Ibn 'Ata'illah, a thirteenth-century Sufi, maintained that God is more "real" than his creatures.
In our present-day world this would seem an incredible claim. Secular society has banned God so effectively from the workshop and the market-place, from our scientific world view, from marriage and family life, that we can easily pass a whole day without giving him a thought.
Would it not be bordering on the naive to claim that God is unmistakably evident, there for all to see? And yet Ibn 'Ata'illah's insight might well offer medicine to our coarsened sensitivity.
There is a kind of knowledge, the Sufi master tells us, that transcends academic learning. It cannot be described in books. It grows by perception of a sort that defies rational concepts. It is a living knowledge, made up of lived experiences and pursuing vital concerns. Through it, Ibn Atta'illah says, God can be known clearly and directly.
Is he thinking of mystical visions or unusual states of mind? No. For him, such states create an emotional imbalance; they are not a safe guide for the knower. In the words of Kalabadhi: "Truth comes after states of ecstasy and takes its place . . . When truth comes. ecstasy is dethroned." Profound religious feelings may enthuse in an earlier stage. Knowledge of God is not based on them.
To enable us to comprehend the kind of knowledge Ibn 'Ata'illah is talking about, a small digression may be in order. For a number of years I was involved, in different parts of the world, in personnel management. I inspected managers, helped them to assess their work and life, counselled them, gave courses, mediated transfers and made new appointments. I made a curious observation. Their success or failure as leaders almost universally depended on one quality: whether they could 'get on" with people or not. Social background, intellectual acumen, organising skill, dwindled into nothingness compared to their ability to relate to people in a positive way. How, I asked myself, can we learn this skill?
Some people pick it up at an early age. Others never seem to acquire it. It calls for shrewd perception, empathy, common sense and diplomacy but transcends all of these. It rests on a person's sixth sense, an "inner eye", so that the adept can correctly "guess'' another person's feelings and sensitivities; can anticipate expectations and needs. Here, indeed. we have a kind of knowledge that is superior to academic learning; a social skill acquired from experience, not from textbooks.
What has all this to do with the knowledge of God? A great deal. For a tendency to relate to people through stereotypes and concepts affects also the way we relate to God. Like every person we meet, but infinitely more sob God is unique. We can only properly know God by building up an experience of him based on day-to-day encounters. We cannot see God with our bodily eyes, any more than we can see the mind and heart of other people. But we can know God distinctly and directly by what he/she does. We know God not in categories but as a person, by meeting him/her face to face.
''Yes'', we might think with our western bend to externalise, "we meet God in nature, in society, in the universe.'' But this is not the principal. nor the first. way. Rather, we know God by what he does in us. Sheikh Ahmad Al-'Alawi, who lived in Algeria at the beginning of this century. put it like this: "Whoever seeks God through another than himself will never attain unto God.''
It is by becoming aware of the spiritual forces in ourselves that we come to know him experientially. Again, no high mystical flights are envisioned here. We are speaking of the waves we can all detect on the lake of our inner self: our search for meaning, our sense of wonder, our feelings of responsibility. and our hunger for love.
Sheikh Al'Alawi taught his disciples: "Do not abandon your soul nor oppose it. Go along with it and search it for what is in it." And again: "The person who has learned to know God in his soul, returns to it. anxious to yield to its desires.''
The moment we become directly aware of God's working in us, an interesting shift in our perception can take place. We begin to realise that this Person we are in touch with, the One who causes our search, our wonder, our love, is powerfully present behind everything in our visible world. Again, it is not unlike our "knowleage''of people. Once we grasp their internal motivations, we can suddenly see these strongly reflected in everything they do. Knowing the invisible Person throws light on his actions. We begin to understand how it is God who explains creation and not the other way about.
None has expressed this better than Al-Ghazzali, that eminent Sufi guide who taught in Iran during the 11th century. 'Those endowed with this Insight'', he tells us in Mishkat al Anwar, never see a single object without seeing God along with it. It may be that some go further and can say: 'I never see a single object without first seeing God.' For some only see objects through and in God. while others first see objects and then see God in and through those objects." Such a "seeing" can happen to many people but they must be made aware of what they are seeing."
I remember talking to a very committed Christian who said she was going through a crisis in her faith and her life of prayer. "The images of God as Creator. Father, Judge have become empty", she confided to me. "I hang on to the moment of enlightenment I had years ago during a retreat. It's the last trace of my contact with God." It had never crossed her mind that so much of her own personality-her passionate love of truth, her deep concern about justice for all, her wrestling with oppressive images of God - was itself a reflection of God working in her, responding to her. Suddenly her whole perspective changed. "I never dared to think God could be so personally and deeply involved with me", she said. "It's overwhelming.''
Text from John Wijngaards, "God and yourself", THE TABLET, 11 October 1986.
