One of my teachers in primary school loved a poster that displayed a
large eye within a triangle. “This is God looking at you”, she would
tell us. “He sees everything!” lt was a standard warning to deter us
from the various kinds of mischief we engaged in while she turned her back.
“You cannot escape God! He is your judge and he is watching you all the
time!”
Muslims too believe in this all-seeing Judge. The Koran tells us: “He observes everything. No eyes see him; he sees all eyes” (S. 6,102-3). “He knows all things. . . He observes all your actions. . . He sees the very secrets of the bosom!” (S. 57,3-6).
But if God’s sight is so keen that he even sees the leg of a black ant on a black stone in the thick of night, as an Arab proverb has it, what precisely is he looking at? “Whether your deeds conform to the law”, traditional Muslims might answer. “No!”, the Sufi replies. “Whether your heart is full of love!” The God of conventional religion measures performance by the scale of the law; the God of the heart judges a person by his or her conscience.
To see the practical implications of this consider the function of the K’abah. It is a small shrine located in the centre of the great mosque of Mecca. Muslims consider it the most sacred spot on earth. It is at the K’abah that the pilgrimage ends with a walk seven times around the shrine. It is towards the same K’abah that Muslims have to turn for their prayers five times a day. In every mosque a niche called the qibla indicates the direction of the K’abah. A sacred tradition records an assurance by Muhammad that a prayer offered in the holy K’abah earns a reward equal to a hundred thousand prayers elsewhere.
The importance traditionalists attach to the direction of the K’abah annoys the Sufi temper. Do we turn towards the K’abah because God is there?, they would ask themselves. Their answer was: “No! God is not out there, far away in Mecca. He is right in our heart!” Jalal ad-Din Rumi (A.D. 1207-3) wrote a beautiful poem about it.
I examined the whole of Christendom and the cross.
He was not on the cross.
I entered the Hindu temple, the ancient pagoda.
He was not to be seen.
I ascended the highland of Herat and Kandahar.
My search was in vain.
He was neither on the heights nor in the valleys.
I climbed the peak of Mount Kaj.
Nothing I found but the nest of the Anqa bird.
I visited the K’aba of Mecca.
He was not there.
I asked Avicenna, the philosopher, about him.
He was beyond Avicenna’s reach. . .
Finally I looked into my own heart.
It was there, in his own place, that I saw him.
He was nowhere else. (1)
God is not in the K’abah, but in the heart! Innermost consciousness and loving heart can find God in the most unlikely places, Ibn al-Arab), would say: in the tablets of the Torah or the leaves of the Koran; in the pilgrim’s K’abah, but also in the temple of idol worshippers, the church of Christian monks and a meadow feeding gazelles. (2) Other Sufis said simply: “Consider the curve of your eyebrow as the edge of your prayer niche. There is no real difference between the K’abah and a pagan temple—wherever you may look, God is equally everywhere!” (3)
This is quite revolutionary talk if we remember the rigid obedience to external practice expected in traditional Islam. In fact, one prominent Sufi, Al-Hallaj (A.D. 858-922) was condemned to death because of a remark he had made about the K’abah. It may be that he had attracted most hostility because of his mystical claim to be in union with God (“I am the Real!”); but the official ground for putting him to death was Al-Hallaj’s assertion: “More important than going on a pilgrimage is to proceed seven times around the K’abah of one’s heart”. (4) The prosecution also adduced a letter written by Al-Hallaj in which he had advised a believer that instead of going to Mecca, one could draw a square in the central part of one’s house and perform the same rites around it as one would have done in Mecca. (5) Al-Hallaj died a terrible death. He was scourged, one hand and one foot were cut off, he was nailed to a gibbet; and then beheaded after six hours.
Small wonder that later Sufis were more careful in what they said or wrote in public. To retain their inner freedom, they often had to hide their true beliefs from the suspicious scrutiny of traditionalists. At times they would maintain conventional teaching for outsiders, while giving a different interpretation to their close disciples. Those “on the level of the Shari’ah” cannot understand deeper things. (6) But the bloodhounds of external law had smelt blood.
The Qur’anic Law had only legislated for an external tribunal and punished public sins. . . The canonists and professional theologians, very displeased at seeing people speak of searching their consciences and judging one another by this inner tribunal, tried to show that the ultimate results of the life led by mystics were heterodox. For the mystics held that the intention is more important than the act, that practical example is better than strict letter of the law and that obedience (in spirit) is better than observance. (7)
Did the Sufis reject external law? They did not. Law was helpful, they maintained, because it contained guidance. But it was not in itself the absolute will of God. It had a symbolic function. It pointed to a deeper, inner reality. Men and women would, in the last analysis, be judged not by external conformity, but by obedience to the dictates of their consciences. Let us listen again to an explanation by Al-Ghazali.
We put off our sandals when entering a mosque; or before kneeling down on our prayer mat. Moses was told to put off his sandals in the presence of Allah (Koran 20,12). Pilgrims approaching Mecca put off their sandals at a certain point. What is the meaning of all this? Is Allah really bothered about us wearing sandals or not? Is he upset when we wear them at prayer?
When we put off our two sandals we make a symbolical gesture. We indicate detachment from the two worlds: from the world of earthly pleasure and the world of spiritual reward. We indicate by this gesture that we want to serve Allah alone, for his own sake. Now do not think on that account that the external action is useless. Precisely because it has this inner meaning, we should be faithful to it. We should combine fidelity to symbolic ritual with the intention of the heart. When Moses was told by Allah “Take off your shoes”, he understood that Allah meant: “Renounce the two worlds”. He obeyed the command literally by putting off his two sandals and spiritually by detaching himself from the two worlds. This is the spirit in which we should observe external prescriptions! (8)
As to turning towards the K’abah when we pray, the same thing applies. Of course, we should follow this practice if we can. But we should not for a minute think that we do this because Allah is more present in Mecca than elsewhere. The Koran says clearly: “In whatever direction they turn themselves there is the face of God” (S. 2,115). In fact, the name of God, Allah, is derived from the root wly which means “turning”. He is the one towards whom all faces are turned— by which I mean especially the faces of the hearts of men and women for they are truly lights and spirits. (9)
The mind, Ghazali tells us, is aided by philosophies. “Now the greatest of philosophies is the word of Allah in general and the Koran in particular. Therefore the verses of the Koran, in relation to our mind, have the value of sunlight in relation to eyesight.” (10) Elsewhere he tells us that percipient spirit (whether the eye or the mind) “is as important as perceptible light; no, it is more important because it is the percipient spirit which apprehends and through which apprehension takes place”. (11) Therefore the human mind, which “breaks through into the inwardness of things and into their secrets”; which “covers the entirety of existence passing upon them judgements that are both certain and true”; which left to itself “cannot err because it sees things as they are”; which is created after Allah’s likeness and the sample must be commensurate with the original”, and which may be called “Allah’s balance scale on earth” is the ultimate norm by which a person will be judged. (12)
This principle of conscience made many Sufis accept that the highest religiousness transcends organized religions. Jalal ad-Din Rumi could say: “What can I do, Muslims? I do not know myself. I’m not a Christian, neither a Jew, nor a pagan, nor a Muslim!” (13) An Indian Urdu song exclaims: “Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jew and Sikh— brothers in a secret sense; yet who knows it in his heart?. . . All is He, my friend, all is He!” (14) Ghazali himself in one of his other books deals explicitly with the question of salvation for non-Muslims. Only those who willingly and knowingly refuse to accept revelation will be punished, he asserts. God’s mercy will embrace all who follow their honest conviction. “I would say that the majority of Turks and Byzantine Christians of our time come under the divine mercy, God willing.” (15)
For Sufis, what matters is finding “the pearl”. This pearl is the discovery that God is everywhere; especially in our hearts. It is this discovery and true inner conversion that make a person holy, not religious observances. It is not the multiplication of practices or the proximity to holy things that count in the end. “A thread does not become a jewel by passing through the holes of a series of pearls.” (16) “A donkey stabled in a library does not become literate.” (17) In the conflict between observance and inner devotion to God, inner devotion should prevail.
A Sufi disciple once said to his master: “I’m surprised that anyone who believes in God should not attend the mosque for worship.” The master’s reply was typical. “I am surprised that anyone who has a personal experience of God can pray to him without losing his senses and thus render his ritual prayer invalid.”(18)
I would like to conclude this chapter with a Sufi parable describing the life journey of an individual. God is present in the cloud, the ocean, the shell and—the pearl!
A drop of rain fell from a cloud. Looking down at the ocean it said: “Who am I compared to this vast expanse of water?”
A clam, touched by the raindrop’s humility, opened its shell and received the drop inside; which turned into a pearl.
1. See I. Shah, The Way of the Sufi, Penguin 1974, p. 113 (rendering my own).
2. I. Shah, ib. p. 87.
3. I. Shah, ib. p. 242.
4. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Brill, Leiden 1971, Vol. 13, under Halladj, pp. 99-104.
5. E. Schroeder, extract from Akhbar al-Hallaj, in Anthology of Islamic Literature, Penguin 1964, pp. 104-13; esp. p. 108.
6. I. Shah, ib. p. 197.
7. Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, Brill, Leiden 1953, p. 580.
8. Al-Ghazali, Mishkat al-Anwar, ed. W.H. Gairdner, Kitab Bhavan, New Delhi 1981, pp. 75-7.
9. Al-Ghazali, ibid. p. 63.
10. Al-Ghazali, ibid. p. 52.
11. Al-Ghazali, ibid. p. 46.
12. Al-Ghazali, ibid. p. 47-51.
13. I. Shah, op. cit. p. 112.
14. I. Shah, ibid. p. 137.
15. Al-Ghazali, Faysal al-tafriqa bayn al-Islam wa l-zandaqa, ed. Cairo 1901, p.75; see J. Wijngaards, “I call you to Salvation” (Qur 40, 44), Indian Ecclesiastical Studies 9 (1970) 247-50.
16. I. Shah, ibid. p. 275.
17. I. Shah, ibid. p. 297.
18. I. Shah, ibid. p. 180.