Spiritual Knowing
In the last few weeks since I wrote about Ibn-Arabi and Plotinus, I have continued my side research project on the various mystical traditions, including Kabbalah, that were influenced by medieval neo-Platonism in Al Andalus, or medieval Muslim Spain. This week, I read a set of aphorisms by Ibn-Arabi, originally included in his Book of Spiritual Advice. Here are a few of the aphorisms, to give you a bit of the text’s sense and flavor:
“The passing thought (al-khātir al-thānī) that comes back a second time, or more, can't be relied upon.”
“Every (spiritual) light which doesn't take away a darkness can't be relied upon.”
“Every longing that is quieted by the meeting (with what was longed for) can't be relied upon.”
“Every love whose proximate cause/occasion (sabab) is known and is among those things which may come to an end can't be relied upon.”
How do you feel reading these passages? As a student of mysticism and a seeker of mystical knowledge, I found them at times hurtful, but otherwise amusing, and overall inundating with their unwavering insistence that one cannot really rely on anything that appears to be certain spiritual knowledge, because the very nature of spiritual knowledge, I must infer, is uncertain. All of these aphorisms, and all of the ones in the translation, conclude with the same phrase that whatever experience is being referred to “can’t be relied upon” (in Arabic, lā yu'awwal 'alayhi.) It begs the question, what kind of spiritual insight--if any--can actually be relied upon? And what is the cost of relying on something unreliable?
I spent last weekend in Joshua Tree, where a group of friends and I took a night hike through the wash, starting at a trailhead about 5-6 miles off the main road through the park. I would describe this as a spiritual experience. Despite having spent all day driving past signs with skulls and crossbones, and warnings instructing us to bring water—I asked my friend that I was with, how often do people die here? And neither of us knew—I found myself in the cold night of the desert feeling utterly held and protected. The rocks and trees around me, the flowers blooming from the desert’s annual autumnal monsoon, the cacti which grow in unexpected formations and which my friends could identify, some of them being very rare–made me feel safe, even loved, by my surroundings. In the profound darkness of the nighttime desert, a light did shine through and seem to protect us. I was worried at times that I would wander too far off from the group and that the sun would rise the next day and the elements would ravage my body, leaving me to become one of those sorry souls whose unpreparedness merits the skull-and-crossbone warnings. I knew my sensation of safety was not a reliable insight. So I stayed close to the group.
These experiences of spiritual knowing, which I seek out from time to time by doing things like night hikes in the desert with my friends, are something I then try to integrate into my day-to-day life back in the city, where I am always working hard, building things. But Ibn-Arabi is right that the insights form an unreliable ground. To live, and practice faith, on the basis of these fleeting transcendent experiences is fruitless; at some point, the conditions that produced the experience never hold, and that feeling of profound safety and love fades away. How do we live in the world then, and maintain our connection with the spiritual force which brought us spiritual experiences? The aphorisms don’t help us with this. But by putting pressure on what we want to be true, insisting that it’s unreliable, they encourage us to ask what exactly it is about the mystical experience that we want to hold onto, what it is that we wish we could rely upon and can’t. It’s not just that the spiritual feeling deceives you (though, in a sense, it does,) it’s that the very deception is an invitation to explore the feeling more deeply, to figure out what we want to be true about it, what wish it answers, and what divine mechanisms of revelation and concealment are at work, giving us the experience of truth and then taking that truth away.
Ibn-Arabi emphasizes in the aphorisms that we should not trust a spiritual insight that does not change its form. We see this logic most clearly in the following aphorism:
“Every "spiritual knowing" (ma'rifa) that is not constantly varying in its forms can't be relied upon.”
Since this line tells us that we can’t rely on a spiritual knowing “that is not constantly changing its forms,” Ibn-Arabi is implying (but certainly not saying outright) that a spiritual insight which does change forms is more reliable. That is, if the truth looks one way, and then transforms, that means it is more trustworthy. I will have to continue to reflect on what realizations I had in the desert were plastic and flexible, changing forms, suggesting maybe I can rely on them. The truth that changes shape constantly is one that maybe, we can rely a little bit more on, sometimes, because there is an honesty in their very transformation, not pretending to be the same, certain thing all the time.
