Rumi and the 'Clash of Civilisations'
 

Thanks for that, Paul.

As Aldous Huxley and many others have pointed out, the "Perennial Philosophy" of mysticism is the most consistent cross-cultural experience we humans share.

Mysticism has many expressions, of course, but there really is, as Frithjof Schoun says, a "Transcendental Unity of Religion" - at the esoteric level.

Given such a universal there is hope that it might help bridge culture gaps.

Unfortunately, mysticism is frowned upon or actually suppressed and persecuted in many religions, since it concerns practical religion, as distinct from the orthodoxies of exoteric, theological religion.

Many Sufis, like Mansur el-Hallaj, were executed for sayings which were judged as blasphemous to the exoteric Mullahs. And if Rumi were living today in Afghanistan, he would be a target for the Taliban for sure.

I have taught adult ed courses on Sufi mysticism, and I can testify to the compatibility of experience in that tradition with the other major world religions.

I would still love to see a verse translation of Rumi - maybe I should try it myself, since I share Coleman Barks' ignorance of the original language.

Paul, interestingly, the true "clash of cultures" is not between Islam and Christianity, which have proved that they can live together in peace (with Judaism also) during many historical periods.

There is really only one world religion today which is utterly incompatible with the “Perennial Philosophy”, and that is the contemporary de facto Western religion called “Scientism.” As Houston Smith writes:

“Twenty years ago I wrote a book, The Religions of Man, which presented the world's enduring traditions in their individuality and variety. It has taken me until now to see how they converge. The outlooks of individual men and women ... are too varied even to classify, but when they gather in collectivities--the outlooks of tribes, societies, civilizations, and at deepest the world's great religions--these collective outlooks admit of overview. What then emerges is a remarkable unity underlying the surface variety. When we look at human bodies, what we normally notice is their surface features, which of course differ markedly. Meanwhile on the insides the spines that support these motley physiognomies are structurally very much alike. It is the same with human outlooks. Outwardly they differ, but inwardly it is as if an ’invisible geometry’ has everywhere been working to shape them to a single truth.

The sole notable exception is ourselves; our contemporary Western outlook differs in its very soul from what might otherwise be called ‘the human unanimity’. But there is an explanation for this: modern science and its misreading. If the cause were science itself, our deviation might be taken [as the Dawkins-people assert] as a breakthrough: a new departure for mankind, the dawning of an age of reason after a long night of ignorance and superstition. But since it derives from a misreading of science, it is an aberration. If we succeed in correcting it, we can rejoin the human race. "

– Houston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition, p ix, x.

Modern secular rationalist materialist culture is a true anomaly in the history of cultures, and it opposes ALL other religions, true to its intolerant, fundamentalist nature.

I believe it is crucial for those of us in the West with the will to find our shared common experiences with people who live in the Islamic world.

During the first invasion of Iraq I made an index of all the wonderful Arab dishes in my collection. It helped me to stay sane.

Rumi contains what most of us recognise, for want of better words, as the divine spark.

Good article, Paul. Thanks for posting it. Whatever the literary value of Barks's translations, it's a wonder how much they have given to people. And to bridging gaps, as the author of the article says. I got drunk with Coleman Barks once, and enjoyed listening to him slur his Rumi.

The best book I have seen that explains Islam to Westerners is by the Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Heart of Islam (2002). Nasr has lived in the U.S. since the fall of the Shah in 1979, and currently teaches in Washington, D.C. His introduction says:

"The past few decades have witnessed a growing interest in Islam in the West, increasing with each global event involving the name of Islam: from the Lebanese civil war to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 to the rise of Islamic movements among Palestinians. This rising interest now stands at unprecedented levels since the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The world is thirsty for information about Islam, especially in America, yet this thirst has generally not been quenched with healthy water. In fact, a torrent of 'knowledge' has flooded the media, from books to journals, radios, and television, much of which is based on ignorance, misinformation, and even disinformation. Not only has this torrent failed the cause of understanding, it has too frequently rendered the greatest disservice to the Western public in order to further particular ideological and political goals."

This may be a good place to insert a favorite medieval Arabic poem by an unknown author:

I used to shun my companion
if his religion was not like mine;
but now my heart accepts every form.
It is a pasturage for gazelles, a monastery for monks,
a temple of idols, a Ka'ba for the pilgrim,
the tables of the Torah, the holy book of the Qu'ran.
Love alone is my religion, and whichever way
its horses turn, that is my faith and creed.

I'd recommend a close reading not only of Dick Davis's translations from the Persian as a wonderful alternative to the banality of Barks, but also Davis's prefaces, introductions and interviews on poetry. He's a wise, lucid mind on these and so many other subjects.
Dave

I've just started reading a book by the Dalai Lama titled The Universe In A Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (Broadway Books 2005). Thus far it's a fascinating read. This topic in general, and the mention of Huston Smith in particular, spurred me to post.

The Dalai Lama met Smith in the early 1960s and continued meetings and discussions with him from time to time through the years.

Here's what the Dalai Lama writes in one passage:

I heard about the theory of evolution when I made my first trip to India in 1956 . . . Ironically, the first person to help me understand the theory more fully was not a scientist but a scholar of religion. Huston Smith came to see me in Dharamsala in the 1960s. We spoke about the world religions, the need for greater pluralism among their followers, and the role of spirituality in an increasingly materialistic world . . . However, the topic that struck me most was modern biology, especially our discussion of DNA and the fact that so many secrets of life appear to lie in the mystery of this beautiful biological string. When I count my teachers of science, I include Huston Smith among them, although I am not sure whether he would himself approve of this.

Although I'm only early into the book, I find it marvelously compelling.

Richard

That sounds fascinating, Richard.

Houston Smith sees no fundamental problem between science and religion. But the conversion of science to the fundamentalist religion of materialist “scientism” is another story.

“Whereas science is positive, contenting itself with reporting what it discovers, scientism is negative. It goes beyond the actual findings of science to deny that other approaches to knowledge are valid and other truths true. In doing so it deserts science in favor of metaphysics – bad metaphysics, as it happens, for the contention that there are no truths save those of science is not itself a scientific truth, in affirming it scientism contradicts itself. It also carries marks of a religion – a secular religion … Since reality exceeds what science registers, we must look for other antennae to catch the wavebands it misses.” Forgotten Truth, p 16/17.

And a very limiting fundamentalist religion it is. Scientism is a full-blown belief-system, whereas true science is observational and objective.

This makes me wonder, Dave. Obviously Davis’s translations are better than Barks’s, and his books of more intrinsic value. I can’t get past a couple of pages of Barks, whereas I’ve really enjoyed Davis’s translation of Attar’s Conference of the Birds and some others of his I've seen in the magazines.

But does the popularity of Barks suggest that people’s imaginations can be fired up by bad poetry? Or is it that the bad free verse offers a brand of Sufism Lite for consumers, not really challenging them and so ultimately not really doing any good?

I tend to think it’s a combination of both, but I wonder what other people think about this.

Mark said

...interestingly, the true "clash of cultures" is not between Islam and Christianity, which have proved that they can live together in peace (with Judaism also) during many historical periods

Yes. As Jonathan Meades nicely put it - they all three worship the same God; the argument is over who owns the franchise.

Interesting thread. I have a long standing interest in Islam and Sufi and have studied (in an amateur way and obviously in translation) the Qur'an as well as works like Attar's "Conference of the Birds".

One of the key concepts which seems to have been lost in modern Islam is the holiness of the search for knowledge, or Ilm. These days it very often seems to be ignorance that is being promoted.

One of my abiding beliefs is that the search for knowledge is not necessarily a search for answers (at least of the blinding light variety). In a way this is the message of Attar and possibly Sufi - the search is a holy and difficult one, but in the end you will see the answer was before you all the time. All the journey did was open your eyes.

I shall follow the rest of this debate with interest.

Philip

So called Western Science owes a great debt to Islam. Probably moreso than to the Greeks.

Mark:

Your comments parallel quite closely what the Dalai Lama states:

I have noticed that many people hold an assumption that the scientific view of the world should be the basis for all knowledge and all that is knowable. This is scientific materialism. . . .

One of the principal problems with a radical scientific materialism is the narrowness of vision that results and the potential for nihilism that might ensue. Nihilism, materialism, and reductionism are above all problems from a philosophical and especially a human perspective, since they can potentially impoverish the way we see ourselves.

He writes so many other splendid thoughts, but I must stop here or I'll find myself typing out the book.

Richard

Exactly, Philip. Which is why the Buddha famously claimed that "I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled enlightenment."

Zen has many tricks (or upaya) to try and lure the heroic ego into acting on its assumption that it could "attain" to realization through effort and practice. Sufism does this also. But all that is really necessary is for the ego to see through itself. And when it does, there is the understanding that it gained nothing it didn't already have, but had simply failed to see. In other words, the highest religious realization is NOT an accomplishment - it is available at any moment for any person.

The esoteric/exoteric divide has long fascinated me, and it was the essence of my doctoral work.

What I discovered was that the difference between the two levels of understanding is not simply a product of doctrine alone - of choosing between a mystical reading of scriptures or a fundamentalist reading - but that the choice of doctrine expressed a difference in the individual's psychology.

The fundamentalist position involves a need to shore up and protect the ego of the believer, and so literalism (the language of the ego) prevails.

Those individuals capable of seeing through the ego-image identity are more likely to follow mystical readings of the religion, and perceive the "transcendent unity" of all religion.

Unfortunately, there seems to be something like 4-5% of any population capable of ego-transcendence, and so a popular mystical understanding seems unlikely.

The ego-needs of exoteric followers ensure the attitude that "my" religion is the "true" religion, so yours must be "wrong." And this causes all the strife.

Gail, I love that quote too! It comes from Ibn al-‘Arabi: "My heart has become capable of every form.". He could say this because, like Blake, he saw the world as a continual theophany, or self-revelation of God in every form.

The key for him, as for Rumi and the other great Sufis, was their view of the creative imagination, which they understood much as Blake understood it. That’s why they could “see through” religious forms, as Mark says.

The great scholar of Islamic esotericism, Henry Corbin, writes about them:

“The theophanic perception is accomplished in the ’alam al-mithal, whose organ is the theophanic Imagination. . . . Since the Imagination is the organ of theophanic perception, it is also the organ of prophetic hermeneutics, for it is the imagination which is at all times capable of transmuting sensory data into symbols and external events into symbolic histories.”

This of course has nothing to do with subjectivism or relativity in the current sense. They saw the Imagination as an organ that mediates between the intellectual and the sensory realms, so that form takes on meaning and meaning takes on form.

In order to keep Imagination from degenerating into “fantasy”—the unreal or the merely imaginary—Ibn ‘Arabi and others said that a spiritual discipline was necessary, which for them was Islam and the study of the Quran and the hadith (the oral tradition of Islam). For Blake it was Christianity. They didn't throw out tradition, but they did see through it. They understood that the great religions are basically local dialects of a universal language.

That's an excellent way to put it, Andrew - "local dialects of a universal language."

However, the key to this vision of the transcendent unity of religions is the capacity for what the Sufis call fana, the passing away of identification of consciousness with the personal ego.

The exoteric's resistance to this idea, since it does indeed involve THE death experience, prevents that breakthrough which allows for the perception of the universal oneness of religions.

Or as Blake would put it, one requires the capacity to throw one's spectre into the lake.

Most of humanity identifies with its spectral self, and has no desire to surrender it, along with its associated identifications. So the personal investment with "my" religion and the "one way" of fundamentalism continues as ever.

As I said earlier, many Sufis were executed (martyred) for claiming union with the Godhead, which to ego-identified exoteric orthodox believers sounds like nothing less than blasphemy.

And had Blake lived in the Middle Ages, or even the Renaissance, he would almost certainly have died for his identification of God with the Imagination. Giordano Bruno died because of his pantheism.

I was thinking about this today - the evolution of human consciousness may be seen in terms of a progression of death experiences - from the infant narcissist we die (or abandon this primal identification) into mother/family identity, from family identity we die into the social group, from the social group or tribe we die into national identity, from nation-identity we die into world-consciousness. Each of these transition points - the early ones usually well-marked by ritual in old cultures - is a type of the death experience. We "let go" of one identity and find another, wider identity. Life itself, our birth, actually begins with a death experience:

Birth’s another kind of death –
a fetus-killing rush of breath

And from exoteric religious identity we die into esoteric religious identity - the transcendent unity arrived at via the experience of fana. Or if not fana itself, at the very least we need the intuition that there is a reality of Being beyond the ego-identity. That there is something in us which is deathless, and which is the possession of ALL beings - as the Buddha says.

But no can can force anyone into a transcendence they resist. So it is not as simple as a mere acceptance of the mystical vision - acceptance of a doctrine among equal doctrines. You can't sermonize exoterics into esoterics. To break from a narrow reading of religion requires the capacity for self-surrender, or fana, which is a psychological/ontological issue.

Sorry if I am ranting again, but I find this stuff fascinating.

Well, Mark, in this case I agree with every word you say! The fana you describe would be the emotional experience of the opening up to the ’alam al-mithal, which clearly is beyond the ego's little regime.

I can't take credit for the dialect/language metaphor--that's Ananda Coomaraswamy.

[Editing back in to add: I don’t have the slightest idea if what I said would make sense to a sufi. Only that it strikes me that surrender of the ego and discovery of the imagination as Ibn ‘Arabi meant it would have to be closely related.]

D.H.Lawrence, a type of Sufi himself, puts the case for the necessity of fana or "extinction" of the ego throughout his work.

It really is the sine qua non of mysticism.

Phoenix

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,
made nothing?
Are you willing to be made nothing?
dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.

The phoenix renews her youth
only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down
to hot and flocculent ash.
Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest
with strands of down like floating ash
shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,
immortal bird.

- D.H. Lawrence