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Toyin writes:
ISLAMIC MYSTICISM AND IBN ARABI
IN RELATION TO
THE CONVERGENCE OF COGNITIVE DOMAINS
On Buying
Islamic Mystical Poetry
Sufi Verse
from the Early Mystics to Rumi
selected with
explanatory notes by
by
Mahmood Jamal
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
I bought this book because it contains, with rich and lucid
explanatory notes, selections from the poetry
of Ibn Arabi, described by some as the greatest thinker in the Abrahamic
traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, if I remember well. This is a
very large claim in a field that
contains such figures who have shaped history as the Christians St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Thomas Aquinas
and Dante Alighieri, Jews such as Moses
de Leon, described as the writer of the monumental Zohar, Nahman of Bratklasv, Hillel and Rashi and the luminaries of
the Islamic tradition, such as Al
Ghazali and Rumi, described
by one source as the greatest poet of all time, whose famous
poetry is also in this book, and other Islamic lights, some being polymaths who combined genius in the arts and sciences,
such as Ibn Sina.
Ibn Arabi's magnum opus, Futuhat Al-Makkiyya, translated into English as The
Meccan Revelations, is described as so profound, that even among devotees
and scholars, humanity has not reached
such a level as to adequately appreciate it, if I am not exaggerating the point
made in an Amazon review of the work. I have looked into the English
translation of the book, representing only a part of its totality, and it is clearly rich with a dense tapestry of ideas, some of them dizzying in their strangeness
and yet communicated simply and directly.
To help me gain entry into Arabi, I have decided to begin with his
poetry, which demonstrates an elevation both ethereal and imagistically
gripping in its concreteness, such as the image of “an ocean without shore, and
a shore without ocean” or Arabi’s description of the youth he ran into while circumambulating
the Kaaba, the holy stone in Mecca at the symbolic centre of Islamic geography,
and who, when Ibn Arabi asked to be informed of the nature of the youth, the
youth asked Arabi to read the letters engraved on his, the youth's body, to be so informed.
My very limited exposure to Islamic mysticism, to conceptions of
perceiving, experiencing or understanding directly the source of existence as
demonstrated by Islam, suggests that its classical form might be different in significant ways, beyond the differences of doctrine, from the related school of Christian mysticism
in its classical sense, being perhaps generally more rooted in everyday
imagery, such as the story of birds on a journey to meet the king of birds (?)
in the famous Conference of the Birds of Attar and another mystic describing an encounter with the Ultimate experienced
as a veiled woman, lovely and tender in her concealed yet immediate presence.
Henry Corbin has a famous book on Arabi, Creative
Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, dealing with Arabi 's understanding of imagination as a
realm that enables entry into a unique form of knowledge. William Chittick has
published at least two fat books, richly embedded with ideas, about him, and
there exists an industry of scholarship on Arabi, including the rich fare on the site of
the Ibn Arabi society (www.ibnarabisociety.org) , based in Oxford.
Chittck presents Arabi as a thinker who demonstrates the
significance of the individual locating themselves within a cosmological
framework. Arabi's poetry is one sure way of understanding his ability, digging
deep into the illumination of his religion, to anchor himself in perennial human themes in a manner that may resonate
with one regardless of one's
religious faith, or lack of one.
A helpful scholar to read in relation to such poetry is Karen
Armstrong, in any of her books and essays, but ideally taking in the full range
of her works, from her autobiographical The Spiral Stair and Through the Narrow Gate, to history and
philosophy of religion, as in A History of God and The Case for God, because they are all
linked in terms of her journey from Christian nun, to student of literature, and
eventually to former nun and scholar of religion who has moved beyond her
earlier approach to religious faith as an interpretation of facts to a
conception of faith as imaginative
framework through which the otherwise inaccessible is brought within the
courtyard of the mind, to be at least roughly accurate about her understanding
of religious knowledge and action. In
this she is in agreement with the epistemology of the Hermetic occultist Dion Fortune, who, as she argues in her Mystical
Qabalah, Sane Occultism and Applied Magic, understands occult symbols as an imaginative
shorthand, a cognitive ladder for
thinking about modes of being not otherwise conceivable.
These perspectives about imagination as a bridge between otherwise
incompatible cognitive domains may also be compared with modern scientific efforts to answer the
question "What is the ultimate
origin of the universe?" . "
If it was the explosion and expansion known as the Big Bang, what came before the Big Bang?". In response to these
questions, one may answer
"nothing", as eloquently
argued by philosopher of science Tian Yu Cao in "Ontology and Scientific Explanation," in Explanations. Ed.
John Conwell, Oxford UP, 2004. 173-196.
When all casual chains break down, when the quest for ultimate
beginning regresses infinitely, what do
you do? You may posit, like Cao, does,
developing a trend very visible in the scientific theory of quantum mechanics,
that "nothing" is the beginning of everything. Even though
one, like the scientists who answer that way, could have arrived at that point
from a different epistemological route than the mystics, one would therefore share a platform with the
mystics who make a similar cognitive leap, through intuition rather than
primarily or not at all through the intellect, and claiming direct engagement with that
reality rather than addressing it only
theoretically as the scientific construction of truth does.
Also posted at
comprosyt.blogspot.co.uk
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