On Love: In the Muslim Tradition

The Speech of Skins

The Speech of Skins Whenever anyone praised the Imam ‘Ali, he would respond that he knew himself better than others did, but that God knew him better than any.3 As this statement says, a man can hide from another man, and even from himself, but he cannot hide from God. Since the eyes, ears, and skin are the borders across which relationships are established between the self and the nonself, they are also obstacles for the other in his knowledge of the inner self. Thus hearing, sight, and touch bear witness to what can be hidden from another. And only those who can speak can bear witness. Human reliance on the other’s lack of knowledge about his inner self presupposes the inability of ears, eyes, and skin to speak. They are thus subordinated to human management through speech. This removes from them their nature as signs that return to the designated objects, handing on to them all that it has accepted from them. What is hidden in human closedness, through ears, eyes, and skin, cannot be unknown to their Creator. Hiding from another in the outer world transforms man into a god if it is denied that nothing was ever hidden from God. The uncovering of the body, the openness of the eyes, and hearing render a man naked in front of the other. But he can also cover himself before the other. Closing his eyes or turning his gaze away, not listening or blocking his ears. But, none of this makes him hidden from God. Everything of his remains accessible to Him. 130 / On Love Forewarn them of the day when the enemies of God will be brought together and led into the Fire, so that when they enter it, their ears, their eyes and their very skins will testify to their misdeeds: ’’Why did you speak against us?’’ they will say to their skins, and their skins will reply: ‘‘God, who gives speech to all things, has made us speak. It was He who in the beginning created you, and to Him shall you be recalled. You did not hide yourselves, so that your ears and eyes and skins could not be made to testify against you. Yet you thought that God did not know much of what you did. It was the thoughts you entertained about your Lord that ruined you, so that you are now among the lost.’’4 Man’s presence in the world, through touch and exchange, includes the skin as a border. But human totality is contact with the outer world across open and closed borders. Man is never completely open, nor completely closed to the outer world. And this indicates his place on the border between this world and the higher one. If he is closed toward the higher, the outward penetrates into his inner self as into a yawning pit. But if it is open to the higher world, his inner self is also illuminated by light, which is elementally higher than that in the outer world. Then the outer world is illuminated through it. God is the complete Witness. And everything that reaches into the inner world from the outer one, across the open and closed borders of the self, bears witness to those borders. Only thought can deny that, but together with closure toward the Higher. Then man is reduced to separation from the Real. By raising his thinking to the highest level, he adjudges to himself separation from the Real. The consequence of this is the impossibility of any relationship between evil and good. They become two opposed principles that are in insoluble struggle. Only in the openness of the self toward the principle can that insoluble duality take on a completely different aspect: Good deeds and evil deeds are not equal. Requite evil with good.5 Knowledge / 131 Being in the skin, or borders, means the separation of the self and the world. That separation reflects another: all that is divergent in the world as a whole is gathered together in man. His center, or heart, ‘‘stands’’ on the border between the spirit and the body. Through it the light of the spirit is carried into the world of the soul. When human divergence is directed toward oneness as its aim, only that center can anticipate every change. It does not permit any form to have permanence , for that can be nothing...