Divine Spirit,” on the principle of naming the original by the derivative, but in the presence of God he has only one name, which is “The Spirit” (al-Rúḥ).
Jílí gives a long account of a vision in which the Rúḥ conversed with him and spoke darkly concerning the mystery of his nature, saying, “I am the child whose father is his son and the wine whose vine is its jar.…I met the mothers who bore me, and I asked them in marriage, and they let me marry them.” In the course of this colloquy the Idea of Mohammed (al-Ḥaqíqatu ’l-Muḥammadiyya) says:
God created Adam in His own image—this is not doubted or disputed—and Adam was one of the theatres (maẓáhir) in which I displayed myself: he was appointed as a vicegerent (khalífa) over my externality. I knew that God made me the object and goal of all His creatures, and lo, I heard the most gracious allocution from the Most Great Presence: “Thou art the Quṭb whereon the spheres of beauty revolve, and thou art the Sun by whose radiance the full-moon of perfection is replenished; thou art he for whom We set up the pattern and for whose sake We made fast the door-ring; thou art the reality symbolised by Hind and Salmá, and ‘Azza and Asmá. O thou who art endued with lofty attributes and pure qualities, Beauty doth not dumbfound thee nor Majesty cause thee to quake, nor dost thou deem Perfection unattainable: thou art the centre and these the circumference, thou art the clothed and these the splendid garments.”
In some aspects the spiritual organ which Sufis call “the heart” (qalb) is hardly distinguished from the spirit (rúḥ): indeed Jílí says that when the Koran mentions the Divine spirit breathed into Adam, it is the heart that is signified. He describes it as “the eternal light and the sublime consciousness (sirr) revealed in the quintessence (‘ayn) of created beings (Mohammed), that God may behold Man thereby”; as “the Throne of God (al-‘Arsh) and His Temple in Man…the centre of Divine consciousness and the circumference of the circle of all that exists actually or ideally.” It reflects all the Divine names and attributes at once, yet quickly changes under the influence of particular names. Like a mirror, it has a face and a back. The face is always turned towards a light called the attention (al-hamm), which is the eye of the heart, so that whenever a name becomes opposite to, or as we should say, strikes the attention, the heart sees it and receives the impression of it; then this name disappears and is succeeded by others. The “back” of the heart is the place from which the attention is absent.
The Divine names and attributes are the heart’s true nature, in which it was created. Some men are so blessed that they have little trouble to keep it pure, but most of us must needs undergo painful self-mortifications in order to wash out the stains of the flesh. Recompense for good works depends on the merit imputed by God to His creatures according to the original individualisations in which He created them: it is a necessary right, not an arbitrary gift. The heart reflects the world of attributes, or rather, as Jílí holds, is itself reflected by the universe. “Earth and heaven do not contain Me, but the heart of My believing servant containeth Me”: if the universe were primary and the heart secondary, i.e., if the heart were only a mirror, then the power of containing and comprehending would have been ascribed to the universe, not to the heart; but in fact, it is the heart alone that comprehends God—by knowledge, by contemplation, and finally by transubstantiation.
When God created the whole world from the Light of Mohammed, He created from the heart of Mohammed the angel Isráfíl (Seraphiel), the mightiest of the angels and the nearest to God.
The faculty of Reason has three modes, viz., the First Intelligence (al-‘aqlu ’l-awwal), Universal Reason (al-‘aqlu ’l-kullí), and ordinary reason (‘aqlu ’l-ma‘ásh). Jílí identifies the First Intelligence, as the faithful treasurer of Divine Knowledge, with Gabriel, “the trusted Spirit” (al-Rúḥu ’l-amín), and as a locus for the form of Divine Knowledge in existence—the first objective analysis of the Divine synthesis—with the Pen (al-Qalam) which transmits the particulars contained as a whole in God’s consciousness to the Guarded Tablet (al-Lawḥu ’l-maḥfúẓ). Universal Reason is “the percipient luminous medium whereby the forms of knowledge deposited in the First Intelligence are made manifest”; not the sum of individual intelligences, for in this case Reason would be plural, while in reality it is a single substance, the common element, so to speak, of human, angelic, and demonic spirits. Ordinary reason is “the light (of Universal Reason) measured by the rule of reflection (fikr), and does not apprehend save by means of reflection”: therefore it cannot reach the unconditioned First Intelligence, often misses its mark, and fails to perceive many things. Universal Reason, on the other hand, is infallible, since it weighs all with the twin scales of Wisdom and Power, but it never penetrates beyond the sphere of creation. Neither universal (intuitive) nor ordinary (discursive) reason can attain to knowledge of God. The contrary doctrine has only a demonstrative and controversial value. True gnosis (ma‘rifa) is given by faith, which does not depend on proofs and effects (áthár) but on the Divine attributes themselves.
The judgment (wahm) of Mohammed was created from the light of the Divine Name al-Kámil (the Perfect), and God created from the light of Mohammed’s judgment Azrael, the Angel of Death. Wahm is the strongest of the human faculties: it overpowers the understanding, the reflection, and the imagination…nothing in the world apprehends more quickly; it is what enables men to walk on the water and fly in the air; it is the light of certainty (yaqín) and the basis of dominion; he that has it at his command exercises sway over all things high and low, while he that is ruled by its might becomes stupefied and bewildered. The spirit, on entering the body, either acquires angelic dispositions and ascends to Paradise, or assumes bestial dispositions and sinks to Hell: it ascends when it judges the limitations of its human form, e.g., grossness and weakness, to be merely negative and capable of being thrown off, since the spirit always retains its original qualities potentially. At death Azrael appears to the spirit in a form determined by its beliefs, actions, and dispositions during life. Or, again, he appears disembodied and invisible, so that a man may “die of a rose in aromatic pain” or of a stench. When the spirit sees Azrael, it becomes enamoured of him, and its gaze is entirely withdrawn from the body, whereupon the body dies. The spirit does not quit its bodily form at once but abides in it for a while, like one who sleeps without seeing any vision. After this dreamless sleep, which is its death (mawtu ’l-arwáḥ), the spirit passes into the intermediate state (al-barzakh).
Meditation (himma) is the noblest of the spiritual lights (faculties), for it has no object but God. Yet one must beware of resting in it in order to enjoy its fruits: the master-mystic will leave it before it has yielded all its secrets to him, lest it become a barrier to his further advance. Michael, the angel created from it, is charged with the duty of dispensing the portions of fate allotted by eternal necessity to each recipient.
From the reflection (fikr) of Mohammed God created the spirits of the celestial and terrestrial angels, and appointed them to guard the higher and lower spheres of existence until the Last Day, when they shall be translated to the intelligible world. One of the keys to that world is reflection, leading to true knowledge of the nature of Man, which is set with all its aspects over against the aspects of the Merciful (al-Raḥmán). But the pure region of fikr lies open to mystics alone: the path of speculative philosophy ends in a mirage.
As we have already seen, thought (khayál), i.e., the faculty that retains what the fancy perceives of the forms of sensible objects after their substance has disappeared, is declared by Jílí to be the stuff of the universe. In Hegelian language “the things that we know about are appropriately described when we say that their being is established not on themselves, but on the Divine Idea.” Nothing exists otherwise than as a dream in the perception of the dreamer, and the cosmos is “a thought within a thought within a thought” (khayálun fí khayálin fí khayál). It must be added, however, that while every thing, i.e., every thought, expresses some reality, the Perfect Man (though he is not Reality itself) is the complete self-expression of Reality.
Imagination, memory, and perception, which the author enumerated amongst the eight spiritual faculties, find no place in this discussion.
After a preliminary chapter on the Form of Mohammed (al ṣúratu ’l-Muḥammadiyya), which I will omit for the present, he concludes his psychology with an account of the nature of the soul.
Ascetic and devotional Sufism, in agreement with orthodox Islam, distinguishes sharply between the spirit (rúḥ) and the soul (nafs). The latter term may, indeed, be used to denote a man’s spiritual “self”—“he that knows himself (nafsahu) knows his Lord”—but as a rule when Sufis refer to the nafs they mean the appetitive soul, the sensual “self” which, from their point of view, is wholly evil and can never become one with God. Jílí makes short work of this dualistic doctrine. The heading of his 59th chapter promises to show that the nafs is the origin of Iblís and all the devils, and he begins as follows:
The nafs is the consciousness (sirr) of the Lord, and the essence (of God): through that Essence it hath in its essence manifold delights. It is created from the light of the attribute of Lordship: many, therefore, are its lordly qualities.…God created the nafs of Mohammed from His own nafs (and the nafs of a thing is its essence); then He created the nafs of Adam as a copy of the nafs of Mohammed.
With great boldness Jílí argues that the Fall of Man is the necessary consequence of his Divine nature. Adam ate the forbidden fruit because his soul manifests a certain aspect of Deity, viz., Lordship (rubúbiyya); for it is not in the nature of Lordship to submit to a prohibition. The soul knew that, if it ate the fruit, it would inevitably descend into the material world and would suffer misery, but on the other hand it was aware of the blessedness of its inherent sovereignty. Thus it became perplexed, and its perplexity (iltibás) brought about its fall. The choice of the soul is at once determined and free: determined, because in the last resort its act proceeds from a fundamental difference in the nature of God; free, because the soul acts in accordance with its knowledge of itself and, had it not been blinded by pride, would have perceived that its true nature requires obedience to the Divine command, inasmuch as disobedience renders the spirit miserable, and misery is inconsistent with Lordship.
When God created the soul of Mohammed from His own Essence, which comprises all contraries, He created from the soul of Mohammed (1) the Sublime Angels in respect of His attributes of Beauty, Light, and Leading, and (2) Iblís and his followers in respect of His attributes of Majesty, Darkness, and Misleading. Now, the name of Iblís was ‘Azázíl: he had worshipped God for thousands of years before the creation of the world, and God had forbidden him to worship aught else. Therefore, when God created Adam and commanded the angels to bow down before him, Iblís refused, for he did not know that to worship by God’s command is equivalent to worshipping God. Instead of justifying his disobedience or repenting of it and asking God to forgive him, he silently acknowledged that God wills and acts in conformity with the eternal and unchangeable principles of His nature. Iblís was banished from the Divine presence and a curse was laid upon him “until the Day of Judgment” (Kor. 15, 35), i.e., for a finite period. After the Day of Judgment the creatureliness which hinders the spirit from knowing God as He really is will be counted amongst its perfection, and Iblís will then be restored to his place beside God.
Jílí mentions five phases of the soul, or ascending grades of spiritual life: (1) the animal soul, i.e., the spirit regarded as governing the body; (2) the commanding (evil-prompting) soul, i.e., the spirit regarded as subject to the passions; (3) the inspired soul, i.e., the spirit which God inspires to do good; (4) the self-reproaching soul, i.e., the spirit regarded as turning penitently towards God; (5) the tranquil soul, i.e., the spirit regarded as at rest with God.
As Man is created in the image of God, so the universe is created in the image of Man, who is its spirit and life. In describing its creation Jílí combines mystical ideas with an old cosmological myth, in the following manner:
Before the creation God was in Himself, and the objects of existence were absorbed (mustahlik) in Him so that He was not manifested in any thing. This is the state of “being a hidden treasure” or, as the Prophet expressed it, “the dark mist above which is a void and below which is a void,” because the Idea of Ideas is beyond all relations. The Idea of Ideas is called in another Tradition “the White Chrysolite, in which God was before He created the creatures.” When God willed to bring the world into existence, He looked on the Idea of Ideas (or the White Chrysolite) with the look of Perfection, whereupon it dissolved and became a water; for nothing in existence, not even the Idea of Ideas, which is the source of all existence, can bear the perfect manifestation of God. Then God looked on it with the look of Grandeur, and it surged in waves, like a sea tossed by the winds, and its grosser elements were spread out in layers like foam, and from that mass God created the seven earths with their inhabitants. The subtle elements of the water ascended, like vapour from the sea, and from them God created the seven heavens with the angels of each heaven. Then God made of the water seven seas which encompass the world. This is how the whole of existence originated.
Jílí surveys the celestial, terrestrial and aqueous universe at considerable length, but I will not attempt to give more than an outline of his map. He takes first the seven heavens, which rise in concentric and gradually widening circles above the spheres of earth, water, air, and fire. Mystics, he remarks, have seen them and can interpret them to sublunary men.
1. The Heaven of the Moon.
This is not the earth-born vapour which we call the sky, but is invisible on account of its farness and subtlety. God created it from the nature of the Spirit (al-Rúḥ), that it might have the same relation to the earth as the spirit has to the body; and He made it the dwelling-place of Adam. Its colour is whiter than silver.
2. The Heaven of Mercury.
God created it from the nature of reflection (fikr) and placed in it all the angels who help craftsmen. Its colour is grey.
3. The Heaven of Venus.
It is created from the nature of phantasy (khayál) and is the locality of the World of Similitudes (‘álamu ’l-mithrál). Its colour is yellow. Jílí describes the various tasks assigned to the angels whom he saw in this heaven, where he also met the Prophet Joseph.
4. The Heaven of the Sun.
It is created from the light of the heart (qalb). The Sun in his heaven is like the heart in man—a mirror of Deity: while the heart displays the sublime degrees of existence connoted by the name Allah, the Sun is the source and principle of the elemental world. Idrís, Jesus, Solomon, David, and most of the prophets dwell in the heaven of the Sun; its ruling angel is Isráfíl.
5. The Heaven of Mars.
Azrael, the Angel of Death, presides over this blood-red heaven, which is created from the light of judgment (wahm).
6. The Heaven of Jupiter.
Its colour is blue. God created it from the light of meditation (himma). The angels of the Sixth Heaven, of whom Michael is the chief, are angels of mercy and blessing. Some have the shapes of animals and birds and men; others appear as substances and accidents which bring health to the sick or as solids and liquids which supply created beings with food and drink; others are formed half of fire and half of ice.
Here Jílí beheld Moses, “drunken with the wine of the revelation of Lordship,” who explained to him the meaning of “Thou shalt not see Me” (Kor. 7, 139).
7. The Heaven of Saturn.
The Seventh Heaven was the first to be created. It was created from the light of the First Intelligence, and its colour is black. Between it and the Starless Heaven (al falaku ’l-aṭlas) there are three heavens which have only a logical, not an actual, existence: the Heaven of Matter (falaku ’l-hayúlá), which is the highest of the three; the Heaven of Atoms (falaku ’l-habá); and the Heaven of the Elements (falaku ’l-‘anáṣir); some philosophers add a fourth, viz., the Heaven of Natural Properties (falaku ’l-tabá’i‘).
The author proceeds to describe the seven limbos of the Earth.
1. The Earth of Souls (arḍu ’l-nufús).
God created it whiter than milk and sweeter than musk, but when Adam walked on it after the Fall it became dust-coloured, except one region in the North, never reached by any sinner, which is ruled by al-Khaḍir and inhabited by the Men of the Unseen World (rijálu ’l-ghayb).
2. The Earth of Devotions (arḍu ’l-‘ibádát).
In colour it resembles an emerald. Its inhabitants are those of the Jinn (genies) who believe in God: their night is our day, and their day our night. After the sun sets in our earth, they appear on it and fall in love with the children of men. Most of these spirits envy the disciples of the Mystic Way, and taking them unawares bring them to ruin. Jílí affirms that he had seen some Sufis who were in bondage to them and were made so deaf and blind that they could neither hear nor understand the Word of God, unless the reciter were one of the Jinn.
3. The Earth of Nature (arḍu ’l-ṭab‘).
Its colour is saffron-yellow. The unbelieving Jinn who inhabit it appear in human shape amongst mankind and cause them to neglect the worship of God.
4. The Earth of Lust (arḍu ’l-shahwa).
Its colour is blood-red. It is inhabited by different sorts of devils who are the offspring of the soul of Iblís.
5. The Earth of Exorbitance (arḍu ’l-ṭughyán).
Its colour is indigo blue. ‘Afríts and potent demons dwell in it, who busy themselves with seducing men to commit great sins.
6. The Earth of Impiety (arḍu ’l-ilḥád).
Its colour is black as night. It is the abode of the márids (the most evil and rebellious of the Jinn).
7. The Earth of Misery (arḍu ’l-shaqáwa).
It is the floor of Gehenna (Jahannum) and is inhabited by enormous snakes and scorpions, which God placed there in order that it might be a pattern of the torments of Hell to the people of this world.
Concerning the Seven Seas, which were originally two—one of salt and the other of fresh water—Jílí has much to say, but his description of them is somewhat confused and we must now pass on to matters of greater interest.
The gist of Jílí’s philosophy, as I understand it, is the notion of One Being, which is One Thought, going forth from itself in all the forms of the universe, knowing itself as Nature and yet, amidst the multiformity of Nature, reasserting its unity in Man—in Man whom self-knowledge has enlightened and made perfect, so that ceasing to know himself as an individual he sinks into his Divine element, like a wave into the sea. This language, apart from its inadequacy, conveys a wrong impression by translating in terms of time and space what does not belong to these categories. All interpretations of ideal and mystical experience are more or less fictitious.
The word commonly used to denote the self-manifestation of God in His essence, attributes, and names is tajallí, which implies that something hidden before is now clearly seen, as the splendour of the sun emerging from eclipse or the beauty of a bride when she unveils. The Divine tajallí, in respect of the person to whom it is made, may be called an illumination, for it is the light whereby the mystic’s heart has vision of God. Accordingly, the ontological descent from the Absolute and the mystical ascent or return to the Absolute are really the same process looked at from different points of view. The self-revelation of God necessarily involves the manifestation of His nature by those who possess an inborn capacity for realising it in themselves. Jílí divides the ascending movement of this consciousness into four stages—the Illumination of the Actions, the Illumination of the Names, the Illumination of the Attributes, and the Illumination of the Essence—which correspond in reverse order to the devolution of Pure Being from its primal simplicity to the manifestation of its effects in the sensible world.
(a) The Illumination of the Divine actions.
To one thus illumined it becomes plain that human agency is naught, that he has no power or will of his own, and that all things are done by the power of God who moves them and brings them to rest. Sometimes the Divine will is made known to him before the act: consequently, he may disobey the command of God in order to comply with His will; in which case his disobedience is essentially obedience and lies between him and God, though “it remains for us to exact from him the penalty which God has imposed in the Koran and the Sunna upon those who break His commandment.”
(b) The Illumination of the Divine names.
The mystic to whom God reveals Himself in one of His Names vanishes (from consciousness of individuality) under the radiance of the Name; and if you invoke God by that Name, the man will answer you, because the Name is applicable to him.…If God reveal Himself in His Name Allah, the man will disappear and God will call to him, saying, “Lo, I am Allah”; and if you cry “O Allah!” the man will answer you with the words “At thy service (labbayka)!” Then, if he mount higher and God strengthen him and let him abide in consciousness after his passing-away (faná), God will answer any one who calls the man, so that if you say, for instance, “O Muḥammad!” God will respond to you, saying, “At thy service!” In proportion as he is strengthened to ascend, God will reveal Himself to him in His subordinate Names, viz., the Merciful (al-Raḥmán), the Lord (al-Rabb), the King (al-Malik), the Omniscient (al-‘Alím), the Omnipotent (al-Qádir), etc. The self-revelation of God in each of these Names is superior to His self-revelation in the Name preceding it, because as regards the Illumination of the Names analysis is superior to synthesis, and the manifestation of each lower Name is an analysis of the synthesis which is manifested by the one immediately above it.
As regards illuminations of the Essence, it is otherwise; here the more general is above the more particular: al-Raḥmán is superior to al-Rabb, and Allah to either. Finally, all the Divine Names seek to apply themselves to the illumined man, even as the name seeks the object named, and then he sings:
One calls Her by Her name and I answer him, and when I am called (by my own name) ’tis Laylá (the Beloved) that answers for me.
That is because we are the spirit of One, though we dwell by turns in two bodies—a marvellous thing!
Like a single person with two names: thou canst not miss by whichever name thou callest him.
Jílí only speaks of what he himself has experienced, since every Name is revealed in different ways to different individuals. From his account of these illuminations I take a passage which exhibits his characteristic blend of logic and mysticism:
The way to the illumination of the Name al-Qadím (the Eternal) is through a Divine revelation whereby it is shown to any one that he existed in the knowledge of God before the Creation, inasmuch as he existed in God’s knowledge through the existence of that knowledge, and that knowledge existed through the existence of God: the existence of God is eternal and the knowledge is eternal and the object of knowledge is inseparable from the knowledge and is also eternal, inasmuch as knowledge is not knowledge unless it has an object which gives to the subject the name of Knower. The eternity of existent beings in the knowledge of God necessarily follows from this induction, and the (illumined) man returns to God in respect of His Name, the Eternal. At the moment when the Divine eternity is revealed to him from his essence, his temporality vanishes and he remains eternal through God, having passed away from (consciousness of) his temporality.
(c) The Illumination of the Divine Attributes.
When God desires to reveal Himself to a man by means of any Name or Attribute, He causes the man to pass away (faná) and makes him naught and deprives him of his (individual) existence; and when the human light is extinguished and the creaturely spirit passes away, God puts in the man’s body, without incarnation (ḥulúl), a spiritual substance, which is of God’s essence and is neither separate from God nor joined to the man, in exchange for what He deprived him of; which substance is named the Holy Spirit (rúḥu ’l-quds). And when God puts instead of the man a spirit of His own essence, the revelation is made to that spirit. God is never revealed except to Himself, but we call that Divine spirit “a man” in respect of its being instead of the man. In reality there is neither “slave” nor “Lord,” since these are correlated terms. When the “slave” is annulled, the “Lord” is necessarily annulled, and nothing remains but God alone.
Mystics receive these illuminations in proportion to their capacities, the abundance of their knowledge, and the strength of their resolution. Taking each of the seven chief attributes in turn, the author describes the effects of the illumination on himself or on others, and the different forms which it may assume. Concerning Life and Knowledge something has been said above. Those endowed with Hearing hear the language of angels, animals, plants, and minerals. As for the mukallamún, who receive the illumination of Speech, the Word (kalám) comes to them sometimes audibly and from a certain direction, sometimes from no direction and not through the ear, sometimes as an inner light having a definite shape; and in oneness with God they realise that all existent beings are their Word and that their words are without end. According to Jílí, the illumination of Power is marked in its initial stages by a phenomenon characteristic of prophetic inspiration—the ringing of a bell (ṣalṣalatu ’l-jaras), which is produced, as he quaintly writes, by “the dashing of realities one against another in order that men’s hearts may not dare to enter the presence of Divine Majesty.” “In this illumination,” he says, “I heard the ringing of bells. My frame dissolved and my trace vanished and my name was rased out. By reason of the violence of what I experienced I became like a worn-out garment which hangs on a high tree, and the fierce blast carries it away piece by piece. I beheld naught but lightnings and thunders, and clouds raining lights, and seas surging with fire.”
(d) The Illumination of the Divine essence.
While every illumination of a Name or Attribute reveals the Essence in a particular relation, the Illumination of the absolute Essence is not identical with any or all of these illuminations. Jílí refers the difference to the Divine substance, which, as we have seen, God “puts instead of the man” so that the subject and object of illumination are really one. This substance may be either attributal (ṣifátí) or essential (dhátí). Only in the latter case does “the man” become the God-man. Such a one is the Perfect Unit (al fardu ’l-kámil) and the Microcosmic Pole (al-ghawthu ’l-jámi‘) on whom the whole order of existence revolves; to him genuflexion and prostration in prayer are due, and by means of him God keeps the universe in being. He is denoted by the terms al-Mahdí and al-Khátam (the Seal), and he is the Vicegerent (khalífa) indicated in the story of Adam. The essences of all things that exist are drawn to obey his command, as iron is drawn to the magnet. He subdues the sensible world by his might and does what he will by his power. Nothing is barred from him, for when the Divine substance is in this walí as a simple essence, unconditioned by any degree appertaining to the Creator or to the creature, he bestows on every degree of existent things its ḥaqq, i.e. what it requires and is capable of receiving, and nothing can hinder him from doing so. That which hinders the Essence is merely its limitation by a degree or name or quality; but the simple Essence has nothing to hinder it: therefore with it all things are actual, not potential, while in other essences things are sometimes potential and sometimes actual.
It would seem, then, that the Illumination of the Absolute is given to the Heavenly Man (Mohammed) alone and transmitted through him to the Perfect Men who are his representatives on earth.
Religious belief may be defined as man’s thought about God, and we have learned that all things and thoughts in the universe are attributes of God, i.e., aspects in which He reveals Himself to human minds. Moreover, the attributes are identical with the Essence in so far as they are nothing but the Essence regarded from every possible point of view. Therefore God is the essence of all thought; and all thought is about God. In the light of such principles the author’s philosophy of religion is easy to understand.
Divine worship, he says, is the end for which all things are created, and therefore belongs to their original nature and constitution. The different forms of worship result from the variety of Names and Attributes by which God manifests Himself in creation. Every Name and Attribute produces its own characteristic effect. For example, God is the true Guide (al-Hádí); but He is also the Misleader (al-Muḍill), for the Koran says, “Allah shall lead the wicked into error.” He is the Avenger (al-Muntaqim) as well as the Forgiver (al-Mun‘im). If any one of His Names had remained ineffectual and unrealised, His self-manifestation would not have been complete. Therefore He sent His prophets, in order that those who followed them might worship Him as the One who guides mankind to salvation, and that those who disobeyed them might worship Him as the One who leads mankind to perdition.
All God’s creatures worship Him in accordance with His will, and every form of worship expresses some aspect of His nature. Infidelity and sin are effects of the Divine activity and contribute to the Divine perfection. Satan himself glorifies God, inasmuch as his disobedience is subordinate to the eternal will. Yet some aspects in which God shows Himself, such as Majesty and Wrath, are relatively less perfect than others, such as Beauty and Mercy. And, again, the more completely and universally the idea of God is presented in any form of worship, the more perfect that form must be. Religions revealed through a prophet contain the fullest measure of truth, and amongst these the most excellent is Islam.
Jílí mentions ten principal “religious” sects from which all the rest are derived. It is an odd catalogue, comprising (1) the Idolaters or Infidels; (2) the Physicists, who worship the four natural properties, namely, heat, cold, dryness and moisture; (3) the Philosophers, who worship the seven planets; (4) the Dualists, who worship light and darkness; (5) the Magians, who worship fire; (6) the Materialists (Dahriyyún), who abandon worship entirely; (7) the Brahmans (Baráhima), who claim to follow the religion of Abraham; (8) the Jews; (9) the Christians; (10) the Mohammedans.
The author proceeds to explain that God is the truth or essence of all these forms of belief. The Infidels disbelieved in a Lord, because God, who is their essence, has no lord over Him, but on the contrary is Himself the absolute Lord. They worshipped God according to the necessity of their essential natures. Idolaters worship Him as the Being who permeates every atom of the material world without infusion or commixture. God is the “truth” of the idols which they worship, and they worship none but Him. This is the mystery of their following the Truth in themselves, because their hearts bore witness to them that the good lay in their so doing. On account of that spirit of belief in the reality of their worship, the thing as it really is shall be revealed to them in the next world. “Every sect is rejoicing in that which it hath” (Koran, 23, 55), i.e., here they rejoice in their acts, and hereafter they shall rejoice in their spiritual states. Their joy is everlasting. Therefore, even if the Infidels had known the torment which they must suffer in consequence of their worship, they would have persisted in it by reason of the spiritual delight which they experience therein; for when God wills to punish any one with torment in the life to come, He creates for him in that torment a natural pleasure of which his body becomes enamoured; and God does this in order that the sufferer may not have an unquestionable right to take refuge with Him from the torment, but may remain in torment so long as the pleasure continues to be felt by him. When God wills to alleviate his torment, He causes him to lose the sense of pleasure, and he then takes refuge in the mercy of God, “who answers the sorely distressed when they pray to Him” (Koran, 27, 63).
Similarly, the Physicists really worship the four essential attributes of God, namely, Life, Knowledge, Power, and Will; the Philosophers worship His names and attributes as manifested in the planets; the Dualists worship Him as Creator and creature in one; the Magians worship Him as the Unity in which all names and attributes pass away, just as fire destroys all natural properties and transmutes them to its own nature; the Materialists, who deny the existence of a Creator and believe in the eternity of Time, worship God in respect of His He-ness (Huwiyya), in which He is only potentially, but not actually, creative; the Brahmans worship Him absolutely, without reference to prophet or apostle.
As regards the future life, since all worship God by Divine necessity, all must be saved. But the seven sects above-mentioned (unlike the Jews, Christians and Moslems, who received their religions from a prophet) invented their forms of worship for themselves. Consequently, they are doomed to misery hereafter. That which constitutes their misery is the fact that their felicity, though ultimately assured, is far off and is not revealed to them until they have suffered retribution. On the other hand, those who worship God according to the mode ordained by a prophet enjoy immediate felicity, which is revealed to them continuously and gradually. It is true that the Jews and Christians suffer misery, but why is this? Because they have altered God’s Word and substituted something of their own. Otherwise, they would have come under the rule that God never sent a prophet to any people without placing in his apostolic mission the felicity of those who followed him.
Here, perhaps, it will not be inopportune to give some details of the author’s eschatology. We must remember that in his view all experience is perception by the human spirit of the nature and destiny eternally stamped upon it. “I Myself am Heaven and Hell.”
“Life” denotes the spirit’s contemplation of its bodily form: the spirit assumes the form of the object contemplated, just as sunbeams falling on green or red glass take the form and colour of the glass. After death, i.e., after the withdrawal of the spirit’s gaze from the body, the spirit remains wholly in the spiritual world, while wearing the same corporeal aspect as it had before. Those mystics who deny the resurrection of the body are in the wrong. “We know by Divine information that bodies are raised from the dead with their spirits.” The death of the spirit consists in its detachment from the body and resembles the dreamless sleep which is akin to not-being, since the sleeper has neither perception of the sensible nor vision of the unseen.
During the intermediate state (barzakh) between death and resurrection every one moves in a world of phantasy (khayál) peopled by the forms, ideas, and essential characters of the actions which he or she committed in their earthly life. The drunkard quaffs fiery wine in a cup of fire; the sinner whom God has forgiven passes into forms of good works, each fairer than the last; and he whose good works have been done in vain becomes imbued with the form of his eternal fate, ever-changing images of woe which his resurrection shall reveal to him as realities. The present, intermediate, and future states are one existence (wujúd wáḥid), and you by virtue of your inmost nature (huwiyya) are the same in them all, but while the things of this world are free (ikhtiyárí), the things hereafter are determined by what happens here.
The world, having been created, must die: its death is its passing away (faná) under the might of the Divine Reality which manifests itself in the guise of individuals; and its resurrection is the manifestation of that Reality with the signs foretold in the Koran. The universal or greater resurrection (al-sá‘atu ’l-kubrá) includes the particular or lesser resurrection (al-sá‘atu ’l-ṣughrá), i.e., the resurrection of every individual, and their signs correspond. For example, Dajjál (Antichrist) is an emblem of the flesh (nafs): as Dajjál shall be slain by Christ (the Spirit of God, Rúḥ Allah), so shall the flesh be destroyed by the spirit (rúḥ). Again, the coming of the Mahdí, who shall reign for forty years, symbolises the perfection of the Perfect Man uniting and consummating the forty grades of existence. God beholds this world through the medium of Man; therefore, after the Resurrection, it will not exist otherwise than in God’s knowledge, even as Paradise and Hell exist in His knowledge to-day. But when Man shall have been removed to the next world, God will behold Paradise and Hell through him, and they will then exist actually.
God created the Form of Mohammed (al-ṣúratu ’l-Muḥammadiyya) from the light of His Name the Almighty Maker (al-Badí‘u ’l-Qádir), and regarded it with His Name the All-subduing Giver (al-Mannánu ’l-Qáhir); then He displayed Himself to it in His Name the Gracious Pardoner (al-Laṭífu ’l-Gháfir). Thereupon, because of this illumination, it split in two halves, and God created Paradise from the half on the right hand, and Hell from the half on the left hand.
Jílí’s description of the Eight Paradises is not specially interesting. In the first Paradise good works are rewarded, in the second good thoughts and beliefs concerning God. The third, which is gained solely by Divine grace, surpasses all the rest in magnitude and contains persons of every religion, sect, and nationality. Theoretically it is possible for any human being to enter this Paradise, if such fortune be vouchsafed to him in some Divine illumination, but the author adds: “We saw in mystical vision that only a few of each sect are there.” The four highest Paradises have no trees, pavilions, or houris, and are inhabited (except the highest of all) by contemplatives and saints in an ascending scale of holiness. The floor of the eighth Paradise is the roof of the Throne of God (al-‘Arsh). Thither none may come—for it is the Paradise of the Essence, “the Lauded Station” (al-Maqám al-maḥmúd) which, as the Tradition tells us, was promised by God to Mohammed.
With the people of Paradise every idea immediately becomes an object of sensation. When Adam, whose form is a copy of the form of Mohammed, went down from Paradise, he lost the life of his form, i.e., the power of materialising his thoughts. In the present world this power depends on the spirit, and since most of mankind are dead spiritually, belongs only to mystics endued with God’s everlasting life.
Hell is the manifestation of Divine Majesty (jalál). When God created the Fire, He revealed Himself to it seven times, appearing each time in a different Name. These theophanies clove the Fire into seven valleys, which are the limbos of Hell.
Pantheism cannot allow evil to be permanent. Jílí cites the Tradition, “My Mercy preceded My Wrath,” and infers that while the latter attribute is a mode of Divine Justice, Mercy is essential and prevails in the end. Hell, according to him, is a temporary state, and not necessarily an altogether undesirable one. Of course, he had been there in his visions, and he tells of a meeting with Plato, “whom the formal theologians account an infidel, but I saw that he filled the unseen world with light, and that his rank was such as few amongst the saints possess.” Some of the damned are more excellent than many of the Paradisal folk: God has placed them in Hell, that He may be revealed to them therein. Jílí expatiates on the variety of pleasures enjoyed by those who burn in the Fire. Some feel a pleasure comparable to the joy of battle, for although the soldier is conscious of pain he often has a keen delight in the fray into which “the Lordship lurking in his soul” impels him to plunge. Another of their pleasures resembles that felt when any one rubs an itch, even if he should chance to break the skin. Then they have subtler pleasures, like the self-satisfaction of the fanatic who persists in a wrong way of thinking, or the philosopher’s happy sense of superiority in preferring his own wretched condition to the rich man’s luxury and ignorance.
Their states are diverse: some, notwithstanding that they suffer the most intense torment, would not exchange it for Paradise; some long for a breath of the air of Eden and a draught of its water; some, having no pleasure in their pain, feel the utmost bitterness of loathing in themselves.
It is well known that Mohammed asserted the essential unity of Revelation. From the beginning of the world, as he believed, one and the same faith had been revealed to mankind through a succession of prophets, of whom he himself was the last. Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus taught the same religion, the religion of Islam. It followed, in the first place, that the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Gospel are identical in substance with the Koran, and secondly, that since the Jews and Christians would neither accept Islam nor acknowledge Mohammed as the prophet foretold in their books, they must be giving a false account of what these books actually contained. The argumentum ad homines needed firm handling. Uninspired Moslems would rather say that the books in their present form are corrupt or incomplete. From quite another standpoint the Sufis agree with their Prophet that the Word of God is essentially one. For them, indeed, all that exists is His Word, which is revealed to His prophets and saints under different aspects and in varying degrees of perfection. The historical and temporal is only a symbol of the mystical and eternal revelation. As, in the former, Christianity occupies the middle place between Judaism and Islam, so in the latter, where these religions typify the progressive ascent of the soul to God, the Illumination of the Names is denoted by the Pentateuch, the Illumination of the Attributes by the Gospel, and the Illumination of the Essence by the Koran.
No one who reads the Insánu ’l-Kámil can fail to discern that its author was profoundly influenced by Christian ideas, though it is not always possible to separate these from the Jewish, Gnostic and other elements with which they are intermingled. I need only allude to the Trinitarian basis of the Divine nature and the prominence given to the Holy Spirit as the source and, in relation to man, the organ and sustaining principle of spiritual life. Jílí criticises the Christian doctrine, but so mildly and apologetically that one passage of his work is declared by the Moslem editor to be an interpolation which only a heretic could have written. The Pentateuch, he says, was sent down to Moses in nine tables, two of which, containing the mysteries of Lordship and Power, he was forbidden to communicate to any one; and as the Jews remained ignorant of their contents, Moses was the last of that people to gain perfect knowledge of God. On the other hand, both Jesus and Mohammed revealed the mystery of Lordship; but whereas Mohammed cloaked it in symbols and made it an esoteric matter, Jesus proclaimed it openly, with the result that his followers became infidels and worshipped him as the third of three Divine Persons, namely, the Father, the Mother, and the Son. This form of Trinity, by the way, appears in the Koran; it is not a grotesque blunder on the part of Mohammed, but a Christian heresy which still survives amongst the tribes of the Syrian desert.
While Jesus spoke the Truth allegorically, the Christians have taken his words literally. Polytheists as they are, God after punishing them for their error will pardon them because of the inward sincerity of their belief, for “they acted in accordance with the knowledge which He bestowed upon them: therefore blame them not, since their polytheism was essentially belief in One God (al-siḥru ’l-‘álí).” It is this sentence and others of like tenor that the editor would erase, and we can understand his indignation, though Jílí is simply applying to a special case the monistic doctrine which has been explained already. Of all non-Islamic religious communities he holds that the Christians are nearest to God, for while they worship Him in Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Ghost, they assert the indivisibility of the Divine nature and that God is prior to His existence in the created body of Christ. Thus they recognise the two complementary sides of true belief concerning God, namely that from the one point of view (tanzíh) He is above all likeness and that from the other (tashbíh) He reveals Himself in the forms of His creatures. But, in addition to the grave error of anthropomorphism (tajsím), they are at fault in restricting the Divine self-manifestation to these three. God said, “I breathed My Spirit into Adam,” and here the name “Adam” signifies every human individual. The contemplation of those who behold God in Man is the most perfect in the world. Something of this vision the Christians possess, and their doctrine about Jesus will lead them at last, “when the Thing shall be discovered as it really is,” to the knowledge that mankind are like mirrors set face to face, each of which contains what is in all; and so they will behold God in themselves and declare Him to be absolutely One.
Jílí concludes his work with a mystical interpretation of Islam, “the crown of religions.” Much of what he says has no interest except for specialists, e.g., his definitions of technical terms used by Sufis and his explanations of the esoteric meanings which he finds under every detail of Mohammedan ritual. He is careful to guard against antinomianism. Certain Sufi saints claimed to have outdistanced the prophets, but Jílí decides in favour of the latter. He admits that saintship—the revelation of the Divine attributes to man—is the essence of prophecy, and that the prophet qua saint is superior to the prophet quâ prophet. Every prophet has “the prophecy of saintship” (nubuwwatu ’l-wiláyat), although some, like Jesus and al-Khaḍir, have nothing more; others, like Moses and Mohammed, have also “the prophecy of institution” (nubuwwatu ’l-tashrí‘), i.e., they were sent to promulgate and establish a new religious code. The Sufi Shaykhs, whom God brings back from the state of trance (faná) in order that they may guide the people to Him, are vicegerents (khulafá) of Mohammed and, as such, are invested with “the prophecy of saintship” and bound to observe the laws of the last of the institutional prophets, Mohammed, who in both respects is supreme and unique. Jílí must be called a pantheist in so far as he takes “There is no god but Allah” in the sense of “Nothing really exists but the Divine Essence with its creative and creaturely modes of being.” These modes are unified in the abstraction of intellect as well as in the mystic’s flight to God, but the author of the Insánu ’l-Kámil is neither a pure philosopher at any time nor an ecstatic always. “Perception of the Essence,” he writes, “consists in thy knowing that thou art He and that He is thou, and that this is not identification or incarnation, and that the slave is a slave and the Lord a Lord, and that the slave does not become a Lord nor the Lord become a slave.” Even the Perfect Man is a reality (ḥaqq), not the Reality (al-Ḥaqq) which displays itself in the mirror of his consciousness as God and Man.
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