On Love: In the Muslim Tradition

The self and the Self

The self and the Self The well-known holy saying, in which God speaks through the Praiser, gathers together the relationship of knowledge and love: ‘‘I was the Hidden Treasure, so I loved to be known. Hence I created the creatures.’’ The words ‘‘I was the Hidden Treasure’’ mean that the fullness of knowledge is in nonexistence or noncreatedness. It is there and thus eternally and forever. God’s ‘‘I am’’ is the eternal fullness of knowledge. In that eternal and unchangeable fullness of knowledge, in which nothing is divided, lies love of knowledge. Therefore, the hiddenness of the treasure is God’s love of knowledge. That love of knowledge has two contents—descending, from the Intellect toward man and ascending, from man toward the Intellect. The first content is the Intellect through which the image of the Hidden Treasure is carried over into existence as a whole. The Intellect is, as the first appearance of creation, darkness in relation to the fullness of uncreated light. But it is light in relation to the soul that is illuminated by it. And the soul is darkness in relation to the Intellect although it is itself light in relation to the body. In that succession Intellect-soul-body the receptive level is transformed into the active. The Intellect receives everything from the Creator, but it acts on the soul. ‘‘The Universal Soul arises from the First Intellect,’’ says Ibn al- ‘Arabi. ‘‘Hence it is the first object of activity to arise from a created 134 / On Love thing. It mixes that which acts upon it, with that upon which it acts. That which acts upon it is light, while that upon which it acts is darkness , that is, Nature.’’11 Everything that is in the Hidden Treasure will be revealed in the world and in man—dispersed through the world, and gathered together in man. That totality of revelation is one and the same man— the perfect image of God. God knows him and he knows God. In relation to one another, they are God’s looking at Himself. Thus, creation emerges from Love, which is eternal. Given that in nonexistence there is no change, neither is the Love of God for Himself any different. The love God has for His creatures is without beginning or end. . . . He has never stopped loving His creatures just as He has never stopped knowing them. . . . His existence has no beginning , therefore His love has no beginning!12 If one starts from the divergence of ‘‘love’’ and ‘‘knowledge,’’ it is possible to say that the loving and attracting nature, whose standpoint is based on the duality of ‘‘generosity’’ versus ‘‘egoism,’’ one comes upon the danger of neglecting the ‘‘objective truth.’’ But the nature of the intellect, which, on the contrary, sees phenomena in the concepts ‘‘truth’’ versus ‘‘error,’’ is exposed to the danger of neglecting purely human perfection, and even perhaps also the human connection with God. Although neither love nor knowledge appears in its pure form, it is possible to determine and distinguish them in different ways: ‘‘For the ‘volitional’ or ‘affective’ man, (the bhakta),’’ says Frithjof Schuon, ‘‘God is ‘He’ and the ego is ‘I,’ whereas for the ‘Gnostic’ or ‘intellective’ man (the jnani) God is ‘I’—or ‘Self’—and the ego is ‘he’ or ‘other.’’’13 Here one should immediately observe that the revelation is expressible only in the mutual relation of the self and the Self. Given that it is brought down into the language of the self, as the discourse of the Self, it is brought down, spoken and given by Him, and heard, accepted, and repeated by the self. Thus, when that self says, ‘‘In the Name of God the Compassionate, the Merciful: praise Knowledge / 135 be to God, Lord of the Universe or Our Father Who art in heaven,’’ in those formulations, He and Thee are opposed to the self, but so is the self itself. The question of whose speech is expressed demands the resolution of the duality of the self and the Self. Consequently, the relation of the selves in the pattern ‘‘there is no—other than’’ can be revealed in two ways. The first relation is the connection of the self to the Other. It reveals the perfection outside itself as the undeniable presence of beauty and goodness in the totality of revelation. The fact that beauty and goodness are present in everything that...