Posts Tagged ‘Metaphysics’

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.

***

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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Gnosticism, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Sufism | No Comments »

Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 6

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

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.

***

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: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Gnosticism, Seyyed Hossein Nasr | No Comments »

Where We Are Coming from and Where We Are Going to: 1

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

In my June 28th post, I quoted a sentence from the opening paragraph of Part One of The Garden of Truth (p. 4), wherein Nasr raises four questions which he characterizes as “basic questions.” Here it is again:

Wherever we are and in whatever time we happen to live, we cannot avoid asking the basic questions of who we are, where we came from, what we are doing here, and where we are going.

In that post attention was given to the first such basic question, that of who we are, and to the answer that Nasr at least very nearly, if perhaps not exactly, gave to it. In today’s post, the second and fourth questions will undergo some scrutiny and their answers will be introduced.

As to the questions: one thing that springs to mind is that they are “complex questions,” as indeed was the first question. That is, they presuppose an affirmative answer to a prior question. In the case of the question of where we came from, the prior question quite obviously is, “Is there somewhere we came from?” The affirmative answer is, “There is somewhere we came from.” In the case of the question of where we are going, the prior question quite obviously is, “Is there somewhere we are going?” The affirmative answer is, “There is somewhere we are going.” Nasr does not, at least in The Garden of Truth, provide us with any rigorous demonstration of the truth of either of the two presuppositions.

As to the answers: Nasr offers us a passage from the Quran briefly stating where it is that we come from and where it is that we go to.

[Islam] 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. The Quran asserts majestically, “Verily we come from God and to Him is our returning” (2:156). The One is of course that Supreme Source and End of all things whom Abraham, Moses, and Christ addressed as the One God and whom the Quran calls by his name in Arabic, Allāh.

Turning from the Quran to “the language of Islamic thought, including both philosophy and Sufism,” he tells us that:

According to Sufi metaphysics, and in fact other metaphysical traditions in general, all that exists comes from that Reality which is at once Beyond-Being and Being, and ultimately all things return to that Source. In the language of Islamic thought, including both philosophy and Sufism, the first part of this journey of all beings from the Source is called the “arc of descent” and the second part back to the Source the “arc of ascent.” Within this vast cosmic wayfaring we find ourselves here and now on earth as human beings. Moreover, our life here in this world is a journey within that greater cosmic journey of all existents back to the Source of all existence.

The answers of Nasr’s Sufism to the questions of where we come from and where we are going have, then, been introduced. In the next scheduled on-topic post, I’ll subject them to some examination. Before ending this post, however, I cannot let the first sentence of the passage quoted just above pass without a digression, in two parts. The one part has to do with the question of whether or not there is a significant difference between a “Reality Beyond-Being and Being,” with capitalization, or a “reality beyond-being and being,” without. For the moment, I have nothing more to offer than I did in my immediately previous post, about “being Real” and “being real,” that there may be a pertinent and significant difference and that we’ll need to remain alert to the matter as we work our way through The Garden of Truth.

The second part of the digression has to do with my concern about the sentence’s evident violation of the Principle of Non-Contradiction, according to which no being whatsoever both is and is not, in any one respect and at any one time.

That is, it seems to me evident that whatever is, say, beyond-visible, or beyond visible, is not visible. So too it seems to me evident that whatever is beyond-being, or beyond being, is not being, i.e., does not be. And, just as surely as nothing can both be visible and beyond-visible, or not visible, in any one respect and at any one time, so just as surely as nothing can both be being and beyond-being, or not being, in any one respect and at any one time. Further, to bring both the digression and the post to a close, let me remark that the restoration of the capital letters would make no difference on this point.

***

You’ll perhaps note there is a misspelling in one of the tags below. I have not yet figured out how to edit tags; there the misspelling will stay until I do.

***

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

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Gnosticism | No Comments »