living islam _ Islamic tradition

by Jane Carroll

The title comes from T.S. Eliot The Dry Salvages from the
Four Quartets.
He writes in this passage of our perennial and foolish need to
understand the signs of the times and what they may mean for
our future:

"To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams: all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And will always be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men's curiosity searches past and future
and clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
the point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint."

Ibn 'Arabi, whose writings never leave the realm of the timeless,
was nevertheless born into a religion which reveals itself
according to a linear progression in time. Other religions and
orders have emphasized cyclical time or the re-appearance in
time of the same eternal realities but the story of the people of
the Book, the people of the Torah, the Gospels and the Koran,
has a beginning, a middle and an end. The cultures, world-view
and imaginative presence of the people born into these religions
are imbued with this sense of the linear progression of time.
Many of the great masterpieces of western art tell this story:
Milton and Dante in verse, Chartres Cathedral in stone and glass,
Michaelangelo has laid it out on the walls and the ceiling of the
Sistine chapel where the whole event is depicted, from the first
moment God divided light from darkness, through the old
testament prophets to the life of Christ and the inevitable
conclusion with the Last Judgement. Ibn 'Arabi himself has a
specific role in time as the Seal of the Mohammedian saints. His
appearance at a point in time relative to what came before and
what comes after has significance.
What is it the unfolding of this story tells us of who we are now
and to what we are invited at this moment? At the intersection of
the timelessness with time the past is not behind and the future
not ahead, all exists in the moment. What happened to other
people in another time and another place happens to us here and
now. "The past is not dead," says William Faulkner, "it is not
even past." So the study of history can become the study of
ourselves.

I would like to begin, (with some presumption), with a
speculative glance over several thousand years of history in a
place closely connected with Ibn 'Arabi - Anatolia or modern
day Turkey a place in which the teachings of Ibn 'Arabi took
root and brought forth seed of intersection and also, not
coincidentally a place of many civilizations and religions whose
traces are still clearly seen there. This speculation is to draw out
one of an infinity of ways of seeing the progression of time as a
progression of more and more expansive revelations or more
and more expansive invitations to completion, to see in some
way how this could inform us of the era in which we live.

In the centre of Anatolia is the earliest known settled
community yet excavated at Chatal Huyak. We know almost
nothing about the people of this place nor their religion but they
left powerful ritual objects, now collected in the museum in
Ankara, which indicate that when man first settled he created
here a holy place a temple an area especially designated as
sacred space set apart from ordinary affairs of life.

Successive civilizations moved through this area and left their
own traces of sacred spaces until Alexander, tutored by
Aristotle, foretold his destiny by the oracle of Ammon, forged
the historically important link between the west and the east.
Provided the cities he conquered submitted to his rule, he, for
the most, left their temples intact and even offered sacrifices to
their Gods. Alexander opened up the way for the Roman Empire
which followed in his footsteps, assuming many of the sacred
spaces and temples which had gone through successive religious
identities. ( Those of you who have seen the film "Turning" will
be familiar with the idea that the ancient earth mothers of Chatal
Huyuk transformed themselves into the Hittite deities, then into
the Artemesia of the Greeks and Diana of the Romans) Into this
empire, two thousand years ago, the teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth spread rapidly and a profound change was brought
about in the place. The era of the temple, the space set aside as
holy and administered by priests who mediated between man
and the Gods gave way to the Christian Ecclesia, or church -the
place of gathering of the community. The locus of revelation of
the divine moved from the temple, into the community- or
"Whenever two or three are gathered in my name". It was at this
time of course that the second temple in Jerusalem was
destroyed and the Jewish people began their worship in the
synagogue, also a gathering place of the community, without a
priest.

Walking now around the great Temple of Didyme, south of
Ephesus, which was the location of the famous oracle of Apollo
in Greek and Roman times (built on the site of an even earlier
temple) you cannot help but experience the magnitude and
significance of that place and, at the same time, the sense that
nothing of the spirit which manifested there now remains.
When, after the Roman Empire had become Christian, the
Emperor, known as Julian the Apostate tried to revive the
ancient Gods of Rome he sent a delegate to the consult the
oracle at Didyme and was given the message "Apollo now longer
inhabits these halls. He has retreated into the bowels of the
earth."

So the locus of the revelation spread into the earth and through
the community. It also spread from the chosen people of Israel
to all who embraced Christ's teachings and it spread rapidly
through the vast empire which had been made ready to receive
it.

St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, the people of present day
Ankara, wrote that covenant which God had made with
Abraham and his descendants 1000 years earlier was extended
by the prophethood of Jesus to all who followed him:
"For as many of you as have been baptised into Christ have put
on Christ. There is neither Jew, nor Greek, there is neither bond
nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in
Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's then are ye Abraham's seed,
and heirs according to the promise."

More than a millennium later, after a series of invasions, the new
religion of Islam came to this land to whose prophet Mohammed
God said "I have made the whole earth a mosque for you" The
physical location for worship became the correctly oriented
prostrated form of the believer.

It was to Konya in central Turkey, of course, that the two great
poles of Islamic sainthood, Ibn 'Arabi and Rumi, came in the
13th century, not quite meeting in time, establishing an
education in the Unity of existence which was to be followed by
other great Anatolian saints throughout the centuries and which
is finding so many students today. Both these men were
travelers of course, Ibn 'Arabi from the far west of the then
Muslim world, Rumi from the East. Part of what moved them
across the globe were the conditions of the time, warfare,
invasions, political intrigue, etc. Their interior knowledge
expressed itself through a large range of culture, sensibility and
taste which was their experience. A very large place had been
made ready for them, prepared to receive what it was they
brought. "God knows best where to place his message" it says in
the Koran and "He who manifests Himself in a form does so only
according to the degree of receptivity of that form" from the
chapter of Elias.

The subsequent reception, during the Ottoman Empire, of the
teaching of Ibn 'Arabi by those called the Melāmi is discussed by
Victoria Rowe Holbrook in Journal IX of the Society's
proceedings. She describes the intellectual climate of the time as
representing a tension between the near eastern learned
traditions of Arabic and Greek philosophy and the more
eclectic, free wheeling, Turkmen Sufism. Again, this was a large
place for a large teaching.

So now we find ourselves at the beginning of the 21st century
emerging from one of the most destructive and disturbing
periods in human history where old orders were overturned and
new ideologies where found to be deadly. What is being
prepared? What does this era manifest of the single unique
reality?

The rapid span through a particular aspect of human history
shows that the clashing of armies and destruction of civilizations
are intertwined with what prepares the place for successively
expansive revelations. We cannot say they cause the
preparation but we cannot say they are separate for it either.
The Roman empire must have seemed over-powering and
indestructible to most of those living in the first century AD and
yet the message of the poor carpenter from Nazareth, so
apparently antithetical to the aims of the Empire, found its place
there and spread through it rapidly like water in a dry sponge.

At the start of the 21st century a new empire is gaining
dominance not this time created by armies or of a single
nationality but the empire of international global capitalism and
popular Western culture. This seemingly oppressive and banal
force is rapidly destroying traditional cultures and unique
sensibilities throughout the world, colonising the appetites and
imaginations of most of what it touches. But it does not seem far
fetched to suggest that this empire, whatever its own intentions,
is laying the ground on which certain ideas are rapidly
communicating themselves just as the roads of the Roman
Empire allowed the spread of the ideas of Christ at the beginning
of the first Christian millennium.

Amongst the chaos, clamour and disorder of the last 100 years
certain ideas have emerged, it is not quite clear from where, and
become established, seldom in the actions of those in power but
in the convictions of an increasingly large range of people. The
century which witnessed two world wars also witnessed, in the
United Nations declaration of Human Rights, in the work of
Ghandi, Martin Luther King and others, in the social movements
of the sixties, the establishment of the idea that the individual
human being has a value based purely and essentially on their
humanity, not their status amongst others, and that this
essential humanity is worthy of profound respect. That the
conditions of birth, of nationality, religion, race, class, gender
etc. should not be allowed to impede a human being reaching
their potential has become a common belief. This idea, of
course, is not new to the world, but it has penetrated through
societies to an extent possibly not seen before and is held by
many people now as a core spiritual value, something which
transcends politics and religion. For instance, many of those
who participated in the civil rights movement of the sixties in
America describe the experience as a spiritual awakening rather
than political or social action and that it was something which
seemed to be happening to them, not something which they
brought about.

"Know this to be definitely like this" opens the commentary on
the Chapter of Jonah in the Fusūs, "that God created this
emergence of humankind according to completion in his image...
so that the qualities of completion of this totality be manifest in
him ." If this emergence of humankind has been created for
completion and if there is to come about a universal perspective
then it is required , as the first step, that at least in thought it is
recognised that the value of another human being and oneself is
that which is essential, without condition: that our value does
not lie in our attributes because the attributes do not belong to
us, they are lent, or assumed. The deep common bond we may
be graced to experience is a single reality in multiple
manifestations. This is a simple but profound revelation which
has the power to change everything.

Another idea running rapidly through this new world, which can
appear to be in complete contradiction to the sense of unity
between peoples, is that the differences in human beings deserve
recognition and respect. Groups not formerly represented in the
prevailing culture, government, or education ethnic
minorities, women, gays, native peoples, the disabled the list
goes on have - demanded to be recognised. In its lowest form
this descends to the tyranny of political correctness which so
infuriates right wing columnists and broadcasters. But it seems
something very important is being expressed here which is at
the heart of a nascent universal perspective. On the one hand, if
the real value of a human being rests only in their essential
humanity, not their birth, nationality, race, creed, class, talents
or achievements then how they appear is, in essence, always
suitable. That is, there is no requirement to become something
other than what one is, nothing to transform oneself into, no
attributes to acquire. The only requirement is to become
properly and completely who it is one is meant to be.

On the other hand, these differences in humans which come
about through their unique experiences, cultures, religions,
histories, talents, dispositions are intelligences. They are
aptitudes for the perception of the One Reality. When they are
allowed to be free from relative values and conditioned
response and are seen to be unique tastes of the One Reality
they become themselves an education and an invitation to a
more universal truth.

From the chapter of Jonah in the Fusūs: "One and the same thing
may appear differently to the various observers of it. Such is the
Self-manifestation of God. Either one may say that God
manifests Himself like that or that the Cosmos, being looked at
and into, is like God in His Self-manifestation. It is various in the
eye of the beholder according to the make-up of the beholder,
or it is that the makeup of the beholder is various because of the
variety of manifestation"

Human beings all over the world are resisting the orders which
have been imposed on them and demanding the right to express
who it is they are. The tension caused between the desire to
recognise the essential humanity common to all and the desire
to respect and give value to difference can only be resolved
from the point of view of Unity. So long as the different
attributes are seen to belong to different entities, conflict and
ranking one above the other will be inevitable. When they can
be perceived as attributes of a single entity to which there are no
exclusive rights except
Its own right to Itself, then all the tension and conflict falls
away.

There is a profound education for all of us in this. This place,
this planet at the beginning of the new millennium is providing
the conditions for a vastly expanded perception. Our common
history, the progression of revelations appearing over time
witnessed in our communities lives on in us and gives us our
sensibilities. It becomes our means of understanding or it
becomes what conditions us to a limited perception. This era is
requiring of us that we move beyond the limitations simply in
order to survive with one another.

It is not only in the interaction of people that our perceptions
are expanded. Much of the art of the 20th century in the West
has been dedicated to cutting ties to the past so that we are
forced to use our senses in new, fresh ways without the
interference of the previously applied intellect. The cubist
paintings of Picasso, the abstract expressionism of Rothko
demanded a new way of perceiving of form and color
unattached to what it is these symbolise. The high mode of the
music of Charlie Parker or John Coltrane which demands to be
heard fresh in this moment, the language of Samuel Beckett, the
architecture of Le Corbusier - in every major art form,
literature, dance, drama, a new education has been offered to
expand the possibilities of perception. This is not even to
mention the field of science where the previously understood
laws of physics have been turned inside out.

(James Morris told us two years ago in Berkeley of Ibn 'Arabi's
description in the Futūhāt of the people of fragrances, special
saints in Andalusia to whom all divine knowledge was conveyed
through the sense of smell. This is such an evocative image of
the pure receptacle where the senses are free of conditioned
response and intellectual interference and through which real
knowledge can be received)

The bewildering changes, the speed with which old orders are
overturned, the suddeness of the necessity to accommodate the
new can either be welcomed and embraced or resisted and
resented but nothing will halt the requirement to respond. If we
can look back over several millennia of the history which
informed us and see the expansion of the platform of the
revelation, we can see ourselves now at a time and in a place
where the platform has expanded exponentially. The invitation
to completeness can no longer be contained in the order laid out
by the temple, the tribe, the community, the followers of the law
of a prophet. As always what is needed to understand the world
around us is what is needed to understand ourselves or vice
versa. The era is His name. This time and this place is
demanding in even the most overt ways that in order to
understand what is going on we must remove from ourselves
limited belief and conditioned response. This is not easy. An
education is needed in this to perceive what is essential and what
is peripheral, what is "ancient and abiding and what is recent and
perishing". An education from one order to another order will
not be sufficient. This is the beginning of the education which is
offered by such as Ibn 'Arabi, who starts from the point of unity
and never leaves it. He gives help from what is real to what is
known to be real in oneself - the education from the interior
reality of man to the interior reality of man, without
intermediary.

We have no way of knowing what the future will bring. Whether
the new world order at the dawn of the 21st century will bring
harmony, destruction, apathy or combinations of all three. We
may see that the invitation to completeness is being made to a
much broader platform but we cannot know how it will be
responded to - except in ourselves.

Ibn 'Arabi delivers an invitation to direct knowledge from the
most ancient place. In this way there are no real states or
stations to be brought through. There is no platform of
understanding to be brought about. There are no conditions to
be changed or attributes to be attained. All that is required is the
proper response, the request to be informed directly from the
most interior place."Rabb hibli istidad'i kamilan" says the
prayer of Ibn 'Arabi. "Lord grant me as a gift the perfect
aptitude to receive from the most holy effusion."

Jane Carroll
Paper delivered for the Symposium of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi
Society, "The Spirit of the Millennium"

Chisholme House
August 2000
Berkeley, California
October 2000

2001-08-26