The task is the same every day. Live selflessly in the present, giving yourself fully to the people you are with and the tasks you are called to. It doesn’t matter if you get the thing you think will make you happy or not. Changing life circumstances are just new contexts to live out the same call. The task is the same every new day.
“Invoking strengthens the heart and the body, puts inner and outer affairs in order, gladdens the heart and face, making the latter radiant. Moreover, it procures sustenance and facilitates obtaining it. It clothes the invoker with dignity; it inspires correct behavior in every affair. Its permanence is one of the means of obtaining the love of God; it is one of the greatest gateways leading to that love. Invoking causes the vigilance that leads to the station of spiritual virtue, wherein the servant adores God as if he saw Him with his very own eyes. It causes one to turn to God often; for whoever turns to God by remembering Him frequently will eventually turn to Him in all his affairs. Invoking brings closeness to the Lord and opens the door of gnosis within the heart. It bestows on the servant the veneration and reverential fear of his Lord…The invocation is the nourishment of the soul just as food is the nourishment of the body. Invoking polishes the heart of its rust, which is forgetfulness and the pursuit of its passions.”
– Ibn Ata Allah Al-Iskandari, The Key to Salvation and the Lamp of Souls
In the Sufi Tradition, the state of fana is sometimes described as self-extinction in God, and is thought to be achievable (by grace) through meditative Dhikr.
“Its beginning is only with the tongue, then comes invocation with the heart with effort; then comes invocation with the heart naturally; then comes possession of the heart by the Invoked and the effacement of the invoker.”
“Invocation is an inner reality in which the Invoked takes possession of the heart while the invoker is effaced and vanishes. But it has three coverings, one closer to the kernel than the others. The kernel as such is beyond the three coverings, yet the virtue of the coverings lies in their being the way to the kernel.”
“This is fana, that a man be extinguished from himself.”
– Ibn Ata Allah Al-Iskandari, The Key to Salvation and the Lamp of Souls
“Know that there are four degrees of Remembrance (of God): The first is that it be with the tongue while the soul is inattentive. The effect of this is weak, but it is still not without some effect, for the tongue that is busy with service is better than the tongue that is busy with foolishness or left in idleness. The second is that it be in the soul, but not established firmly and dwelling (in it). It is as though the soul must be constrained to do it, so that if there were no (conscious) effort and constraint, the soul would, from inattention and the whisperings of the self, revert to its normal nature. The third is that in which the remembrance is resident, established, and dominant in the soul, so much so that there is no more need for importuning. This is tremendous! The fourth is that in which the Remembered – and that is God Most High – overwhelms the soul, not the remembrance. There is a difference between him whose entire soul loves the Remembered and him who loves the Remembrance. Rather, the perfection of that is that the remembrance and the awareness of the remembrance go from the soul, leaving the Remembered and nothing else… When one becomes immersed thus, one forgets oneself and all there is, save God Most High. One arrives at the beginning of the way of mysticism. This state is called by the Sufis ‘annihilation (of the self).’ It is also called ‘non-existence (of the self).’”
– Al-Ghazzali, On the Remembrance of God Most High
“In contemplative prayer, the inner intellect or spirit, which is itself a Divine Spark to which Meister Eckhart refers when he says that there is in the soul something uncreated and uncreatable… is able to transcend the I-Thou dichotomy altogether. This faculty is able to plunge into the Supreme Reality and, in drowning in the Ocean of Divinity, to know it.”
“As human beings, we have the ability to reach the state of extinction and annihilation and yet have consciousness that we are nothing in ourselves and that all being belongs to God. We can reach a state of unitive consciousness prior to bifurcation into object and subject.”
– Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth
The following is a lecture from Seyyed Hossein Nasr on “Sacred Silence in Sufism.” In the original lecture, Nasr was paired with a conversation partner representing Vedanta. This audio can also be found with the site Audio Files.
“The world appears to us as multiplicity, and the goal of the spiritual life is to ascend from this multiplicity to unity, to see the One in the many and the many integrated into the One. Now the doctrine of the oneness of Being does not negate the reality of multiplicity. Nor does it claim that God is the world and the world in its totality is God, a position held by pantheists. How could a metaphysics that speaks so categorically of the transcendence of God be accused of pantheism? What the Sufis assert is not that God is the world, but that the world is mysteriously plunged in God, to use a formulation of Frithjof Schuon. Existence is a manifestation of Being, and all existence issues from and belongs to Being in the same way that the rays of the sun are finally nothing but the sun.
Some Sufis and Islamic philosophers have interpreted the doctrine of the oneness of Being to mean that all levels of being come from the one Being, that all the rays of light emanate from the sun, while many Sufis claim that on the highest level of understanding there is in fact only the one and absolute Being. Viewed from within the sun, there is nothing but sun…”
– Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth
I find the analogy of the Sun and the Sun’s rays to be helpful when thinking about unity and multiplicity in the context of the contemplative traditions. From the perspective of a ray of light, after it projects outward from the Sun, it can look around and see other “Sun-rooted” rays of light – the world of multiplicity. But from the perspective of the Sun, there is “Nothing But Sun.”
Unity and Multiplicity. Multiplicity and Unity.
The “Oneness of Being” is a core concept in much of philosophical Sufism.
“We live in times of spiritual uncertainty and great contradictions. We witness signs of cultural collapse and long for a vision of hope. The situation for many in the postmodern era is that all religious truths seem to be relativized; no religion seems absolute anymore. In this situation, even a life of faith and morality is no assurance of salvation. We live with unnamed anxieties and guilt. An undercurrent of shame and unworthiness moves just beneath the surface of our busy lives. We try to find cosmic satisfaction in a lifestyle, a career, a self-image, or a romantic relationship. Some employ therapists to attain self-acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding…
Furthermore, there is no shared cultural myth, no unifying vision to bind us together with the wider society. The servitude to religious forms and structures is quickly disappearing, to be replaced only by a worship of the self or a compulsive escape from the self. The worship of the self conceals itself in many forms: fashion, fitness, career. The escape from the self is served by vast industries that more and more shape our lives: professional sports, alcohol and narcotics, gambling, mass media, and the entertainment of sex and violence.
…Furthermore, we exist in a psychologically fragmented state, a state of continuous inner conflicts among the parts of ourselves. We have lost the principle of unity within ourselves. We are not only psychological polytheists, worshipping gods of our own creation, we are ‘poly-selfists,’ because we have many selves and have not known our essential self.”
– Kabir Helminski, The Knowing Heart
The Islamic Contemplative Tradition and Dhikr pages on the site have been updated.
You can’t. Every small thing you do is important. The conversation you have could change one person’s life and through that person a thousand.
“As the One does not contain any difference, He is always present; and we are ever present to Him as soon as we contain no more difference. It is not He who is aspiring to us, or who is moving around us; on the contrary, it is we who are aspiring to Him. We resemble a chorus which always surrounds its leader, but (the members of) which do not always sing in time because they allow their attention to be distracted to some exterior object; while, if they turned towards the leader, they would sing well, and really be with him. Likewise, we always turn around the One, even when we detach ourselves from Him, and cease knowing Him. Our glance is not always fixed on the One; but when we contemplate Him, we attain the purpose of our desires, and enjoy the rest taught by Heraclitus. Then we disagree no more, and really form a divine choric ballet around Him….
…In this choric ballet, the soul sees the source of life, the source of intelligence, the principle of being, the cause of the good, and the root of love. All these entities are derived from the One without diminishing Him. He is indeed no corporeal mass, otherwise the things that are born of Him would be perishable. However, they are eternal, because their principle ever remains the same, because He does not divide himself to produce them, but remains entire. They persist, just as the light persists so long as the sun remains. Nor are we separated from the One; we are not distant from Him, though corporeal nature, by approaching us, has attracted us to it (thus drawing us away from the One). But it is in the One that we breathe and have our being. He gave us life not merely at a given moment, only to leave us later; but His giving is perpetual, so long as He remains what He is, or rather, so long as we turn towards Him. There it is that we find happiness, while to withdraw from Him is to fall. It is in Him that our soul rests; it is by rising to that place free from all evil that she is delivered from evils; there she really thinks, there she is impassible, there she really lives.”
– Plotinus, Ennead VI.9 Of the Good and the One
For Plotinus, if we fix our eyes on the One – the Source – , we can sing and dance rightly.
“In short, the divinity is not outside of any being. On the contrary, He is present to all beings, though these may be ignorant thereof. This happens because they are fugitives, wandering outside of Him or rather, outside of themselves….
…Self-knowledge reveals the fact that the soul’s natural movement is not in a straight line, unless indeed it has undergone some deviation. On the contrary, it circles around something interior, around a center. Now the center is that from which proceeds the circle, that is, the soul. The soul will therefore move around the center, that is, around the principle from which she proceeds; and, trending towards it, she will attach herself to it, as indeed all souls should do. The souls of the divinities ever direct themselves towards it; and that is the secret of their divinity; for divinity consists in being attached to the Centre (of all souls). Anyone who withdraws much therefrom is a man who has remained manifold (that is, who has never become unified)…”
– Plotinus, Ennead VI.9 Of the Good and the One
“We must close the eyes of the body, to open another vision, which indeed all possess, but very few employ…
…But how shall we train this interior vision? At the moment of its first awakening, it cannot contemplate beauties too dazzling. Your soul must then first be accustomed to contemplate the noblest occupations of man, and then the beautiful deeds, not indeed those performed by artists, but those (good deeds) done by virtuous men. Later contemplate the souls of those who perform these beautiful actions. Nevertheless, how will you discover the beauty which their excellent soul possesses? Withdraw within yourself, and examine yourself. If you do not yet therein discover beauty, do as the artist, who cuts off, polishes, purifies until he has adorned his statue with all the marks of beauty. Remove from your soul, therefore, all that is superfluous, straighten out all that is crooked, purify and illuminate what is obscure, and do not cease perfecting your statue until the divine resplendence of virtue shines forth upon your sight, until you see temperance in its holy purity seated in your breast. When you shall have acquired perfection; when you will see it in yourself, when you will purely dwell within yourself, when you will cease to meet within yourself any obstacle to unity, when nothing foreign will any more, by its admixture, alter the simplicity of your interior essence, when within your whole being you will be a veritable light, immeasurable in size, uncircumscribed by any figure within narrow boundaries, unincreasable because reaching out to infinity, and entirely incommensurable because it transcends all measure and quantity, when you shall have become such, then, having become sight itself, you may have confidence in yourself, for you will no longer need any guide. Then must you observe carefully, for it is only by the eye that then will open itself within you that you will be able to perceive supreme Beauty.”
– Plotinus, Ennead I.6 Of Beauty
Purify yourself of all that is not beautiful. Close your eyes, dwell within yourself. “The eye will then open itself within you.” This seems to be as close as Plotinus gets to a meditative method.
Flowerly language aside, Plotinus’ emphasis on striving to perfect oneself morally as a precursor to “the contemplative experience” is another common element among the world’s contemplative traditions.
“How shall we start, and later arrive at the contemplation of this ineffable beauty which, like the divinity in the mysteries, remains hidden in the recesses of a sanctuary, and does not show itself outside, where it might be perceived by the profane? We must advance into this sanctuary, penetrating into it, if we have the strength to do so, closing our eyes to the spectacle of terrestrial things, without throwing a backward glance on the bodies whose graces formerly charmed us. If we do still see corporeal beauties, we must no longer rush at them, but, knowing that they are only images, traces and adumbrations of a superior principle, we will flee from them, to approach Him of whom they are merely reflections. Whoever would let himself be misled by the pursuit of those vain shadows, mistaking them for realities, would grasp only an image as fugitive as the fluctuating form reflected by the waters, and would resemble that senseless (Narcissus) who, wishing to grasp that image himself, according to the fable, disappeared, carried away by the current.”
– Plotinus, Ennead I.6 Of Beauty
Here Plotinus echoes many of the contemplative traditions in encouraging “fleeing the things of the world.” The things of this world are merely shadows, “as fugitive as the fluctuating form reflected by the waters.” Whether they must be rejected/given up completely, or merely abstained from for a time so that the heart may become unattached, is a matter of debate within the traditions, and perhaps among each individual seeker.
To engage in the world without attachment, to appreciate all the beauty in the world – but without seeing its forms as absolute, or coming to them with craving or need – is sometimes seen as characteristic of one who has matured on the contemplative path. The final stage of the Zen Oxherding Pictures (Returning to the Marketplace with Helping Hands) may be one way of expressing this.
“Thus, in her ascension towards divinity, the soul advances until, having risen above everything that is foreign to her, she alone with Him who is alone, beholds, in all His simplicity and purity, Him from whom all depends, to whom all aspires, from whom everything draws its existence, life and thought. He who beholds him is overwhelmed with love; with ardor desiring to unite himself with Him, entranced with ecstasy. Men who have not yet seen Him desire Him as the Good; those who have, admire Him as sovereign beauty, struck simultaneously with stupor and pleasure, thrilling in a painless orgasm, loving with a genuine emotion, with an ardor without equal, scorning all other affections, and disdaining those things which formerly they characterized as beautiful. This is the experience of those to whom divinities and guardians have appeared; they reck no longer of the beauty of other bodies. Imagine, if you can, the experiences of those who behold Beauty itself, the pure Beauty, which, because of its very purity, is fleshless and bodiless, outside of earth and heaven. All these things, indeed are contingent and composite, they are not principles, they are derived from Him. What beauty could one still wish to see after having arrived at vision of Him who gives perfection to all beings, though himself remains unmoved, without receiving anything; after finding rest in this contemplation, and enjoying it by becoming assimilated to Him? Being supreme beauty, and the first beauty, He beautifies those who love Him, and thereby they become worthy of love. This is the great, the supreme goal of souls; this is the goal which arouses all their efforts, if they do not wish to be disinherited of that sublime contemplation the enjoyment of which confers blessedness, and privation of which is the greatest of earthy misfortunes. Real misfortune is not to lack beautiful colors, nor beautiful bodies, nor power, nor domination, nor royalty. It is quite sufficient to see oneself excluded from no more than possession of beauty. This possession is precious enough to render worthless domination of a kingdom, if not the whole earth, of the sea, or even of the heavens – if indeed it were possible, while abandoning and scorning all that (natural beauty) to succeed in contemplating beauty face to face.”
– Plotinus, Ennead I.6 Of Beauty
“Alone with the Alone” is perhaps the most widely quoted language from Plotinus, which he uses more famously at the end of his essay Of The Good and The One.
“We must ascend to the Good to which every soul aspires. Whoever has seen it knows what I still have to say, and knows the beauty of the Good. Indeed, the Good is desirable for its own sake; it is the goal of our desires. To attain it, we have to ascend to the higher regions, turn towards them, and lay aside the garment which we put on when descending here below; just as in the (Eleusynian, or Isiac) mysteries, those who are admitted to penetrate the recesses of the sanctuary, after having purified themselves, lay aside every garment, and advance stark naked.”
– Plotinus, Ennead I.6 Of Beauty
The writings of Plotinus (204-271 CE) represent a major strand of Neoplatonic thought. In Neoplatonic thought, the soul’s ultimate good is sometimes conceptualized as “a return to the One” – alternatively referenced as the One, Divinity, Unity, the Good, the Beautiful – the Ultimate Principle from which all emanates. Personally, I view Neoplatonism as a development in the Platonic Theory of Forms, but more explicitly unified in a vision of God or the Absolute. Neoplatonism likely influenced Christian and other forms of mysticism, especially through Pseudo-Dionysius.
In Neoplatonic thought, matter (referenced above in the idea of “descending here below”) is generally regarded as evil, or at least inconsequential to the soul’s task. Plotinus also here references the Greek “Mystery Religions,” and sometimes uses their rituals as demonstrative analogies.
The following posts will be a series of quotations from Plotinus’ Of Beauty and Of the Good and the One.
Keep on taking small steps each day, doing the good that is in front of you to do.
Live perfectly. And when you fall off the horse, you climb back on.
Within the study of world mysticism, there is debate over what bounds to put around the topic. What do we mean by “mystical” experience? What experiences count, or don’t count?
The content on this site mostly revolves around the form of contemplative experience typically meant by the Christian term contemplation. Contemplation, in the Christian context, refers to an experience of Absolute or Pure Consciousness, most often interpreted as “Union with God.” It is “beyond thought” – a place in which the self disappears into Being, into God.
St. Theresa describes it as “water in water,” or light which enters a room from different windows and becomes one.
St. John of the Cross calls it “abiding in a pure and simple light” – beyond image and form.
It seems to me that this experience not only exists within each contemplative tradition, but also that what we might call Unitive Consciousness is the apex of the journey. Its ongoing experience is that which ultimately and fully transforms a soul.
Another class of experience which often falls within the bounds of world mysticism we might classify as the experience of “God as the Ground of the world.” In his Mysticism and Philosophy, W. T. Stace contrasts introvertive mysticism (i.e. Unitive Consciousness in the Ground of the soul) with extrovertive mysticism (an experience of the Unity and Beauty of all things in the world, United in God so to speak).
Examples of this extroverted mysticism (in various degrees) might be a sudden intuitive flash while in nature, the Zen experience of Satori, or something along the lines of Aldous Huxley’s description of his mescalin experience in The Doors of Perception; the temporary and sometimes unexpected experience of the sacredness and oneness of all things.
I tend to see introvertive experience – Pure Consciousness in the Ground of the Soul – as somehow more fundamental and agree with Stace when he says:
“…it looks as if the extrovertive mysticism were a sort of incomplete version of the completeness realized in the introvertive kind.”
But extrovertive forms of mystical experience also exist, and are often described as overwhelmingly powerful. In our modern Western culture, the term “mysticism” typically evokes ideas related to various forms of extrovertive mysticism.
F. C. Happold, in his Mysticism, discusses as follows:
“Thus our study is concerned with a form of experience and a type of consciousness, which can not only be approached from different angles but also be given different interpretations. We can put aside immediately all those false types of so-called mysticism such as spiritualism, occultism, and the like, which have been referred to above. We may also dismiss as inadequate and misleading such phrases as ‘All religion is mystical.’ Mystical experience may take more than one form. It is, however, a quite different and recognizable form of experience. Not need we concern ourselves with visions and states of ecstasy. Accounts of them are found in the writings of contemplatives; they are, however, usually regarded with some suspicion and are in no way an essential element in mystical experience. Nor shall we regard all psychical experience as necessarily mystical…
We shall, however, regard as falling within the scope of our study a range of experience, which we shall maintain may rightly be called mystical, which extends far beyond that advanced and rare state which medieval writers call Contemplation. While few attain to that high state of mystical experience when it becomes a distinct form of consciousness, there is a wide range of spiritual and aesthetic experience which, I would maintain, is of the same character and proceeds from the same source. A man may be a mystic who is not, and never could be, a contemplative. There come to many the sudden moments of intuitive perception, elusive, fading quickly, but of deep significance, illuminations which they feel reveal to them new facets of reality. Perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime may come an experience more profound, of the sort which came to Warner Allen, and which he described in The Timeless Moment, or to Blaise Pascal, which he recorded on the scrap of paper found sewn up in his doublet after his death:
From about half past ten in the evening to
about half an hour after midnight.
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
Not the God of philosophers and scholars.
Absolute Certainty: Beyond Reason. Joy. Peace.
Forgetfulness of the world and everything but God.
The world has not known thee, but I have known thee.
Joy! joy! joy! tears of joy!
Such experiences, when they happen to a man, revolutionize his outlook, often change his life. He may carry on with his normal occupation as before. To his friends and acquaintances he may seem to be the same as he always was. But in himself he is changed. He feels that he has received a pure, direct vision of truth. Nothing can be the same again. These may not call themselves mystics, but in a lesser degree they have known something that the true contemplative knows in a more intense and continuous form. Their contact is with the same Reality as his.”
And so the comparison between introvertive and extrovertive experience has become one way of classifying forms of mystical experience within the field.
It is debated whether or not traditional visionary experiences (or perhaps visionary experiences achieved through the use of chemical induction) should fall within the scope of the field.
Anecdotally, my dream life is much more vivid and powerful during periods when I am consistent with my meditation. I remember much more from them and they sometimes seem to signify something of weight to me.
Carl Jung – a proponent of dream analysis – was well aware that analysis was subjective, open to an almost infinite number of interpretations. Nevertheless, he thought, when probed, the dream often meant something significant to the dreamer. The meaning lies between the dreamer and his dream.
I’ve never cared much for dream analysis, and I still don’t. Still, the vividness of my dreams has stood out to me as very correlated with how disciplined I have been with my meditation practice.
I’ve recently been studying Sufism. As a tradition, Sufism is far more open to visionary experience than, say, the Christian Tradition as a whole. The only difference between a “vision” and a very strong or vivid dream seems to be whether the subject was “awake” or “asleep” – just different forms of conscious experience – at the time.
Creativity; dreams; perhaps visions; all associated with contemplative practice in one form or another.
“When one enters the deeper layers of contemplative prayer one sooner or later experiences the void, the emptiness, the nothingness, the darkness, the unknowing, the profound mystical silence. All these words point to the same reality. Yes, it is as though there is within me an immense and bottomless void. And when one first experiences this void there is an absence of thought and imaginative pictures, and perhaps there is a certain forgetfulness, as forms are buried beneath a cloud of forgetting. ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing, and even on the mountain nothing.’ But the nothing is all; the emptiness is fullness, the void is plentitude. To experience the vast inner nothing is to experience the vast inner all. It is to experience the ‘eternal now.’ This is the doctrine of St. John of the Cross and the whole apophatic tradition which he represents.”
– William Johnson, Letters to Contemplatives
The Zen Ox Herding Pictures, sometimes called "In Search of the Missing Ox," are a famous set of images in Zen Buddhism. The pictures are arranged in a progression, and are designed to show the stages of spiritual development in Zen. As far as I know, there is no canonical interpretation of the images (for instance see Zen Training, where the author gives two separate interpretations of the same images), but they are popular objects of commentary within the tradition.
The Ox is often interpreted as one’s Original, True, or Buddha Nature.
The images are as follows:
“In all that he tried to say, whether in familiar or startling terms, Eckhart was trying to point to something that cannot be structured and cannot be contained within the limits of any system. He was not trying to construct a new dogmatic theology, but was trying to give expression to the great creative renewal of the mystical consciousness which was sweeping through the Rhineland and the Low Countries in his time. If Eckhart is studied in the framework of a religious and cultural structure, he is undoubtedly intriguing; yet we may entirely miss the point of what he was saying and become involved in side issues. Seen in relation to those Zen Masters on the other side of the earth who, like him, deliberately used extremely paradoxical expressions, we can detect in him the same kind of consciousness as theirs. Whatever Zen may be, however you define it, it is somehow there in Eckhart.”
“...let us remind ourselves that another, metaphysical, consciousness is still available to modern man. It starts not from the thinking and self-aware subject but from Being, ontologically seen to be beyond and prior to the subject-object division. Underlying the subjective experience of the individual self there is an immediate experience of Being… It has in it none of the split and alienation that occurs when the subject becomes aware of itself as quasi-object. The consciousness of Being is an immediate experience that goes beyond reflexive awareness. It is not ‘consciousness of’ but pure consciousness, in which the subject as such disappears. Posterior to this immediate experience of a ground which transcends experience emerges the subject with its self-awareness.”