Probing sufism
M. Abul Fazl October 14, 2009
Yeh ankhian alsaani, Pia ho saij chalo,
Khamba pakri patang as doli, Na bolay madhur bani
This means: “Beloved, my eyelids are heavy with sleepiness, let’s go to bed, holding on to a pillar, my body shakes like a butterfly, I am unable to even say a sweet word.”
Kabir is speaking of the desire of the soul to re-unite with the Absolute. However, unless explained otherwise, these beautiful lines are simply the expression of a woman’s desire for the man she loves. But then what are our arts about if not voyeurism?
Harchand ho mushahedai haq ki guftugu,
Banti nahin hai bada-o-saghar kahai baghair
Perhaps the best comment on the subject is Han Su-yin’s, after her first sexual experience: “Is this what so much is written about?” Who knows, perhaps Freud was right and Marx wrong. Maybe it is the libido and not the material interest that drives social forces.
In either case, the question of the place of mankind in the cosmos remains. So does the question of his relationship with it. After all, Sartre was not the first to pronounce the existence absurd and advise us to live and solve the problems as they arise. Twenty-four centuries before him, Epicurus had rejected thought of after-life, defining the aim of man’s activity to be “freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind.”
But the man is not prepared to ignore what appears to him as the fundamental question -why am I here? He has evolved numerous theories to explain the inexplicable according to the laws of natural sciences e.g. Plato’s Theory of Forms, until Plotinus (third century AD) freed the belief from the need for a rational content and, therefore, the need for the support of the senses. The Islamic world took it over in the form of Monism. It has been defined by Dr Abdul Ghani as “when sufistic devotion attains perfection in someone’s soul, nothing remains in him except the Absolute.”
This philosophy, developing in the form of Bhagti in South Asia, has inspired beautiful poetry, in fact, the main content of poetry, in Persian, Urdu and other languages right down to the twentieth century:
To aye habab chay yabi khabar zay husn-e-muheet,
Kay chashm-e-shokh-e-to rang-e-naqab mi raizad
(Bedil),
Araish-e-jamal say farigh nahin hanoz,
Pesh-e-nazar hai aiina dayem naqab mein
(Ghalib),
Sabh surat vich zaat sinjani,
Haq bahijun bio ghair na jani
(Khawaja Ghulam Farid).
Ali Abbas Jalalpuri (who did not accept sufism) explains it: “One wonders why the heart is drawn to a pretty face. The reason is that the human beauty only reflects the Divine beauty. (Wahdat-ul-Wujud tay Panjabi Shairy, p 196).
Of course the rationalists reject meta-physical philosophy. Thus Bertrand Russell does not accept “pure thought” as a source of knowledge. But Einstein comments that no one “has actually proved the impossibility of gaining knowledge of reality by means of pure speculation.” (Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, p 21). Well, wouldn’t someone have to first prove the possibility of gaining knowledge by means of pure thought?
*The writer is a former ambassador.
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news- ... g-sufism/1
