On Love: In the Muslim Tradition

Thought

Thought Thought remains forever caught in the tension between the elements of duality. It knows only duality and functions only within it. But, duality is nothing other than the proclamation and confirmation of oneness. Thought deals with what is comparable and similar. But oneness is neither comparable nor similar. In addition, it is present in everything that is duality, and that means in the totality of existence. Consequently, to think means to compare. And that is possible only in a world of multiplicity, where phenomena are forms in movement. The comparable has its space and time. But, more than that, the comparable has both a visible and a hidden side. The visible side makes it closer to the observer, but also more distant from its origin. But, every phenomenon has, along with limitations in space and time, also its quality. Thus, phenomena proclaim through their place, time, and quality what lies behind. And behind each phenomenon, and behind all of them together, is oneness—one and the same reality, which is both present and absent in everything. Thought can bring one to the border, where comparability ends or begins. Where comparability comes to an end, thought ends too. But a person cannot reconcile him- or herself, in the full meaning of that concept, to anything apart from the perfection that surpasses and passes every limit, and that means also every form. This is the case The Impossibility of Definition / 19 because the person is not reducible only to thought. The question of identification with the Almighty, as the name of happiness and survival , is the core of the human drama. Thought takes man to the limit, whether the most remote one, oriented toward infinity and eternity, or the closer one, oriented toward an infinite point and eternal moment. But man wants that proximity. No single border is enough for him, since he would be enclosed by it and reduced to the limited world of thought. He can be made real only in the Reality which, as the one and only, is present in everything. The human ‘‘why’’ is not exhaustible in the totality of existence. It wants Reality itself as its source and spring. If this highest human wish is denied, both the world and mankind become a prison with no way out. Only God can be the guarantee against such a prison. If thought has a purpose, if it becomes meaning, then God is its foundation . Every granting of meaning that can have a positive effect on human existence comes from that foundation, or descends from that suspended ‘‘point.’’ But, it is impossible to discuss God through positive phenomena, without discussing the world. This is the case since those positive concepts are God’s names, which are understood through comparison and similarity. Even the names of distance and incomparability can be understood only out of their presence in the world. It is impossible to understand the Creator without creation, lordship without slavery, one who understands without what is understood, and so on. Without these ‘‘places’’ of the proclamation of God’s names their meaning is unfathomable. What produces effects of every kind, on every level and in every presence, is God. And what receives effects of every kind, on every level and in every presence, is the world. Thus, to say ‘‘God’’ is to say ‘‘the world.’’ And the other way around. Or, to say ‘‘one’’ is to say ‘‘two.’’ And the other way around. One demands the other. If oneness is infinitely close to everything, then it entails multiplicity as its need. If multiplicity is incomparable with oneness, then that means that it is only its confirmation and that there is nothing without it. 20 / On Love ‘‘God is,’’ says the Prophet, ‘‘and nothing is with Him.’’11 Thus, when God says, ‘‘I am the hidden treasure!’’ that means that He is incomparable and infinitely distant. But when He says, ‘‘And I love to be known!’’ that means that His oneness requires and realizes duality or multiplicity. Love and knowledge are thus two sides of one and the same. The beloved is known, the known is beloved. In oneness are all possibilities , but indivisible and unrevealed. Just as the hiddenness of fullness demands or loves oneness as its confirmation, so oneness too loves its revelation in countless multiplicity. Only the secret that oneness confirms and that...