Reflection 1
Questioner: "How should we treat others?"
R. Maharshi: "There are no others"
“In all of these countless faces I see nothing but the One Self.”
- Anonymous
No self but the One Self
La illaha illAllah
"No he but He" (Imam al-Ghazali)
"He is the First and the Last" (Quran 57.3)
He is Alone and without partner.
“There is nothing in existence but Him” (al-Ghazali)
He is One because there are no others.
Commentary
* He is above all things and within all things.
* The central teaching of Islam is, لا إله إلا الله, which means there is “No god but the One God”. On a deeper level that is more metaphysical than theological, it means there is “No being but the One Being, no self but the One Self, no reality but the Reality, No he but He.
Imam al-Ghazali, “the embodiment of orthodoxy”, says the following:
“… ‘There is no god but God’ is the common believers proclamation of Divine 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, all-embracing, truer, more exact, and more operative in bringing him who uses it into the Presence of Unalloyed Singleness and Absolute Oneness.”
[Source: Mishkat al Anwar; Al-jawahir al-ghawali (Cairo, 1343 ah), p. 117-18; quote also found in The Essential Martin Lings under Metaphysics, Oneness of Being.]
Reflection 2
"I never looked upon anything without seeing God within it"
- 'Ali رضي الله عنه
"... Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God..”
- Quran 2:115
"Each thing has two faces. It's own face and a Divine face"
- Imam al-Ghazali
"O you who veil yourself by that which is none other than you"
- Shabistari, poet
Commentary:
He is above all things and within all things. Absent and present at the same time. This enigma is universally expressed in all of the faith traditions. ‘Ibn Arabi says,
“Everything is He/not He"
(Huwa la Huwa)
Ramana Maharshi expresses it similarly,
"Brahman is real,
The world is illusion
Brahman is the world"
Spiritual awakening or unveiling (kashf) enables one to see the Divine within all things. Such people, according to al-Ghazali, experience the highest degree of tawhid (Divine oneness) which is the realisation that there is actually nothing in existence but the solitary One. Everything is He. Such a message appears scandalous to the majority steeped in ignorance where multiplicity rather than oneness is real. This is why Imam al Junayd said,
"You have not realised [ultimate] Truth until a thousand honest people have called you a heretic"
Sufism teaches that it is forbidden to disclose the higher mysteries as it is likely to be misunderstood. According to the well known saying of Christ عَلَیهِالسَّلام ,
"Do not caste pearls before swine, do not give what is holy unto dogs. Lest they trample them underfoot and tear you to pieces"
Reflection 3
“I never looked upon anything without seeing God within it"
- 'Ali رضي الله عنه
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it really is, Infinite” - Blake
The sage perceives the Infinite within the finite, the Everlasting within the ephemeral.
“A fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees” - Blake
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour” - Blake
* Over two thousand years ago in China, the Taoist sage Chuang Tzu said: “The knowledge of the ancients was perfect. How perfect? At first they did not yet know that there were things [seperate from Tao… the Eternal and Infinite]. This is the most perfect knowledge; nothing can be added. Next, they knew that there were things, but did not yet make distinctions between them. Next they made distinctions between them but they did not yet pass judgements upon them. When judgements were passed, [the knowledge of] Tao was destroyed.”
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