World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 451

Man whenever attains divine attributes becomes Godlike and then his all activities are to be considered as the activities of God. Generally, the relationship of man with God is natural and meta-natural and same as that of light with lamp that emits it. It is also the same as the relationship between individual's awareness of his limb and the limb itself; his perception is not separate from limb, and still less, the limb itself. At the same time, the limb itself, without his consciousness of it, it is meaningless corpse. So Sufis does not believe in pantheism, polytheism, Trinitarians outlook or dualism, but only in strict monotheism (Tawhid). Tawhid represents a particular view of the world that demonstrates a universal unity in existence, a unity between three separate hypotheses - God, nature, and man- because the origin of all there is the same. All have the same direction, the same will, the same spirit, the same motion, and the same life. The Prophet Muhammad says, God resides in the hearts of the faithful and that is the real throne of Him (qulubul mumenina arsh Allah). Another popular tradition is 'God says, heaven and earth contain Me not, but the heart of my faithful servant contains me. 13 In cosmological viewpoint, Tawhid being divided into two relative aspects: a) the unseen and b) manifest. These two terms correspond in current usage to the sensible and the supersensible. The supersensible object is beyond observation and experiment and is hidden from our sense perception. This does not indicate the form of dualism; rather it is a relative classification. It is an epistemological and logical interpretation, not only accepted but also applied by science too.
Man is what he has always been and always will be, an image of the Absolute in the relative that cast into the wave of becoming in order to return this becoming itself to Being. The ontological existence of man in the total scheme of things is forever the same and all other aspects of him in the universe as studied in the cosmology may change either apparently or violently. The perfect man is he who is realized in himself all the possibilities of being and becomes the model of everybody. The descent of the universal spirit into matter and the purgative ascent of man out of matter have been the beliefs of the Sufis throughout the ages. Jili says, a successive stage of divine manifestation is ahadiya (oneness), huwiya (he-ness) and aniya (Iness). In essence man is a cosmic thought, which assumes flesh and connects Absolute Being with the universe. The perfect man is present at all times under different names. He is intermediate between the creator and the creatures, in him all divine attributes are manifested and become a pure soul ( ruh al quds). 14
Sufi spirituality is keenly related to Sufi psychology, because various spiritual states and stations of Sufism are basically the mental modifications of human being. Therefore it is needful to mention something about the Sufi psychology
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