Unity within Multiplicity: Short Reflections on Mystical Teachings

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 Quran says, “He is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward” (57:3). Al-Zamakhsharī explains that “the Outward” signifies the One who is above all things while “the Inward” signifies the One who is within all things. The Prophet ﷺ clarified the same meaning in his supplication: “O God... You are the Outward, and there is nothing above You; and You are the Inward, and there is nothing beneath You” (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2713).

* 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

Ramana Maharshi was asked:

“How should we treat others?”

He replied:

“There are no others.”

There is only the “One, without second”—without partner, without other.

The Hindu text says:

एकमेवाद्वितीयम् — Ekam eva advitīyam
“One alone, without second.”
Chāndogya Upanishad 6.2.1

Enlightenment is the “realisation of Oneness” (taḥqīq al-tawḥīd, to use the Sufi expression): seeing the One within the many, unity within multiplicity.

Ḥazrat ʿAlī رضي الله عنه is reported to have said:

“I never looked upon anything without seeing God within it.”

The Qur’an says:

“Wheresoever you turn, there is the Face of God.”
—  2:115

Ibn Ata'illah sums up this whole teaching of Unity within multiplicity in his mystical statement,

 "In the beginning, there was only God and nothing else.

And He is now as He (always) was." 

Further Commentary:

Imam al-Ghazali says, "Everything in this world has two faces. A face of its own and a Divine face. Those who see the Divine face are guided."

Yet this Divine vision—or even an intuition of it—becomes possible only when one has begun to discover the Divine within oneself, or has attained some proximity to It.

He is above all things and within all things at the same time. Absent and present. 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 the same truth in his own words,

"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. This truth 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  

Reflection 4

* 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.”

Source: Yu-Lan-Fung’s translation, p. 53

* Renounce the world and all things undergo a kind of death. "Through this death, they are resurrected into their new body. The old world, so stale... is destroyed as an illusion.. with Enlightenment, a new one comes into being. Everything is there but different; the trees transformed, the men reborn" 

    - Gai Eaton, paraphrased 

(Source: The Richest Vein: Eastern Tradition and Modern Thought by Gai Eaton, p. 107)

* Ibn Arabi reminds us that creation is nothing but a theatre in which all the Divine Names or Attributes are reflected in a limited degree. Divine Attributes include Alive, Seeing, Knowing, Speaking, Desiring, Loving, Patient, Powerful, Majestic, Beautiful and so on. These positive Qualities exist in the world due to the Divine nearness and every evil or imperfection is a result of our separation from the Source. God is simultaneously absent and present in varying degrees.