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The Perfect Man in Sufism |
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Publishing date: 15.02.2016 |
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The Human Being The Almighty God created Adam (as) with His Two Hands from soil. Because of the creation with two hands, Adam (as) could be resembling to God. Therefore all truths of universe were collected in Adam (as). The reason that the angels prostrated themselves to Adam (as) is not because of his knowing the divine names. It is because of the creation of Adam in the divine similarity of God. Soil and ground are the main principles of the human being’s creation. The meaning of the creation of human being in the divine resembling is that he is able to be conducted by the names of God. From here we learn that the human being is the real purpose of God and is His real caliph in the universe. Further the human being is the place where all the divine names of God occur. Therefore all the real truths of universe is gathered up in human being. The universe is a detailed explanation of Adam (as) and Adam (as) is a collecting book. So the situation of Adam (as) against universe is like as the situation of soul against body. Muslims believe that all people are offspring of Adam and are created in the waist of Adam. The reason for not obeying of Adam the divine prohibition in Heaven is the disobedience property of human being which forced him not to obey the divine prohibition in Heaven. God ornamented the human being with His divine names. So human being became His caliph in the universe and emerged in the universe with the most beautiful divine ornaments in human perfection. One of the biggest corruption that God tests the human is to inform people that He created them in His own resemblance. So God wanted to see if people would stay in being servant becoming a created existence or would take pride in being divine resemblance of God. What the share of human in divine resemblance is the authority over divine names. Everything else is creation but the human is both creation and divine resemblance of God. The human is the place of God’s manifestations and the spirit of cosmic truths. Human is a mirror in which God is reflected together with him. Therefore the human exists according to resemblance of God and at the same time according to the copy of universe. Man is not an entity intended for the world. Everything he sees as words and deeds in the life of world is intended for the hereafter. Everything he sees in the world would be interpreted in the afterlife. The life of world is a dream. People will be awake in afterlife. So this life in the world is a bridge. It would be passed over the bridge as mandatory. A human could be saved if he interprets the dream of world right before death through the lighting of God. People are ordered to think on what they read. God wants people to understand that there is no other way in knowing God beyond the informing of God. Only in this way, it appears the people the real states of truth. Nothing is given to people which is more valuable than the knowledge and deeds applying them. These are the cases of God’s servants who are the owners of decencies. The miracle of God towards to His servants is the right information that is bestowed on them. Man is the son of his time, neither past time nor future. That is man belongs to the current time and does not belong to the past time and the future. His real existence is at the current instant and his existence in past and in future is absence according to the current instant. It is certain that human is created from the realm of the dense nature. So he has the features that he allows the occurrence of actual corruption and bloodshed of the people. Because of these features the angels objected to the creation of human. The angels had seen the contrary properties in the natural creations of Adam (as) and therefore raised an objection against the issue of Adam’s creation. Adam (as) is a composed of divine and natural components. So the angels did not see the divine component in the creation of Adam which is the form of divine names. The special definition of human is to have the divine property. If one does not have the divine property then he is not a real human. Such a human is an animal but it seems from the outside a man. Therefore such a human who seems man externally, may be in fact internally like dogs, pigs, monkeys and lions. Even though God has created man in His Own Image, he is not common in definition and realty with God. Human knows all the divine works and the attributes of God through the manager spirit, but is not aware of his knowing these facts. In this sense people are as ignorant and forgotten. God has created the nafs (self) of man with the features of fearfulness. Courage and rashness are temporary for the nafs. The fear of the people is stronger than the fear of animals outside of the crickets. This is because of the power of human mind and thought. The delusion force encourages the people. This force increases cowardice and timidity in certain places. Because delusion is a powerful authority. The human soul governs the body. As God has created the human soul, set him to bothering three properties which are integrated to its building. They are vegetable (plant) self, wrath self (anger strength) and lustful self (desire power). The vegetable self and wrath self will disappear from the happy soul in the heaven, but the lustful self will remain there. When human observes his real origin through knowledge and discovery, becomes hopeless and miserable because of weakness and helplessness. There are two faces of human. One face looks at his own essence and the other face looks at his Creator. Towards which side you turn, you stay away from the other. Human is a summary of cosmos. Everything in cosmos is also found in human. Even the body of human is small, everything in cosmos is also available in human. Cosmos is an image of God through human. However, human is the image of God without the necessity of cosmos. Whole cosmos came into existence from nothing. But human came into existence from an another presence. Human came into the existence of gathered truths from the existence of the scattered truths. The difference between the human and cosmos is similar to the difference between presence and absence. Therefore nothing in the cosmos likes human. The most famous Islamic Scholar Ibn Arabî describes in his famous book “Futuhat al-Makkiyya, (The Meccan Revelations)” the creation of human by the circle method as follows: “Man is the last of species. In this respect it is similar to the reason and is attached thereto. Because the existence is a circle . The beginning of the circle is the creation of the First Mind. It was reported that the first mind is the first thing that God created. So the first mind is the first genus and the creation is finished by creation of human species. Therefore the circle is completed. Between these two ends of circle are located all species have been created by God. All creations are the points on the circumference of the circle and look at their creator as they look at the center of circle. The relationship of God to all creations is same. They take what He gives them. There is no any metamorphosis in this relationship.” About the importance of human, Sheikh Ibn Arabî says in his book mentioned above: “God protects the skies from being destroyed through human. Therefore he has expressed the human as the pole of cosmos. When there is not a human being breathing on the world, the sky will be broken and destroyed. Likewise the earth will be absent by removal of the world’s human. Here we learn with certainty that the real purpose of God in cosmos is the human being. Further we learn that human is His real caliph and the place of the emergency of His divine names.” All the wise men applied to God in the knowing Himself. They left the thinking about the essence of God. They did not move to the place where thinking is not appropriate. So God has given them from His Wisdom and has shown them from His Ingenuity. The superiority of human is his serving God slavishly. The human who is honest in his love meets every job from Beloved with acceptance and approval. People who placed the divine names to himself is considerd as being with God’s morality. He is then one of God’s friends. Our father Adam (as) had known the information of divine names. It should be also our food. Let us not to deprive from it.
The perfect human God has created the first mind and given him the information that makes himself as superior to other entities. When God has created the perfect human, gave him the order of the first mind and taught him the truths about the images in cosmos which are not known by mind. The perfect human is completed in every respect. God manifests the perfect man in absolute perfection. Thus the perfect man would be sober during the manifestation. The being sober of the perfect man is because of the blocking of divine names mutually. This mutually interference leads to ineffectiveness of divine names in the perfect man. Therefore the perfect man remains extremely sober like messengers. The perfect man is separated from other people by only one attribute. This attribute is that in his serving slavishly is not joint the Lordship. When the perfect man says the name of God “Allah”, all the creatures and all the other names of God say together the same name “Allah”. And so the rosary of the perfect man becomes the rosary of the others and his reward is unlimited. God has created the reasons for the occurring of the presence of the perfect man. Even though there are more than one perfect man, they are unique as truth. The divine name “Allah” belongs to God, but does not belong to people. The names caliph and perfect man belong to people, but do not belong to God. These names belong to the created existence. The perfect man knows God through his soul, but the nafs knows God after using his mind. Therefore angels do not know the perfect man, because angels do not observe him from all directions. The people deny God in the world because their mental thinking go beyond of God and set a limit to Him. When the rationalists do not observe the properties limited by themselves, they have denied God. God’s blessings are not for the perfect servants but on the perfect servants. The prayer of perfect servant is not on God, but for God. The perfect man is the heart of cosmos which is the everything outside of God. Due to such a heart the rank of the perfect man is between God and cosmos. God has named it as heart because it is transformed from one state to another. The meaning of the word “kalb” (heart) in Arabic is changing. God qualified the perfect man with His Attributes and stated that anything in the universe do not like him. The perfect man observes God outwardly because of being in the universe and esoteric because of being veil. Not every man has perfection and only the human animal deny Him. When the human became perfect, then he has two sides. The first side faces God, while the other is facing the world. The perfect man looks at the world by becoming independent of it, but looks at God by being in need of Him. The perfect man gets the sovereignty of heavens and earth by the knowledge of divine names and gets the knowledge of wisdom by “cevamiü’l kelim” ( the gathering of words). The concept of perfect man is used first by Ibn Arabî. To explain his mystical doctrine about “Vahdet-I Vücûd” ( oneness of existence ), he suggested the principle of “Tawhid” (affirming the unity of God). A Sufi attempts this principle in three stages: The unity of acts, the unity of attributes and the unity of essence (zât). The unity of acts is to perceive that the absolute perpetrator in the universe is God. The acting of the people are in fact the reflections of God’s acting. The unity of attributes is to separate the attributes of God from the attributes of people and to fix every attribute in Himself. The unity of essence is to know and to observe that there is no other object other than God. This is the last stage of Sufi paths. At the end of this stage it is perceived that the absolute existence is the essence of God. At this stage God manifests the Sufi with His essential manifestations. Through these essential manifestations Sufi observes that all powers and managements in the universe would be fulfilled by himself. All other objects are like instrument for him. For example, if a person gives him something, he observes that the real giver is himself. Therefore everything in universe is from him to him. There is nothing in the universe outside of him. This stage of Sufism is called the position of closeness and guidance. The Sufi who is in this position of closeness and guidance is the Perfect Man.
Wise and Wisdom Wisdom is to know God. Wise is the man who knows God. Wisdom is the treasure of inwards. The way to achieve this is to be Sufi. The perfect caliphs are like seeds. Each seed gives what the original seed gave. Wise men are the perfect caliphs. They obey God with their hearts and inwards. Justice is their property. They want death to escape from the prison of this world. When they reach definitive knowledge about their Lord they become almost entirely light. Then their Lord becomes their ears, eyes and whole powers. Wisdom is the property of wise man. The alms of this property is teaching the wisdom to the people. The teaching is a divine degree. The wise man observes the divine names. The following word of Ebu Bakir (ra), who was the closest companion of the Prophet Mohammad (sav), refers to it: “I saw God before all what I saw”. Therefore, Sufis say that to know God is not knowing Him. So the ignorance of God is considered as the information about Him. The path of wise man is only towards God. This way means the Sharia of Islam. Wise man sees everything in the presence of God. In this regard God surrounds everything. The heart of wise man includes God, so it includes all things. Because there is nothing outside of God. The number of the eyes of a wise man is equal the number of manifestations of God. The number of God’s manifestations is infinite, so the wise man has the infinite number of eyes. These eyes come into existence because of creatures in cosmos or the creatures come into existence because of the existence of these eyes.
Conclusions The most beautiful jewelry and ornaments on the earth are the wise men of God. If you want to be one of them, you should take them as guide. As long as you are soil, you are a place for the flowers. A scholar is a person whose knowledge permeates everything. The penetration of knowledge in everything surrounds them and none of the main issues comes out of the information. In such case, everything becomes dress of the scholar and at the same time he becomes the dress of everything. The reaching of people to a such situation depends on the becoming of his heart the house of God. If a person remains calm under the fate, it is considered that he has reached the consent degree. O my friends! Protect yourself when you become of moral with the beautiful names of Allah . Namely, while you become of moral with the beautiful names of Allah, do not be unaware of seeing their works in you. Stay in front of the beautiful names of Allah as their representatives. So you could be similar of the Prophet’s name. Do not be common to God in being given one of divine names. Be well-behaved and say that “Lord, increase my knowledge”. If the people read the properties of the perfect man, almost every one wishes to achieve the order of the perfect man. Most of them think that it is an easy issue and is possible by loving God. But situation is not so easy and simple as it seems from outside. The path to be a perfect man begins with the true faith in Islam. The first principle of Islamic faith is to believe in and to declare that there is no other God than “Allah” and Mohammad (sav) is His last prophet. The faith must be professed with language and ratified by heart. Then it is needed to know the Sharia of Islam and to act according to its rules. That is, praying five times a day, fasting in the month Ramadan, distribution of one fortieth of one’s income as alms every year to the poor, going on the pilgrimage to Mecca if possible. While they continue the obligatory worships regularly and as prescribed by the Sharia, their hearts must be cleaned from the worldly love and greed. With such a cleaned heart and by continuing the worships, will be felt manifestations of wisdom in the heart. In this way Muslim will be guided by God’s grace and taught him the wisdom of mystical knowledge. This way is rather trouble. Many challenges, trials and sufferings are waiting for him. But it is possible to overcome these difficulties with the help of God. But today the realities above are deviated and the people are corrupted from learning and living the true Sufism. We will try to explain some of the important deviations about Sufism in the next article in this website. Success is from God.
References ‘Fusus al-Hikam, (The Wisdom of the Prophets)’, Ibn Al-Arabi, Beshara Publications, 1975 ‘Futuhat al-Makkiyya, (The Meccan Revelations)’, Ibn Al-Arabi, Pir Press, New York, 2002 “Mathnawi Of Mewlana Jalaladdin Rumi”, Reynold A. Nilcholsen, Tablet Bookstore, Istanbul, 2012 “Mektubat-I Imam Rabbani”, Ahmed Nur, Ed. Karachi, Education Press “Worship in Islam”,Imam Gazali, Edwin Elliot Calverley, Gorgios Press, 1992
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