Outside and Inside

I’m still wondering about developing “vision" that can move from the bare branches and dead leaves to the living root, wondering further about the possibility of an advanced capacity involving imagination to “see” through here-and-now branches into a vision of past and future seeds and flowers.** One step in building this capacity must involve detachment from the surface. It’s like plumbing deep in search of the “water of life.” It’s driving deeper than satisfaction with or indulgence in the immediate zing, the allure of fame, the look of money. It’s discipline to go past immediate gratification toward health instead of sugar high, intimacy beyond sex; it's sacrificing status for destiny and accepting longing as a sign of being on the path.  

Vision and imagination support generativity; these connections may advance understanding resurrection and probe the meanings of “die before you die.” Reading further in Frithjof Schuon’s The Transcendent Unity of Religions, I’m fascinated by his exploration “Concerning Forms in Art” (Chapter 4). Schuon illustrates specifically with the “decadence” of religious art involving the change from “sacred, symbolical, and spiritual” into the “individualistic and sentimental” (p. 63). 

“When art ceases to be traditional and becomes human, individual, and therefore arbitrary, that is infallibly the sign—and secondarily the cause—of an intellectual decline, a weakening, which, in the sight of those who are skilled in the ‘discernment of spirits’ and who look upon things with an unprejudiced eye, is expressed by the more or less incoherent and spiritually insignificant, we would go even as far as to say unintelligible character of the forms” (pp. 62-3).

The connection between art and the spiritual journey looks vitally important.

For me, although the meaningfulness of this remains substantially inarticulate, the movement from branch to root as well as from nature to art points to the capacity of Beauty to guide us toward the Divine. Such vision is invaluable and not automatic. 

• Invaluable: A human’s intuition, tasting, and composing of beauty provide a bridge between worlds. When Beauty is known as a quality of God, we can see our pathway as we engage capacity of discerning sacred art.
• Not automatic: Finding and building the bridge depend significantly upon the gift and development of the human’s ability to see and to feel beyond the superficial.

In the passage just cited, Schuon notes the extra-development in the clause: “in the sight of those who are skilled in the ‘discernment of spirits’ and who look upon things with an unprejudiced eye.”

Rumi tells of this vision and capacity. Nicholson reworks sections from his translation of Rumi’s Mathnawi into a collection of poems. One of these is extracted from Book IV, beginning in line 1358; Nicholson titles the reworked version, “The Truth Within Us” (p. 47 in A Rumi Anthology). These lines tell of a Sufi sitting and meditating in a garden with eyes closed. He gets confronted by a person who urges him to open his eyes and “behold these Signs of God” evident in the garden. The Sufi responds that he beholds the signs within because “without is naught but symbols of the Signs.” Rumi explains that the external world consists of images similar to an orchard being known only as reflected on the surface of water. The “eternal Orchard abides unwithered in the hearts of Perfect Men.” **

As I look in the woods and gardens generously nurturing our home, I wonder about the signs and about the inspiration and direction given through the perfecting heart. Neal Robinson’s contribution to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers assistance on the capacity to have vision: 

“Here Ibn al-'Arabi's idea seems to be that the cosmos as a whole—the totality of existent entities—manifests all the divine names but does so in a diffuse way, whereas man, as a microcosm endowed with consciousness, brings them into sharp focus as a unity. Potentially every man is a microcosm, but in practice men differ in their polishing of the cosmic mirror, with only a select few realizing their primordial nature. These are the prophets and saints, all of whom belong to the category of 'the perfect man' (al-insan al-kamil). They alone assume the character traits of God, which are latent in all human beings, and manifest them in perfect equilibrium.”

It seems that all spiritual pathways call for cleansing in order for humans to see God’s signs and not just symbols of Signs. The image of the mirror with its tendency to cloud over, to distort and misrepresent, points to the limitations of forms, including religious rituals, that lose the power to link the worlds. Without purification, this world covers over our vision of our source and destiny. The mode for cleansing might come through a sweatlodge, baptism, and varied acts of repentance/remembrance. The Bible’s book of James, for example, tells that “pure and undefiled religion” relates to cleasing the heart and to keeping oneself unspotted from the world. 

The cleansing removes veils, allows a passage to open. In his note below Rumi’s “The Truth Within Us,” Nicholson gives “an early parallel” from “the legend of Rabi’ah.” 

“One day in spring-time she entered her house and bowed her head. “Come out,” said the woman-servant, “and behold what God hath made.” Rabi’ah answered, “Come in and behold the Maker.” 

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** Perhaps this wonder stirs from the beauty disclosed in nature, in this case, the woodland “garden” viewed through my window. The specific case probably opens toward the creative process. R.W.J. Austin notes the “pairs of concepts essential to the understanding of the creative process, such as universal-individual, necessary-contingent, first-last, outer-inner, light-darkness, and approval-anger.” This quotation comes from Austin’s introduction to “Chapter 1. The Wisdom of Divinity in the Word of Adam,” from his translation of Ibn al‘Arabi’s Bezels of Wisdom. That chapter especially addresses the construct of “Perfect Man” or al-insan al-kamil which is vital to the passage from Rumi cited in this blog. Austin’s introduction to this chapter also elaborates the vital metaphor of the mirror. Further teaching about al-insan al-kamil can be found in Music of the Soul (Sidi Shaykh Muhammad Sa'id al-Jamal ar-Rifa’i as-Shadhuli), especially in “Adam” (pp. 158-165) and in “Secret of the Love of God” (pp. 171-175).