Posts Tagged ‘Garden of Truth’

The Mutual “Inness” of the Human and the Divine

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

In my previous planned and on-topic post, the “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 6” of August 23, I distinguished between two distinct, as I was then thinking, understandings, of the nature of God, the human, and the relation of the human to God, as two distinct potential metaphysical foundations for gnosticism.

One of the two understandings, I said, 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 “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 6” I offered the following argument against that thesis, an argument the validity of which is quite evident and the soundness of which is, if not quite as quite evident, immediately adjacent to being so.

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.

I closed “Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 6” by saying that in the post that ended up being the present one I would “take a look at the other of the two distinct understandings … as a second potential metaphysical foundation for gnosticism, different [from theomonism] but also figuring prominently in The Garden of Truth.” This understanding, encapsulated in the title of today’s post, “The Mutual ‘Inness’ of the Human and the Divine,” can be put a bit more explicitly as: God is in us and we are in God.

Nasr’s statement of the thesis of the mutual “inness” of the human and the divine is contained in a sequence of three densely packed paragraphs (The Garden of Truth, pp. 5-6). In the first of these three paragraphs, we read:

[Sufism] provides, within the spiritual universe of the Islamic tradition, the light necessary to illuminate the dark corners of our soul and the keys to open the doors to the hidden recesses of our being so that we can journey within and know ourselves, this knowledge leading ultimately to the knowledge of God, who resides in our heart/center.

By journeying within ourselves, we journey to God, who resides in, and therefore is in, our “heart/center.”

The next paragraph distinguishes between the being in God which we both have eternally had and even now have and the created being which we also have now. It reads:

Not only were we created by God, but we have the root of our existence here and now in Him. When we bore witness to His Lordship as mentioned in the Quranic verse, “Am I not your Lord?” the world and all that is in it were not as yet created. Even now we have our pre-eternal existence in the Divine Presence, and we have made an eternal covenant with God, which remains valid beyond the contingencies of our earthly life and beyond the realm of space and time in which we now find ourselves.

That is, we have been and are in God.

Besides introducing two other key themes, that of a “fall” and that of our having “become forgetful beings,” the next paragraph confirms both of the beings in, ours in God (“our reality in God”) and God’s in us (“God, who resides at the depths of our being”).

The answer to the question “who are we?”is related in a principial manner to our ultimate reality in God, a reality that we have now forgotten as a result of the fall from our original and primordial state and the subsequent decay in the human condition caused by the downward flow of time. We have become forgetful beings, no longer knowing who we are and therefore what our purpose is in this life. But our reality in God, who resides at the depths of our being, is still there. We need to awaken to this reality and to realize our true identity, that is, to know who we really are.

Now to the point of the present post and the reason why I have had second thoughts about holding that the thesis of the mutual “inness” is distinct from that of theomonism: if by “in” is meant “entirely in” and if the sense in which the one is in the other is the same as the sense in which the other is in the one, then if there is an existent a and an existent b such that a is in b and b is in a, then a and b must be at least co-extensive. And the thesis that the human, in its true identity, is at least co-extensive with the divine is consistent with, indeed implied by, the theomonist thesis.

It seems to me that both the theomonist thesis that only the divine is real and thus that, if we are real, we are identical with the divine and the thesis of mutual “inness,” such that we and God are at least co-extensive, provide all too simple answers to the question of how humans can enjoy an immediate and direct knowledge of the divine, the “beatific vision,” in this life. If identity or co-extensiveness were sufficient conditions of knowledge, then the coffee cup to which I have turned so frequently this morning would know itself.

In the next planned and on-topic post, I will have something to say about the “fall” and our having “become forgetful beings” that Nasr speaks about.

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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

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Christian Gnosticism

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

In my post of June 28th, “Nasr’s Gnosis and ‘Theomonism’,” I pointed to a text of Nasr’s The Garden of Truth (p. 4) that seemingly has him making the claim that God alone is ultimately real.

Throughout the ages religions have sought to teach us who we are and through their inner teachings to provide the means of “becoming” our True Self. Islam is certainly no exception. It unveils the complete doctrine of our true nature and also the nature of the levels of reality issuing from the One, who alone is ultimately Real, and provides teaching that, if put into practice, lead us back to the One through a path of spiritual effort combined with joy and felicity.

I said “seemingly” above because the use of “ultimately” in “is ultimately real,” suggesting that other things are real, even if non-ultimately, may indicate some hesitation on his part.

Despite it’s meaning that I will get ahead of myself by (just barely) touching upon the doctrine of fana’, or annihilation, let me point to another, confirming or at least conforming, text (Ibid., p. 10):

Who am I? I am the I that, having traversed all the stages of limited existence from the physical to the mental to the noumenal, has realized its own “non-existence” and by virtue of this annihilation of this false self, has returned to its roots in the Divine reality and has become a star proximate to the Supernal Sun, which is ultimately the only I. having passed through the door of nothingness and annihilation, I come to the realization that at the root of my consciousness, of what I call I, resides the only I that can ultimately say I and that ultimately alone is.

Now, as I said in the earlier post, if God alone is real, then, if I too am (or some central part, dimension, or attribute of me is) real, then it must be that I am (or that central part, dimension, or attribute of me is) God. From this it would following that in knowing myself (or that central part, dimension, or attribute of me), I would know God. And so it is that Nasr could (Ibid., p. 5) quote the “Prophet of Islam” as saying, “Whosoever knows his self, knows his Lord.”

I remind you of this because I have just read Elaine Pagels The Gnostic Gospels (New York; Random House, 1981; Vintage Books, 1989) and have been struck by the similarity between the doctrines she sees some of the Christian gnostics of the second and third Christian centuries to be holding and the doctrines we can see in Nasr’s Sufism. One such doctrine is that of the identity of oneself and God.

Pagels brings that doctrine to the fore early on in the book (p. xix-xx). Having pointed out that the emerging Christian orthodoxy considered the gnostics to be heretics, Pagels first goes on to say:

But those who wrote and circulated these [gnostic] texts did not regard themselves as “heretics.” Most of the writings use Christian terminology, unmistakably related to a Jewish heritage. Many claim to offer traditions about Jesus that are secret, hidden from “the many” who constitute what, in the second century, came to be called the “catholic church.”

She goes on to spell out the origin of the “gnostic” descriptor.

These Christians are now called gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, usually translated as “knowledge.” For as those who claim to know nothing about ultimate reality are called agnostic (literally, “not-knowing”), the person who does claim to know such thing is called gnostic (“knowing”).

She next differentiates between gnosis and knowledge otherwise understood, in two ways. First, as she says, “gnosis is not primarily rational.”

The Greek language distinguishes between scientific or reflective knowledge (“He knows mathematics”) and knowledge through observation or experience (“He knows me”), which is gnosis.

Moreover, to take the penultimate step towards the point of today’s post, gnosis is self-knowledge:

As the gnostics use the term, we could translate it as “insight,” for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. And to know oneself, they claimed, is to know human nature and human destiny.

“According,” she continues, “to the gnostic teacher Theodotus, writing in Asia Minor (c. 140-160), the gnostic is one who had come to understand,” [quoting him:]

who we were, and what we have become, where we were … whither we are hastening, from what we are being released, what birth is, and what is rebirth.

And, taking the last step: Pagels next tells us, “Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis; another gnostic teacher, Monoimus, says:”

Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, “My God, my mind, my soul, my body.” Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate…If you carefully investigate these matters, you will find him in yourself.

Pagels may be right in claiming that some gnostics held that to know oneself is to know God. This would reveal a gnosticsm that it similar in at least this one respect to the gnosticsm that I think I see in Nasr’s Sufism. And this would raise all sorts of questions about the Islamic nature of Nasr’s Sufism, for the gnosticism about which Pagels is writing precedes Islam by four or five hundred years.

But I’ll have to leave things in this post in something of a state of ambiguity, as I did at the end of the June 28th post. That is because the textual selections that Pagels has brought to our attention do not say that God alone is real or that the self is identical with God; they merely state that God is in our selves.

If, however, Islamic gnosticism and Christian gnosticism are in some significant degree doctrinally similar, then to what extent can those gnosticisms be Islamic and Christian respectively?

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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

You can similarly purchase The Gnostic Gospels through Amazon.com by clicking on:

The Gnostic Gospels

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Nasr and Gnosticism

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

Having in the first scheduled post of this blog set forth several relevant definitions of “gnosticism,” I will in this post give the two reasons why I am beginning “Gnosis and Noesis” with a review, a thorough review, of the gnosticism of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and most immediately with the exposition he gives of it in his The Garden of Truth: The Vision and Promise of Sufism, Islam’s Mystical Tradition (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

The first reason is that Nasr is without question one of the world’s most recognized and respected thinkers, even if not so within the perhaps narrow confines of American academe. Two facts line up in support of this judgment. One is that he is the first Muslim thinker to have a volume dedicated to his thought published in the prestigious Library of Living Philosophers series, The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn, Randall E. Auxier, and Lucian W. Stone, Jr. (Chicago and LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 2001). Another is that he is the first Muslim thinker to have been invited to deliver the rather more prestigious Gifford Lectures in religion in 1981, published as Knowledge and the Sacred (New York: Crossroad, 1981; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989). And he is the only person to have been so honored in both philosophy and religion.

The second and more immediate reason is that he has, in his The Garden of Truth and his other writings, presented “the reality of Sufism [and gnosis, I will in due course show] as did the authorities of old but in a manner accessible to the present-day serious seeker or Western-educated Muslim seeker.” (The Garden of Truth, p. xiv)

In my first post, I offered “the thesis that an immediate knowledge, i.e., a ‘vision,’ of the divine is possible” as the definition of one type of gnosticism. I also pointed out that one version of that gnosticism would hold that that immediate knowledge of the divine can be gained in this life, as opposed to an afterlife. Nasr’s presentation of “the reality of Sufism [and gnosis]” in The Garden of Truth articulates this version of gnosticism. To illustrate this is the primary point of this post.

Nasr tells us (The Garden of Truth, p. xv) that:

The title of this book, The Garden of Truth, is drawn from the traditional Islamic symbolism of the garden. The traditional Islamic garden is an earthly reflection of Paradise, and the word paradise itself comes from the Middle Persian word pardīs, meaning garden, and is also the origin of the Arabic word firdaws, meaning paradise and garden.

He goes on (Ibid.) to explain that, within that metaphor, God is the Gardener within the Garden:

Using the symbol of the garden, the Quran refers to Paradise itself as the Garden. Moreover, the Sacred Text speaks of levels of Paradise. The Sufis have drawn from this symbolism and speak of the Garden as designating not only the various levels of paradisal realities but also the Divine Reality beyond paradise as usually understood. The highest Garden is associated with the absolute Truth, which is one of the Names of the Divine Essence. Hence we can speak of the Garden of Truth as that reality wherein all the spiritual realities are gathered. The Sufis also speak of the Gardener as God in His absolute and infinite Reality, and of jannat al-Dhāt, or Garden of the Divine Essence.

He continues (Ibid.):

Sufism is a vast reality that provides the means for those who follow its tenets to reach the Garden of Truth. It is the path to the Garden and, on the highest level and in its inner reality, the content of the Garden as well as the means of reaching the Presence of the Gardener.

If there is a distinction being assumed between the Presence of the Gardener and the Gardner, or God, himself, then this passage does not quite state that Sufism is the means of reaching God. But a passage on the next page (Ibid., p. xvi) does so state:

In both the Islamic world and the West, Sufism will continue to play an important role in bringing about understanding across religious borders, in addition to its central role in providing an authentic spiritual path for those who seek to reach in this life the Garden of Truth and ultimately the Gardener.

And, if the “ultimately” near the end of the passage gives pause, we can turn to a later passage (Ibid., pp. 104-105) for as clear a statement as one could want that an immediate knowledge of the divine can be gained in this life.

In Islam the path of ascent to God in this life goes back to the origin of the tradition, to the inner dimension of the Quran and the inner reality of the Prophet as the Universal Man. Any integral religion must offer its followers not only guidance for a righteous life in this world and the hope of the beatific vision in the next, but also the means of attaining that vision in this life for those who aspire to intimacy with God while still in this world.

There is much that needs to be unpacked in the several metaphor-laden passages just quoted and in the rest of The Garden of Truth. In my next scheduled on-topic post (as I have said before, there may well be an occasional unscheduled or off-topic post) I will take up the task of unpacking by pulling out from his text one of the central metaphysical theses operative in his gnosticism, which I identify as theomonism.

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If you wish, you an 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

You can similarly buy The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Knowledge and the Sacred by clicking on:

The Philosophy of Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Library of Living Philosophers)

and

Knowledge and the Sacred.

Knowledge and the Sacred is also available online, along with many other extraordinary works in the Gifford Lectures series, at http://www.giffordlectures.org/.

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