Voices of Islam (96 page)

place where he could be alone, and that it was part of his method to supervise at times very closely the invocation of his disciples, which presupposed that the disciple in question would be within easy reach of him.

‘Abd al-Karˆım Jossot quotes the Shaikh as having said to him:

‘‘The
khalwah
is a cell in which I put a novice after he has sworn to me not to leave it for forty days if need be. In this oratory he must do nothing but repeat ceaselessly, day and night, the Divine Name (Allah), drawing out at each invocation the syllable
aˆ h
until he has no more breath left
...
.’’

‘‘During the
khalwah
he fasts strictly by day, only breaking his fast between sunset and dawn
.. .
. Some
fuqaraˆ
2
obtain the sudden illumination after a few

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minutes, some only after several days, and some only after several weeks. I know one
faqˆır
who waited eight months. Each morning he would say to me: ‘My heart is still too hard,’ and would continue his
khalwah.
In the end his efforts were rewarded.’’ (84–85)

It interested Merton that the spiritual retreat demanded by the Shaikh al-‘Alawi for his disciples was very difficult for most to endure:

But what might have been intolerable in other circumstances was made relatively easy because the Shaikh knew how to provoke ‘‘a state of spiritual concentra- tion.’’ None the less, some of the
fuqaraˆ
would come out of the
khalwah
almost in a state of collapse, dazed in both body and soul, hut the Shaikh was indifferent to this provided that some degree of direct knowledge had been achieved. (105)

Other ideas which would also have been of relevance to a monk are:

Let him examine himself: if what his heart hides is more precious than what his tongue tells of, then he is
one whom his Lord hath made certain
(Qur’an XI, 17), but if not, then he has missed far more than he has gained
...
. The Prophet said: ‘‘Knowledge of the inward is one of the Secrets of God. It is wisdom from the treasury of His Wisdom which He casteth into the heart of whomsoe’er He will of His slaves’’ and ‘‘Knowledge is of two kinds, knowledge in the Heart which is the knowledge that availeth, and knowledge upon the tongue which is God’s evidence against His slave.’’ This shows that secret knowledge is different from the knowledge that is bandied about. (89–90)

The Prophet said, ‘‘The earth shall never be found lacking in forty men whose Hearts are as the Heart of the Friend [Abraham] of the All-Merciful.’’
...
and where else is this body of men to be found save amongst the Rememberers, who are marked out for having devoted their lives to God?

‘‘From men
whose sides shrink away front beds.
’’ (Qur’an XXXII, 16)

‘‘To
men whom neither bartering nor selling diverteth from the remembrance of God.
’’ (Qur’an XXIV, 36)

In addition to the Sufi practice of using the rosary, reciting the litanies, and remembering God (
dhikr
) through the invocation of His Holy Name, occasionally members of some orders participate in certain movements which have been called a ‘‘sacred dance.’’ Merton highlighted the following:

None the less, the subjection of the body to a rhythmic motion is never, for the Sufis, any more than an auxiliary; its purpose is simply to facilitate
dhikr
in the fullest sense of remembrance, that is, the concentration of all the faculties of the soul upon the Divine Truth represented by the Supreme Name or some other formula which is uttered aloud or silently by the dancers. It was explained to me by one of the Shaikh’s disciples that just as a sacred number such as three, seven or nine, for example, acts as a bridge between multiplicity and Unity, so rhythm is a bridge between agitation and Repose, motion and Motionlessness,

Thomas Merton and a Sufi Saint
147

fl and Immutability. Fluctuation, like multiplicity, cannot be transcended in this world of perpetual motion but only in the Peace of Divine Unity; and to partake of this Peace in some degree is in fact that very concentration which the
dhikr
aims at
...
.

If the grace of ecstasy is beyond you, it is not beyond you to believe that others may enjoy it
.. .
. None the less I do not say that dancing and manifesta- tions of ecstasy are among the essentials of Sufi But they are outward signs which come from submersion in remembrance. Let him who doubts try for himself, for hearsay is not the same as direct experience. (95)

God commended the people of the Book [Jews and Christians] for their rapture, mentioning one of its aspects with the highest praise:
When they hear what hath been revealed unto the Prophet, thou seest their eyes overflow with tears from their recognition of the Truth.
(Qur’an V, 83) (93)

The Prophet said: ‘‘The solitary ones take precedence, they who are utterly addicted to the remembrance of God.’’ (94)

Thus when the Prophet was asked what spiritual strivers would receive the greatest reward, he replied: ‘‘Those who remembered God most.’’ Then when questioned as to what fasters would be most rewarded he said: ‘‘Those who remembered God most,’’ and when the prayer and the almsgiving and the pilgrimage and charitable donations were mentioned, he said of each: ‘‘The richest in remembrance of God is the richest in reward.’’ (97)

When Dr. Lings explains that the ‘‘litany comes as it were from midway between the Heart and the head,’’ Merton boldly marks a following sentence, ‘‘Beyond litany is invocation in the sense of the word
dhikr.
This is a cry from the Heart, or from near to the Heart.’’ (111)

A few pages ahead, Merton noted that another form of the invocation is found in groaning: ‘‘The Prophet said, ‘Let him groan, for groaning is one of the Names of God in which the sick man may find relief.’’’ (113)

The first chapter in ‘‘Part Two: The Doctrine’’ is titled ‘‘Oneness of Being.’’ In the fulfillment of the Gnostics’ ascent, ‘‘They see directly face to face that there is naught in existence save only God and that
everything perish- eth but His face,
not simply that it perisheth at any given time but that it hath never not perished
...
. Each thing hath two faces, a face of its own, and a face of its Lord; in respect of its own face it is nothingness, and in respect of the Face of God it is Being. Thus there is nothing in existence save only God and His face, for
everything perisheth but His Face,
always and forever.’’ (123)

What a spiritual novice must unlearn struck Merton:

One of the fi things that a novice has to do in the ‘Alawˆı Tarˆıqah—and the same must be true of other paths of mysticism—is to unlearn much of the agility of ‘‘profane intelligence’’ which an al-‘Alawˆı
faqˆır
once likened, for my benefit, to the ‘‘antics of a monkey that is chained to its post,’’ and to acquire an agility of a different order, comparable to that of a bird which continually changes the level of its flight. The Qur’an and secondarily the Traditions of the Prophet are the great prototypes in Islam of this versatility. (124)

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Voices of the Spirit

Regarding the three levels of recitation said upon the rosary, Dr. Lings explains:

What might be called the normal level of psychic perception, is concerned with the ego as such. This is the phase of purifi ation. From the second standpoint this fragmentary ego has ceased to exist, for it has been absorbed into the person of the Prophet who represents a hierarchy of different plenitudes of which the lowest is integral human perfection and the highest is Universal Man (
al-Insaˆ n al-Kaˆ mil
), who personifi the whole created universe and who thus anticipates, as it were, the Infinite, of which he is the highest symbol. The disciple aims at concentrating on perfection at one of these levels. From the third point of view the Prophet himself has ceased to exist, for this formula is concerned with nothing but the Divine Oneness. (125)

After Dr. Lings explains that ‘‘The soul is not merely immortal but Eternal, not in its psychism but in virtue of the Divine Spark that is in it,’’ Merton boldly marked one line from a poem by Shaikh al-‘Alawi:

Thou seest not who thou art, for thou art, yet art not ‘‘thou.’’ (127)

Merton then highlights the words quoted of al-Ghazali (d. 1111
CE
):

There is no he but He, for ‘‘he’’ expresseth that unto which reference is made, and there can be no reference at all save only unto Him, for whenever thou makest a reference, that reference is unto Him even though thou knewest it not through thine ignorance of the Truth of Truths
...
. Thus ‘‘there is no god but God’’ is the generality’s proclamation of Unity, and ‘‘there is no he but He’’ is that of the elect, for the former is more general, whereas the latter is more elect, more all-embracing, truer, more exact, and more operative in bringing him who useth it into the Presence of Unalloyed Singleness and Pure Oneness. (127–128)

I have never looked at a single thing without God being nearer to me than it. (Abuˆ ‘Ubaidah, d. 639
CE
) (128)

In concluding ‘‘Oneness of Being,’’ Lings mentions that ‘‘the highest saints are referred to as the
Near,
’’ and that what the Qur’an means by ‘‘near- ness’’ is defined by the words:

We are nearer to him than his jugular vein and God cometh in between a man and his own heart.
(Qur’an VIII, 24) (129)

Thomas Merton marked many paragraphs as important in ‘‘The Three Worlds.’’ The chapter begins with the words of the Moroccan Shaikh ad-Darqaˆwˆı:

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149

I was in a state of remembrance and my eyes were lowered and I heard a voice say:
He is the first and the Last and the Outwardly Manifest and the Inwardly Hidden.
I remained silent, and the voice repeated it a second time, and then a third, whereupon I said: ‘‘As to
the First,
I understand, and as to
the Last,
I understand, and as to
the Inwardly Hidden,
I understand, but as to
the Outwardly Manifest,
I see nothing but created things.’’ Then the voice said: ‘‘If there were any outwardly manifest other than Himself I should have told thee.’’ In that moment I realized the whole hierarchy of Absolute Being. (131)

So realize, my brother, thine own attributes and look with the eye of the Heart at the beginning of thine existence when it came forth from nothingness; for when thou hast truly realized thine attributes, He will increase thee with His. (137)

One of thine attributes is pure nothingness, which belongeth unto thee and unto the world in its entirety. If thou acknowledge thy nothingness, He will increase thee with His Being
...
.

Extinction also is one of thine attributes. Thou art already extinct, my brother, before thou art extinguished and naught before thou art annihilated. Thou art an illusion and a nothingness in a nothingness. When hadst thou Existence that thou mightest be extinguished? Thou art
as a mirage in the desert that the thirsty man taketh to be water until he cometh unto it and findeth it to be nothing, and where he thought it to be, there findeth he God.
Even so, if thou wert to examine thyself, thou wouldst find God instead of finding thyself, and there would be naught left of thee but a name without a form. Being in itself is God’s, not thine if thou shouldest come to realize the truth of the matter, and to understand what is God’s through stripping thyself of all that is not thine, then wouldest thou fi thyself to be as the core of an onion. If thou wouldst peel it, thou would peelest off the first skin, and then the second, and then the third, and so on, until there is nothing left of the onion. Even so is the slave with regard to the Being of the Truth.

It is said that Raˆbi‘ah al-‘Adawiyyah met one of the Gnostics and asked him of

his state, and he replied: ‘‘I have trod the path of obedience and have not sinned since God created me,’’ whereupon she said: ‘‘Alas, my son, thine existence is a sin wherewith no other sin may be compared.’’ (137)

The text then refers to what must necessarily be attributed to God as follows: ‘‘Being, Beginninglessness, Endlessness, Absolute Independence, Incomparability, Oneness of Essence, of Quality and of Action, Power, Will, Knowledge, Life, Hearing, Speech, Sight.’’ Merton was interested in the comments of Shaikh al-‘Alawi:

Here he explaineth what belongeth unto God. See therefore, O Slave, what belongeth unto thee, for if thou shouldst qualify thyself with any of these qualities, thou wilt be contending with thy Lord. (131)

Such a statement reminds a seeker of his own essential emptiness, which were he to realize, he would gain the Divine Presence, for which he yearns.

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One can imagine why Merton would have been drawn to the passages above which encourage the spiritual aspirant to recall his own ‘‘nothingness,’’ for

then He will be thy Hearing and thy Sight, and when He is thy Hearing and thy Sight, then wilt thou hear only Him and see only Him, for thou wilt be seeing Him with his Sight and hearing Him with His Hearing. (139)

Wheresoe’er ye turn, there is the Face of God.
Things lie hidden in their opposites, and but for the existence of opposites, the Opposer would have no manifestation. (140)

Merton was concerned with many of the passages which remind a person to accept both the blessings and the trials of life with an equal heart and to love God’s will for us whether it brings ease or contraction into our lives:

The Outwardly Manifest is veiled by naught but the strength of the manifesta- tions, so be present with Him, nor be veiled from Him by that which hath no being apart from Him. Stop short at the illusion of forms, nor have regard unto the outward appearance of receptacles. Do not know Him only in His beauty, denying that cometh unto thee from His Majesty, but be deeply grounded in all the states, and consider Him well in opposites. Do not know Him in expan- sion only when He vouchsafeth, denying Him when He witholdeth, for such knowledge is but a veneer. It is not knowledge born of realization. (142–143)