Wahdat-i-Wujud and Wahdat-i-Shuhud - Part One
Someone asked a question about the issues of Wahdat-i-Wujud and
Wahdat-i-Shuhud. Moreover, they did so in the context of a discussion
about a thesis written by Dr. M. Qadeer Baig (may Allah be pleased
with him) a modern day Sufi master who taught a variety of courses on Islam and the Sufi path at the University of Toronto's Middle East and Islamic Studies Department and who passed away about 16 years ago.
The thesis written by Dr. Baig (may Allah be pleased with him) who was
my shaykh for nearly 16 years, was on the life and teachings of Ahmad Sirhindi (may Allah be pleased with him) This latter individual was a proponent of the doctrine of Wahdat-i-Shuhud, or the unicity of witnessing. This doctrine is often contrasted with the position of ibn al-'Arabi (may Allah be pleased with him) which is known as Wahdat-i-Wujud, or the unicity of Being.
When Dr. Baig (may Allah be pleased with him) completed his thesis, A.J. Arberry, who was the external reader at the doctoral oral examination for the aforementioned work, described the dissertation as being the best treatment of the subject in the English language that he had ever encountered. High praise, indeed, coming from one of the major academic figures to introduce the teachings of the Sufi Path to a Western audience.
Below is my response to the questions being raised. The first, shorter part deals with Dr. Baig (may Allah be pleased with him) and his thesis. The second portion provides a brief attempt to reconcile the doctrines of Wahdat-i-Wujud and Wahdat-i-Shuhud - perspectives which are generally considered to be in opposition to one another.
The short answer to part of your question - namely,
do I have a copy of the thesis of Dr. Baig (may Allah
be pleased with him) - is 'no'. Dr. Baig (may Allah be
pleased with him) left explicit instructions that his
writings not be made available to anyone after his
passing away - and, I am included among those who
were not meant to not have access to what he wrote.
I can think of a variety of reasons why Dr. Baig
(may Allah be pleased with him) did things in this
manner. For example, he was always updating his thesis in the
light of, among other things, the spiritual experiences of
his many chillas, retreats, or seclusions.
However, this project of updating the thesis was
always on the back burner because he did not
consider the matter as important as other
considerations. Therefore, he
was not able to spend as much time as would
have been necessary for the written side of things
to be up-to-date with his experiential understanding
of things.
He would have not wanted incomplete writings to
mislead people, nor would he have wanted other
people trying to use incomplete writings to claim
that Dr. Baig (may Allah be pleased with him)
was claiming this or that, and, thereby, trying to
use the authoritativeness of the name of Dr.
Baig (may Allah be pleased with him) to support
this or that position or agenda. So, he made the
unfinished project unavailable to people.
Secondly, in the light of what has transpired
following his passing away, I feel there was
great wisdom in placing strict limits on access
to his writing. There would have been considerable
temptation for certain people to misuse the work
of Dr. Baig (may Allah be pleased with him), and,
consequently, he was merely removing temptation
from the path of individuals, and, in the process, trying,
as best he could, to protect people from themselves.
From time to time, during his years on this Earth,
Dr. Baig (may Allah be pleased with him) did talk
about the ideas of Ahmad Sirhindi (may Allah be
pleased with him), as well as the ideas of many
other luminaries of the Sufi Path - including Ibn
al-'Arabi (may Allah be pleased with him). However,
the fact of the matter is that he tended to de-emphasize
such issues as being relatively unimportant with respect
to his teaching function.
His teaching - at least, as I understood it - was
always more practically oriented, and, as a result,
more given to issues of: purification of niyat (intention), adab
(spiritual etiquette), basic practices, Shari'at, community
service, saying of fatiha, living in accordance with one's
knowledge, and so on. And, this is how I spent the vast
majority of my, approximately, 16 years with him.
Dr. Baig (may Allah be pleased with him) did not want
people drifting away in flights of fancy and imagination.
He wanted them to focus on the here and now and to
do so with a sincere faith.
So, what I am about to say I do not attribute to
Dr. Baig (may Allah be pleased with him). At the
same time, I do feel that what follows is thoroughly
rooted in what Dr. Baig (may Allah be pleased with
him) taught me, for one must take into account not
only what comes to one on the surface of things,
but, as well, through more subtle and hidden ways
of sina-bin-sina - heart to heart transmissions -
which can inform, shape, color, and direct
discursive thinking even when the latter
cannot comprehend how this takes place, nor
fully fathom the depths of such transmissions.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding the foregoing
comments, whatever mistakes are committed
in the following discussion are entirely due to my own
short-comings and lack of understanding.
-------------
Many, many books have been written about the
controversy or dispute between the doctrines
of Hazrat ibn al-'Arabi and Hazrat Ahmad
Sirhindi (may Allah be pleased with them both).
Ibn al-'Arabi (may Allah be pleased with him),
of course never participated in this controversy
because all of the writings about the issues
entailed by the controversy arose after he
passed away.
In other words, on the one hand, ibn al-'Arabi
(may Allah be pleased with him), himself, never
had an opportunity to respond to Ahmad Sirhindi
(may Allah be pleased with him). The preface
or prolog or introduction to the Meccan Revelations
or Openings indicates that despite the voluminous
nature of this work (covering numerous volumes
and thousands of pages), nevertheless, what ibn
al-'Arabi (may Allah be pleased with him) wrote was
but a small part of what could have been written,
and what could have been written was but a small
part of what he knew, and what he knew was but a
small potion of what there is to know.
So, if given the opportunity, who knows how he would
have responded to the charges and allegations of
Ahmad Sirhindi (may Allah be pleased with him). I
am fairly certain, however, that much more could
have been said which might have cleared up some
of the 'apparent' differences and points of contention.
As anyone knows who has even a passing acquaintance
with the writings and work of ibn al-'Arabi (may Allah
be pleased with him), there is a great deal of what he
said which is deliberately obfuscated and rendered
almost impossible to penetrate unless one has had
the requisite experiences or one has assistance from
someone who knows and understands what is going
on. One cannot take just the passages which seem to
be relatively clear and straightforward and suppose
that everything can be reduced down to such passages.
In addition, language has its limitations. As such, language
is only a very imperfect vehicle for expressing an
understanding which is not rooted in linguistic structures,
but in the epistemic nuances and currents of understanding
of the heart, spirit, and the like.
Therefore, one must distinguish between someone's
understanding and the manner in which they choose to
speak or write about that understanding. So, many
philosophical, theological, and spiritual discussions
have gone awry simply because of people's tendency
to raise language usage to a level which transcends
non-conceptual understanding, rather than realize
that, at best, language use is a translation of something
which takes place in a non-linguistic environment -
whether this latter environment be a matter of concepts,
emotions, psychological events, or the phenomenology
of spiritual life.
Another point to consider before entering into the
fray is that a great deal of what has been written
about this controversy has taken place through
the works of those who are of only marginal
concern - marginal in the sense that they are
not the principles themselves and, so, rightly
are wrongly are seeking to speak for one
principle or the other. As a result, one becomes,
at a minimum, removed from the original
context, and one must entertain the possibility
that one is talking about someone else's
understanding of someone else's understanding
of their own experience which may, or may
not, have been experienced and understood by
the person who is doing the speaking/writing,
once or twice removed from ground zero.
Did Ahmad Sirhindi (may Allah be pleased with
him) properly understand ibn al-'Arabi (may Allah
be pleased with him)? This is an important issue,
but it may take one in directions other than dealing
with the essence of the issues which need to be
addressed.
Did those who wrote commentaries in defense
of the writings of ibn al-'Arabi (may Allah be
pleased with him) correctly understand him? This
is another good question, but, again, pursuing it
is likely to obfuscate issues because one is
filtering the original light through - potentially -
something other than itself which often tends
to lend distortion to the subject matter.
I do not propose to defend or critize either
ibn al-'Arabi or Ahmad Sirhindi (may Allah
be pleased with them both). Rather, I would
try to go to the issues themselves.
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