The Discovery, the Discoverer and the Discovered
The Beauty of Islamic Mysticism in Ibn Arabi's Futuhat al Makkiyah, The Meccan Illuminations
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Islamic mysticism/Sufism, the quest for the utmost intimacy with the Ultimate as understood in Islam, is a central point of intersection between Muslims and non-Muslims. It is a zone of Islamic creativity, which, along with literature and architecture, is able to deliver the vitality of Islam in a way that non-Muslims can readily appreciate, even without knowing much about Islam.
This is evident in such works as in
the Andalusian Ibn Arabi's magnificent Tarjuman al Ashwaq, The Interpreter of Desires, love poetry of inimitable imagistic and lyric force, which, in a commentary of great ingenuity, he interprets in terms of human relations with ultimate reality, Allah, and the grand Futuhat al Makkiyah, The Meccan Openings/Illuminations or Revelations ( Amazon link with superb brief overviewby P. Nagy of Arabi and his inspirational matrix ).
Ibn Arabi's Futuhat al Makkiya, Meccan Illuminations, as a Dramatization of the Universally Penetrative Beauty of Sufism
The Perplexing and Sublime Encounter
Discovery
The great beauty of the
Futuhat is evident in
Eric Winkel's English translation of the first chapter, at the beautiful and inspiring site of the Ibn Arabi Society, describing the encounter that inspired the book, an accidental meeting with a figure seen passing through the crowds circumambulating the Kaaba in Mecca, the geographical centre of Muslim devotion and pilgrimage.
This figure is the Youth, revealed as ''the silent speaker, neither living nor dead, composite and simple, encompassed and encompassing, beyond Where or When,'' a mysterious embodiment of cosmological contraries who yet movingly interacts with the discoverer of his person.
The discoverer requests the strange but compelling figure sit and talk with him, urging the personage to recognize one ''who seeks to be intimate with you.''
Response from the Discovered
The figure responds by making an ''enigmatic gesture'' indicating that he ''speaks only in metaphors and is only spoken to metaphorically,'' leading the awe struck discover to realize that this entity, though seated before him in human form, cannot be perceived by the ''purest language of the pure speakers [and] his articulation unattained by the eloquence of the most eloquent.''
''You beautiful bearer of good tidings,'' the discover continues, ''Do teach me your vocabularies [ the language for communicating with you and about you] and instruct me in the hows of turning your opening keys [ secrets of opening of the mysteries you embody].''
The figure does not speak in response but makes ''a secret gesture, and I knew. Then he shone to me a truth of his beauty and I was overwhelmed with passion. I was felled before him and the moment overcame me. When I recovered after fainting, he knew that knowledge of him had arrived and he set down his walking stick and sat'', perceiving in the discoverer the arrival of ''reverent fear to be a way to recognize that knowledge had arrived'' to the seeker.
The discoverer composes himself and presses further, ''Show me some of your mysteries, so that I would be the one to transcribe your beauties.''
The enigmatically compelling one responds, describing himself as akin to an architectural configuration to be keenly studied for symbolic meanings, "Observe the sectioned segments of my cobblestoned-whole and the ordered arrangement of my shape, and you will find what you are asking of me to be imprinted throughout me.''
This startling description in terms of symbolic edifice is made even more striking as the figure continues, ''I neither speak for myself nor for another, and my knowledge is not of anything but me, and my essence is not different from my names. I am knowledge, the known, and the one who knows. I am wisdom, the fount of wisdom and the one who decides wisely.''
This is one of the most beautifully concise descriptions of divine totality in literature, religion and philosophy, unifying divine essence and expression, knowledge, the known and the knower, wisdom, the source of wisdom and the wise, a magnificent summation of aspiration to know the Ultimate resonant from the Hindu Upanishads to the Christian poetry of St. John of the Cross to Rowland Abiodun's account of the unity of ori, oro, oriki and owe, mind, discourse and imaginative expression, in Yoruba Art and Language.
Impact of the Discovery
These words impact the discoverer with a realization of the unity of himself and Creation, the meaning of the symbol that is existence deposited in him as the meaning of words are deposited in words, as the smell of a perfume embodies the perfume.
He becomes like a circle drawn with a compass, moving from enquiry to fulfillment, like the compass returns to its starting point in creating the circle, the starting point unmoved as the arm of the compass moves, as the Creator remains unmoved as Creation proceeds to fulfillment.
He, the discoverer, remains standing, on a day like any other in Mecca, but, through an uncommon encounter with an embodiment of the transcendent realities the holy city represents, he is imprinted with and transformed by a realization
that took him thirty years to compose in writing, becoming one of the greatest books in world spirituality, the Tufuhat al Makkiyah, the Meccan Illuminations, as the title may be translated.
Epithetical Summation
The same encounter is later depicted by the discoverer in terms that compress the experience into powerfully evocative epithets:
Then, he transformed for me into a form of Sight, and I transformed for him into a form of one whose sight has been Blinded.
Then he transformed for me into a form of Universal Knowledge, and I transformed for him into a form of the Completely Ignorant.
Then he transformed for me into a form of the Hearer of the Call, and I transformed for him into a form of the Deaf to the Invitation.
Then he transformed for me into a form of the Addressor, and I transformed for him into a form of the Silenced.
Then he transformed for me into a form of Wanting, and I transformed for him into a form short on Gist and Practice.
Then he transformed for me into a form of Able and Capable, and I transformed into a form of Unable and Destitute.
A dialectic of contrastive but complementary relations, in which the progressive revelation of the glory of the divine one provokes the bewildered fascination of the human being.
Illumination Within and Beyond Religious Specificities
The greatest religious literature often projects doctrine while transforming doctrine, dramatizing the universal aspirational core, the human quest for ultimate meaning, that animates religion, and to which one can be sensitized across religions and spiritualities, regardless of one's commitment to a religious allegiance or to non at all.
It is this universally valid potency I have tried to illuminate through this interpretive reading of part of Winkel's translation of the first chapter of Ibn Arabi's Futuhat al Makkiya, taking liberties with some of the interpretations by presenting my understanding which might not necessarily correspond to that of the text, in order to indicate my current perception of the text and appreciation of its power.
Winkel's translation is thick with
conceptual depth and complexity, representing Ibn Arabi's weaving of a
powerful ideational structure, mapping a rich metaphysics and epistemology,
a view of the foundations and structure of existence and how it may be understood, within his narrative progression.
Approaching Ibn Arabi
In my ongoing relationship with this work, I have been inspired to understand and relate with it in terms of the simple but great beauty in terms of which it may be appreciated, an approach I gained from first encountering Ibn Arabi's work through Stephen Hirtenstein's The Ultimate Mercifier: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn Arabi (Link to Amazon page with superb reviews), published by Anqa, dedicated to Arabi's work, which, as the site states,
"contain some of the most beautiful and comprehensive depictions of the
vision of One Reality in all its facets.''
Pir Press is publishing Winkel's
ongoing complete translation of the Futuhat.
The Press describes itself as '' an independent publisher dedicated to the sacred
tradition of Sufism and to the Path of Love in its many forms. Sufism is a way to
recognize the radiance of the Source of Love behind the surface of all things.
This divine light is revealed also through the living metaphors of the other
great wisdom traditions. In this spirit of universality, we offer books and
music to aid and inspire seekers from all walks of life on their spiritual
paths to the One Source.''
Amazed Reverence Inspired by the Futuhat
The following responses to the Futuhat represent an amazed reverence-
P. Nagy on the Chodkiewicz/Chittick partial translation :
''Any work on the Al-Futuhat al-Makkiya in English is provisional and exploratory and it will require several generations of scholars and some further development in philosophical hermeneutics before anything like a coordinated complete translation could yet be attempted.'
When I decided to work on this book, I conversed about the idea with some prominent scholars in the field and I was utterly discouraged claiming that translating this book is something absolutely impossible; due to its magnitude, complexity and mystical nature.
Although I was definitely aware of that, I decided to try. But when I started, and as I progressed very slowly, I discovered what a daring decision I might have taken. In fact, after I completed the first draft of the first volume (out of 37) and part of the second volume, I had to stop because practically I realized much more difficulties than that I had been initially warned.
For example one honest scholar told me: "I know from decades of experience--and I know that my considered judgment is shared by those mature scholars whose knowledge of this text is more extensive than mine--that the thought of this project would be sheer folly, leading to a result that would be painfully embarrassing (for sure) and potentially incredibly damaging (if people actually took a bad job seriously)."
This is certainly true, at least because this text presupposes such vast knowledge of underlying systems of thought and reference like Koran, Hadith, theology, jurisprudence and philosophy, so every single line or phrase of the Arabic typically requires many pages of explanation and commentary in English. Moreover, there are many bolted sentences in almost every chapter that remain opaque and unclear to the most specialized scholars who have studied them for years.
Therefore, after working on the first two volumes I experienced all these difficulties and much more, so I had to stop and give up this seemingly impossible job.
Yet I am totally convinced that: "that which cannot be accomplished if full should not be left out in full!"
My principal motivation behind this work was the fact that after I did the research on Ibn Arabi's time and cosmology, based on a total of a very tiny portion of the Futuhat, both in terms of passages size and in terms of the vast extent of subjects tackled in this magnum opus, I discovered how much the world is missing not having access to this historical work, especially that most of the serious scholarship nowadays is performed in English, by students or scholars who may not have full access to the Arabic text, not to mention the fact that this extensive Arabic text itself needs to be properly indexed and characterized to allow easier access benefiting from existing computer accessibilities.
For this reason, and with the possibility now to publish in electronic formats which can be rectified and edited easily, I decided to publish the first volume as it is in its first draft after I stopped working on it for more than two years. The result was overwhelming! This certainly reinforced my initial impression about the urgency for a complete translation of this book.
Therefore, the work will be revived, despite all the difficulties and constraints. I am fully aware that there will be many errors and deficiencies; for example in setting out the correct equivalent English terms, the presence of numerous poor expressions due to the complexity of the original text or the lack of explanatory comments in some places, but I will keep looking at the bright side until a mature and satisfactory version is developed, which I think will take some years before this may be achieved.
