Pages 24 and 25 -
Chapter Two: "If Kalam and jurisprudence depended on reason to establish
categories and distinctions, the Sufis depended on another faculty of the soul to bridge
gaps and make connections. Many of them called this faculty ‘imagination’ (khayal).
For them, it is the innate ability of the soul to perceive the presence of God in all
things - a presence indicated by the verse, "Wherever you turn, there is the face of
God" (2:115). They found a reference to imagination’s power in the
Prophet’s definition of ihsan - "It is to worship God as if you
see Him." Through methodical concentration on the face of God as revealed in the
Koran, the sufis strengthen the ‘as if’ with the aim of reaching the stage of
‘unveiling’ (kashf), which is the generic term for suprarational vision
of God’s presence in the world and the soul. Ibn Arabi asserts that unveiling is a
mode of knowledge superior to reason, but he also insists that reason provides the
indispensable checks and balances without which it is impossible to differentiate among
divine, angelic, psychic, and satanic inrushes of imaginal knowledge."
Commentary: There
are three modalities of ‘imagination’. One mode is experienced by the vast
majority, if not all, of humanity during periods of creativity, fantasy, day dreaming,
planning for the future, and similar cognitive activities.
A second kind of
imagination involves the ‘imaginal’ or spiritual realm and is experienced by far
fewer individuals than is the first kind. This mode of imagination involves a capacity to
‘perceive’ and/or apprehend and/or resonate with different levels of spiritual
reality
The third modality of
imagination is Divine in nature. In fact, the first two species of imagination mentioned
above are expressions or reflections, of a very limited sort - the first mode being far,
far more limited than the second modality - of various dimensions of Divine Imagination.
Creation constitutes an
exercise in Divine Imagination. Everything which exists in one created world, or another,
is the manifestation of an idea that is generated through the Imagination of God.
Although the first mode
of imagination - the one with which most of us are familiar - does have a capacity to
explore various possibilities concerning different facets of both physical, as well as,
psychological worlds, this first kind of imagination is a creator of ‘fictions’.
It invents, combines, and re-works different sets of scenarios, story lines, and images -
some of which are constructive, some of which are problematic, and some of which are
neither one nor the other.
The second kind of
imagination alluded to above - the one involving the spiritual realm, is not a producer of
‘fictions’, nor is it involved in inventing, re-combining, or re-working
different ideas, images, and so on. Instead, this second modality of imagination has the
capacity to grasp and experience, God willing, various dimensions of the
‘imaginal’ or spiritual realm.
Just as one needs eyes
with which to see the material world, so too, one requires a means of ‘seeing’
spiritual realities, and the faculty of ‘imagination’ in the second,
aforementioned sense, encompasses a variety of ways of seeing different parts and levels
of the spiritual realm. In fact, the heart, sirr (mystery), ruh (spirit), kafi (hidden),
and aqfah (most hidden) all constitute different modalities of ‘seeing’ which
collectively give expression to the second kind of imagination.
There is another
distinction to be noted with respect to a fundamental difference between the first two
kinds of imagination outlined above. More specifically, the first kind of imagination -
the species which involves creativity, fantasy, story-telling, model-building, and
contingency planning - is used by many individuals to feed a desire to be God-like ... to
be a creator of ‘worlds’, standards, values, purposes, and so on.
However, whenever the
lower-order variety of imagination is employed in the foregoing manner, the individual is
committing shirk or seeking to set up partners with God. In other words, the individual
sees himself or herself as not only the source - rather than, at best, a locus of
manifestation - of creative endeavors, but believes, as well, that such a capacity carries
a responsibility to invent new forms of Deen, or new systems of thought which are intended
to improve upon, or replace, the methods, purposes, and way which God already has
established through the original process of Creation.
Actually, such
‘creativity’ tends to be little more than a process of selecting bits and pieces
drawn from different phenomenological currents arising out of dunya (the network of
emotional and conceptual entanglements from which much of everyday ‘worlds’ are
constructed), satanic realms, and the machinations of nafsi-amaara (the rebellious self),
and, then, combining and re-combining these currents to generate various conceptual and
psychic interpretations concerning the nature of life. In fact, the Prophet is reported to
have said: "This world is maintained in existence by illusion", and the kind of
lower-order imagination discussed above is one of the primary sources of illusion through
which we maintain the existence of that to which we refer as the ‘world’ or
‘reality’.
Spiritual imagination is
the complete opposite of the first kind of imagination. Instead of trying to re-invent the
‘wheel’, spiritual imagination seeks to grasp the nature of those dimensions of
Divine Imagination which are accessible - at least, potentially, to human beings.
To borrow a phrase from
the hermeneutical literature, Sufis seek to merge horizons with the Divine Names and
Attributes. They do not wish to use the faculty of spiritual imagination to create
something anew but, rather, as a means of gaining access to the cornucopia of spiritual
knowledge that will enable them, God willing, to realize the potential of fitra, or
primordial spiritual capacity, and, thereby, give expression to the purpose for which
Creation was brought forth.
Contrary to the
contention made by the author of Sufism - A Short Introduction, Sufis do not
use this capacity of imagination "to bridge gaps and make connections". Rather,
this faculty is given expression through spiritual intuition, insight, and other forms of
kashf, or unveiling, such that what previously had not been known or encountered becomes
available to consciousness and experience in a manner that is rooted in, and is a
manifestation of, spiritual knowledge and/or wisdom.
This kind of imagination
is not a creation, or an invention, or a flight of fancy, or a reverie, or a day dream, or
an hallucination, or the effect of a temporal lobe seizure, or a hypothesis, or a
projection, or a logical induction, deduction or abduction. This second species of
imagination is an opening up of one, or more, of our internal instruments of spiritual
‘vision’ and ‘sensing’ to the realm of spiritual Being.
This mode of imagination
is not "the innate ability of the soul to perceive the presence of God
in all things", as the author tries to argue in the foregoing quote. Imagination is
the set of potentials within fitra, or our primordial spiritual capacity, for witnessing,
tasting, perceiving, experiencing, knowing, and understanding an infinitely large array of
Divine manifestations.
To be sure, at a certain
juncture of the Path, the seeker may come "to perceive the presence of God in all
things" through the capacities inherent in the faculty of spiritual imagination.
However, before that point is reached, the individual may have any number of flashes of
intuition, insights, visions, states, and/or other sorts of unveiling which are
expressions of the spiritual imagination at work, but which are not, yet, in the form of
an abiding awareness, perception, and certainty concerning the presence of God in all
things.
Spiritual imagination
involves a spectrum of possibilities which are capable, God willing, of engaging many
different facets of the spiritual realm. Indeed, since the spiritual ‘distance’
is substantial between (a) first setting foot on the Path and (b) that point when, if God
wishes, the individual realizes the fullness of his or her potential, and because there are
many ups and downs, as well as twists and turns, on that Path, the seeker needs a faculty
which is able to engage a multiplicity of spiritual possibilities and derive constructive
value from such encounters to assist that person during different stages of the journey.
If spiritual imagination
were restricted to just perceiving "the presence of God in all things", then,
the seeker would be left wandering in a vast wasteland of unknowing until that faculty was
activated. Moreover, in the meantime, this individual would only have reason and the first
kind of ‘creative’ imagination as ‘tools’ with which to make sense of
the Path, together with its concomitant experiences - and, as indicated previously,
neither reason nor the first mode of imagination is capable of handling this sort of
challenge.
The author makes the same
kind of error a few sentences later when he asserts that kashf "is the generic term
for supra-rational vision of God’s presence in the world and the soul." As was
noted in the foregoing discussion, ‘kashf’ is a generic term for
‘unveiling’, and such unveiling can encompass an indefinitely large, if not
infinite, set of spiritual realities.
Not all such instances of
kashf involve a ‘seeing’ or vision of God’s Presence in all things. At the
same time, during kashf, whatever spiritual realities are encountered and experienced by
an individual do, of course, give expression to the Presence of Divinity through this or
that manifest form.
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