For a number of posts now I have been engaged in an analysis of a passage in Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s The Garden of Truth in which, in the course of addressing the questions of where we are coming from and where we are going to, Nasr affirms that we are beings who exist both before and after our incarnate or embodied existence. In the last such post, August 15th’s “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 5,” I pointed out that, though he affirms that that is the case, he does not prove or even offer a full argument that it is.
That is, the argumentation that one can extract from the passage in question concludes only that “we are beings not reducible to being exclusively material beings.” It does not conclude that we have an immaterial component or are an immaterial being which is not dependent for its existence and functioning upon a material body.
I also pointed out that Nasr believes that there is a way of knowing that we have an immaterial consciousness which does not depend upon our material body for its existence and functioning, which way of knowing is other than that of argumentation or demonstration. I ended the post by saying that I would take this alternative way of knowing up in my next on-topic post. I should actually have said, “begin to take up.” In any case, this post is that post.
The passage under scrutiny continues as follows (The Garden of Truth, p. 7):
Now, no matter how we seek to go back to the origin of our consciousness, we cannot reach its beginning in time, and the question again arises what our consciousness, its origin, and its end are. The spiritual practices of every authentic path, including Sufism, enable those who follow and practice them earnestly and under the appropriate conditions to gain new levels of consciousness and ultimately to become aware that consciousness has no beginning in time (but only in God) because “in the beginning was consciousness,” and it has no temporal end because “in the end is consciousness.”
The way of knowing that is alternative to that of argumentation and demonstration is, or involves, the “spiritual practices of every authentic path.” Nasr is emphatic that it is through spiritual practice that the ultimate aim is to be achieved, not through theory or doctrine. Thus, a bit later in the book (pp. 32-33), he tells us:
The description and theoretical description of the Truth is contained in Sufi doctrine while the realization of the Truth is possible only through spiritual practice. Sufi doctrine, which is called theoretical gnosis (al-tasawwuf al-‘ilmī in Arabic and ‘irfān-i nazarī in Persian) is itself the fruit of spiritual realization and not simply philosophical speculation.
I will, in the course of future posts, attempt to pull out of The Garden of Truth and other texts whatever information I can about the spiritual practices that, according to Nasr, Sufis and others are able to attain “spiritual realization.” To anticipate: it will not be easy. In this post, I will content myself with the following. I will begin by granting, for the sake of argument, that spiritual realization, gnosis, or the direct and unmediated knowledge of the divine is possible through, but only through, spiritual practice, as opposed to “philosophical speculation.” I will also grant that anyone who has actually achieved such gnosis through spiritual practice is thereby in a position to know that such gnosis is possible, for whatever is actual is possible.
I myself, however, have not actually achieved such gnosis and therefore do not have that means of knowing that it is possible. I am therefore seeking, first of all, some convincing argumentation or even definitive proof that it is possible, possible through spiritual practice. If I were to be presented with the argumentation or proof that I seek, then I would be motivated to seek out and engage in the needed spiritual practice. Not yet so presented, I am not.
Moreover, even if I were to actually achieve the gnosis in question through spiritual practice and thus know that it is possible, it would still remain that, to understand how it is possible, I would need to have an explanation of how it is possible; I would need to have an understanding of the nature of the divine object of knowledge, such that it would be humanly knowable, the nature of the human knower, such that it would be capable of such knowledge, the nature of the relationship of the human knower to the divine knowable, and the nature of the knowledge by which the human knower would know the divine.
In previous posts we have seen Nasr begin to spell out two distinct understandings of the several natures just listed. One is contained in the thesis that I have identified (in the June 28th, 2009, post, “Nasr’s Gnosis and ‘Theomonism’”) as theomonism, the thesis that the divine being is the one and only real being.
In that post, given the, to say the least, counter-intuitive nature of the theomonist thesis and given Nasr’s use of words, such as “ultimately,” that could be construed as qualifiying the thesis’s statements, I was reluctant to say categorically that he adhered to theomonism. But I am abandonning that reluctance, for Nasr, from one end of The Garden of Truth to the other, offers statements suggestive or explicitly of the thesis. Thus, from relatively early on in the book (Ibid., p. 17):
Our relation to God, which means also the Divine Self at the center of our being, detemines who we really are and what we are meant to be. We can each start with the question “who am I?” and if we search enough be led step by step to the Sufi answer that we are beings who can address God directly by praising Him and being grateful to Him, that is, by saying al-hamdu li’Llāh, and in turn be worthy of being addressed by Him and consequently to reach Him, and to realize ultimately that He is the only I.
And thus, relatively late on in the book, Nasr reviews the thought of the Spanish Arab mystic Ibn ‘Arabi, whom (Ibid., p. 215) “many have rightly considered the father and founder of theoretical gnosis or doctrinal and theoretical Sufism.” Nasr points to “the doctrine of wahdat al-wujūd (the transcendental unity of being)” (Ibid., p. 215), which he identifies (Ibid., p. 220) as one of “the basic gnostic theses,” and then tells us (Ibid., p. 216):
The central teaching of Ibn “Arabi concerns the doctrine of unity, which is also the heart of the message of the Quran. But for him the assertion of this unity means not only that God is one but that ultimately Reality is one. This is what is called the doctrine of the transcendental unity or oneness of being….
Adamantine though Nasr has been in his adherence to the “doctrine of the transcendental unity or of being,” it remains that it is, as I said above, counter-intuitive. To put it more forcefully, it is false, for:
1. If there is anything that is in any way other than the one and only divine being (if such latter there indeed is), then the one and only divine being is not the only being.
2. There is something that is in some way other than the one and only divine being (I offer my own being as evidence; you can offer yours).
3. Therefore, the one and only divine being is not the only being.
It follows that, since it is false, the thesis of theomonism cannot serve as a basis for the doctrine of gnosticism.
In the next planned, on-topic, post, I will take a look at the other of the two distinct understandings of the nature of God, the human, the relation of the human to God, and of the human knowledge of God, as a second potential metaphysical foundation for gnosticism, different from but also figuring prominently in The Garden of Truth.
P. S. Your comments and queries are eagerly sought.
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If you wish, you can easily purchase The Garden of Truth through Amazon.com by clicking on:
The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition
Tags: After-life, Consciousness, Ibn 'Arabi, Metaphysics, Philosophy, Spiritual Practice, Theomonism, Theoretical Gnosis, Theoretical Sufism, Transcendental Unity of Being, Wahdat al-Wujūd