1
Allah Akabar! It is fit that a chapter written on
the mysticism of lands which fly the Islamic Crescent and Star should call upon
the name of the Compassionate, the Merciful, at the beginning of the work. Such
is the custom of those lands; such shall be the custom of the present writer.
2
On the left there are tall graceful and tapering
palmyra trees rising from a stretch of brown desert sand. From their heads there
spread fans of drooping fronds, thin sharp-edged leaves, waving to and fro in
the night wind.
3
The scene was animated enough. Camels, with their
long high-held necks, their ungainly heads, their skirted, striding,
aquiline-nosed drivers, were plentiful.
4
The contrast between loquacious Americans of the
cities and silent Arabs of the desert is unforgettable. The Bedouin can sit in a
group and say nothing at all for hours! The desert's peace has entered into them
to such an extent that the social duty of laryngeal activity is unknown among
them, and regarded as unnecessary!(P)
5
I was deeply impressed by the intense fervour shown
everywhere by the followers of the Prophet. Once at sundown I met a long line of
camels making their slow heavy way across the Rajputana Desert. Suddenly the
animals were halted and a drawn-out shrill cry filled the air. It was the
familiar Muhammedan call to prayer. The riders leapt off their animals, the
latter kneeling on their forelegs, and prostrated themselves on little rugs in
silent worship. It was a picturesque and colourful scene - one that grips the
memory.
6
The sight affected me. Three hundred earnest faces
appeared in the mosque's dim light: three hundred pairs of eyes seeing naught
but Allah.
7
We wandered into a little mosque. My companion bowed
and prostrated himself in prayer, while I sat in reflective meditation upon the
environing presence of Allah, the One.
8
Saracenic architecture has brought me many happy
hours. How often have I been attracted by some mosque's tall tiered minarets
gracefully tapering upwards and striking the eye with a pleasing effect! How
instinctively have I moved towards the noble splendid and arched gateway,
crowned with a graceful bulbous dome and leading into an enclosed garden! How
satisfying has it been to tread the courtyard's oblong worn marble paving-slabs.
How slowly have I paced the cypress-bordered walk by the fountain-fed short
canal! How have I passed through open loggia and beneath the exquisite triple
arches of the main pavilion itself to sit down finally and rest on the matted
floor! How appreciatively have I gazed at the sumptuously carved window tracery
in pierced stonework, at the fascinating symmetry of its geometrically patterned
forms. How deep the joy I have derived from the beautiful characters of the Arab
script in which the Prophet's supreme metaphysical declarations are painted on
the walls! Everywhere perfect taste is displayed.
9
The curved arches and carved arabesques of Islam
draw me more powerfully than its dogmas.
10
Islamic mosques are the most inspiring and
beautiful buildings I know. They perfectly fulfil their function, drawing the
heart by their exquisite charm and stilling the mind by their simplicity.
11
Our grey and wet Northern skies do not favour the
open arcaded courtyards with the trickling fountains in the centre and little
tubs of palm trees around, which I find so friendly in the Near East.
12
The beautiful Arabic architecture clearly derives
its forms from tents, tentpoles, and curtains.
13
In the Persian valley of Mourg-Avo there stands an
immense pile of ancient ruins in white marble. Among them is a profile of a
winged, angelic figure with the following inscription: "I am God and here is
none else. I am God and there is none like me."
14
As long ago as the sixteenth century, Abul Fazl,
the son of a famous Sheikh and the friend of Emperor Akbar, could write: "My
mind had no rest, and my soul felt itself drawn to the sages of Mongolia, or to
the hermits of Lebanon; I longed for interviews with the Lamas of Tibet."
15
The Israelites, like the Muhammedans in their
mosques, possess no picture, no statue, no figure of any kind in their temples
to portray God.
16
The Allah whom Muhammedans worship is not a
personal deity - at least not for the cultured classes. The term is a negative
one. It signifies That which is not limited, formed, bounded, material, or
phenomenal.
17
In the Arabic religious formula, "LA" = there is
no God, "YLLA" = but God. The first part is negative but the second is positive.
18
Hardly any sculpture exists in Muhammedan
religious or secular art. To reduce all risk of idol worship, Muhammed forbade
all representation of living beings. Whereas the Hindus, the Greeks, and the
Romans put their gods into stone, wood, metal, and paint, no follower of his was
allowed to do so. That is, the Formless was not to be thought of as Formed.
19
Islam has its worshipped saints, its walis,
despite the Koran's prohibition of such intermediaries between Allah and man.
20
"Allah is the Light," wrote Muhammed.
21
The Sufis were not allowed to describe their
occult experiences; it was deemed better for truth, and especially for the
subdual of egotism, to hide them.
22
The Sufi mystics put more interest into the quest
of the Spirit's beauty than did other mystics.
23
Do not confound the mechanically aroused ecstasy
of the Dervish with the thought-conquering concentration of the true Yogi. The
first is on a lower level than the second.
24
Sufi terms: Enayat = Grace. Verd =
repetitive mantram used by the Dervishes. Musharaf = To feel the presence
of God as Grace.
25
The Sufi Arabic phrase for "in the world but not
of it" is "halvat dar unjumen."
26
LIGHT. NUR (God's ecstasy-creating
Light) is mentioned several times in Sufi sacred poems.
27
Majdhub = Dervish in ecstasy.
28
Barakah in Morocco and adjacent Muhammedan
lands signifies "grace or blessing or healing power."
29
The mystical symbolism of the Sufis can be traced
in Hafiz and Omar. Their wine equals aspiration, love of the divine. Beloved
equals God. Drunkenness equals ecstatic meditation. Amorous glance equals
devotion.
30
Three quotations from The Diwan by
Nasir-I-Khusraw (eleventh-century Persian poet, traveller, and mystic): 1) Ere
me from their earthly casings uncounted spirits have fled, And I, though long I
linger, may be counted already dead. 2) For Satan had caught and constrained me
to walk in his captives' train, And 'twas Reason who came and saved me, and gave
me freedom again. 3) My soul is higher than Fortune; then why should I Fortune
fear?
31
Persian Sufi verse:
33
"He is a man who dwells amongst mankind, marries,
and associates with his fellow-creatures, yet is never for a single moment
forgetful of God." - Abu Said, eleventh-century Persian mystic of high
degree
34
After I read Ibn Tufail's The Awakening of the
Soul my mind gravitated quite naturally to Eastern wisdom.
35
Ibn Tufail was not only a Sufi mystical master but
also an intellectual thinker and an able physician. His little book, The
Awakening of the Soul (original title Story of Hai Ebn Yokdan) was
the first to lead me to the idea of meditation.
36
(1) "When it is time for stillness, stillness." -
Dervish saying (2) "Essence manifests only in understanding." - Sufi saying
37
Sheikh Shihab ud Din, of Aleppo (twelfth century),
was a Sufi who taught that the ultimate reality was Light (Nur). His
heterodoxy caused him to be executed. This Light is self-existent, perpetually
luminous, self-manifesting, and is the source of all existence. It has two
expressions. The sheikh also taught in his writing that the path of spirituality
had five stations: (1) selfishness, (2) self-centeredness, (3) "I am not," (4)
"Thou God art," and (5) I am not and thou art not - the annihilation of
distinctions of subject and object.
38
"So-named absorption in God, regarded as the goal
of the Sufi seeker, is in fact only the beginning," warned Al Ghazzali, the
Persian whose book, The Authority of Islam, was known and studied
throughout Europe in the Middle Ages by Christians and Jews as well as his
co-religionists, Mohammedans. He spent fourteen years investigating all
available teachings during wide travels throughout Oriental lands; he went into
the desert for solitary meditation for twelve years and is honoured as a great
Master in those lands.
39
The Naqshbandi Order of dervishes was founded in
the fourteenth century in Bukhara, and its chief centre was there until
Bolshevism arose. Their great adept, the Mullah Nasrudin, is the origin of
several mystic-philosophic tales which convey quite simply instruction on deep
Vedantic truths. In the second story he says, "I never tell the truth!" The
commentary explains: "If this is true, he lies. If untrue, he tells truth! Thus
by words we can arrive anywhere, but this is not, never, truth." In the first
tale the idea of cause and effect vanishes. In the third, the past and the
future are already here, now. The Naqshbandis warn aspirants that self-deception
is a common obstacle to finding and realizing truth. They further teach that to
satisfy the intellect becomes impossible and explanation reaches a dead end; but
it can be transcended and a mysterious plane of higher being attained through
the experience of deep contemplation. The last tale may make you laugh. Nasrudin
went into a shop. He asked, "Have you flour?" "Yes." "And have you milk, sugar,
honey?" "Yes." "Then, for heaven's sake, why don't you make sweetmeats?"
40
The Sufis of Pakistan and the Naqshbandi dervishes
of pre-Bolshevik Bukhara, but now elsewhere, use certain writings - stories of
the adept Mullah Nasrudin - to instruct simple persons in subtle truths. They
are "Vedanta made easy" tales.
41
If Buddhist monks in the Far East originally took
tea to stay awake during long periods of meditation, pious Muhammedans
originally took coffee to stay awake during the tedious periods of formal
religious prayer.
42
We in the West have brought punctuality to
perfection and developed business into a religion. We customarily - and from our
standpoint rightly - despise the East for its light-hearted attitude towards
these matters. We arrive at our business engagements with clocklike precision
and involuntarily carry the same spirit into our social appointments, too. We
work hard and well, and to relax when the mood prompts us is to yield to one of
the seven deadly sins. Perhaps the only shining exceptions are to be found in
bohemians and those in artistic circles, whose attitude was aptly and
humourously put by Oscar Wilde into the mouth of one of his characters: "He was
always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of
time." During my wanderings in the East I have not failed to note the difference
of outlook, the easy-going attitude toward work and time, and though this at
first excited my irritation, it now receives, within due limits, my approbation.
For I, too, have felt the pleasure of taking life easily, the delight of ceasing
to be pursued by old Kronos, the comfort of no longer reacting to clockwork and
mechanical discipline. In Egypt I found this spirit at its apogee, and now it
suits me well. Yet I hope I shall never succumb as far as that rotund Hindu
Indian moneylender of Lahore, who boasted to me that when he had an appointment
for ten o'clock in the morning he invariably turned up at two in the afternoon.
I looked at him, shocked, and then reproached him for such inconsiderate
conduct. "Oh, don't worry," he replied, "for even if I did turn up at ten my
client would invariably turn up at two!" However, I mastered one lesson through
my sojourn under the pleasant Egyptian sky, a lesson which has been well put by
Rabelais, who said that the hours were made for man, and not man for the hours.
It is not that I want to enter into a defen se of unpunctuality - far from it -
but that I want to enter into a defense of that inner personal freedom which can
live in the Eternal Now, which can carry on its work and duties without being
enslaved by them.
43
During the inundation of the Nile, many peasants
dream away their time in shady spots and idly await the time when the land will
again be accessible.
44
When the vivid colours of sunset went out of the
Egyptian sky, I took up my station by the Nile bank and mentally went with them.
The little self was left far behind as I passed into Nature's stillness.
45
The Egyptian sundown creates glorious chromatic
appearances - orange, gold, yellow, pink, red, and other colours are painted on
the scene in the quivering light.
46
In most Muhammedan countries, and certainly in the
Egypt which I knew many years ago, lunatics were believed to have left their
soul behind in the heaven world, so that their deserted bodies were bereft of
the mind's guidance. They, and in particular mentally retarded idiots, were
considered to be holy because of this connection with their praying or
worshipping souls in heaven.
47
In the Egypt of those days - a tranquil amicable
and attractive Egypt, before the furies of politics and the hates of war had
entered in - I found some interesting natives uncommonly gifted with psychic
powers or religious depth. There was the little old negress in whose presence
logic lost its value, for she told me truths of my past and future, all true or
fulfilled.
48
That was a beautiful sight, when the monthly
visitation of the full moon's light fell upon the Sphinx's far-gazing eyes.
49
The Sphinx's mutilated noseless face, its lost
desert privacy, show time's devastating hand.
50
The Sphinx bears the scars of having lived too
long. The mutilated face has lost the beauty it once had. This is why it must be
seen by moonlight, not in glaring sunlight.
51
Full moon is the best time to visit the Sphinx. It
comes alive, speaks.
52
Is this the answer to the Sphinx's riddle, that
man's consciousness comes from an unknowable Source? Or is it that this
consciousness, freed from its animal inheritance and human confusions, is itself
that Source? The initiate into the Egyptian Mysteries was given the answer.
53
The temple which still lies hidden under the
Sphinx and the chamber which still remains undiscovered within the Great Pyramid
were not cunningly sealed up by so secretive a tribe as the High Priests for
nothing. For all those who are imprisoned in the fleshly body, they must serve
only as sacred symbols; but for a few of us they mean more.
54
The Great Pyramid of Egypt was erected by
survivors of Atlantis, as a symbolic building reminding us of the connection
between wisdom and the earthly world. It was also a Temple of the Mysteries.
55
Egyptian kings had to undergo first instruction
and then initiation before they could inherit, from the previous king, the title
of divine personage. For the initiation, with its physical ritual and psychic
reality, the Great Pyramid alone was reserved and built, as well as to stand for
a symbol of these things. Professional Egyptologists reject these
interpretations as being unscientific.
56
Although the Pyramid served so many different
uses, physical and spiritual, there was also the geographical one wherein it
served as a kind of map picturing the northern half of our globe. In this way
its apex would be the North Pole and the perimeter would be the equator.
57
On that small platform which is the truncated top
of the Great Pyramid, I once stood to look around at the charming long valley of
the Nile, the pure blue sky, the groves of palm trees, the prolific fields, and
then the endless yellow desert. After a while I squatted on the old flat stone,
browned by time, and within minutes fell into a reverie. A message came.
58
It is quite possible that the flat top of the
pyramid was used as a landing pad for space vessels. It is also possible that
there were secret passages and chambers which led up to this pad and where the
highest priests could meet their visitors from distant space.
59
It was a scientist named Alvarez who investigated
the Great Pyramid with the use of cosmic ray instruments.
60
Amenophis IV, also called Akhnaten the Heretic,
was the father of King Tutankhamen and also the husband of Queen Nefertiti.
Akhnaten was a great mystic, a superb artist, a convinced pacifist, a noble
idealist. Yet he was opposed, hated, defeated, and destroyed by the existing
selfish, externalized and materialized, orthodox priestly leaders when he was
only twenty-six years old. His ambition? To bring a new and better society.
61
The dust in Tutankhamen's tomb was
poisonous. It is this which sickened and violently killed off those
violators. There was no need for any psychic non-physical sorcerous force to be
brought in.
62
It was not on Greek earth that Greek thought
finally transcended itself, became mystical, and thus blossomed with its finest
flowers. This happened on Egyptian earth, in the city of Alexandria, which was
founded by a Greek, ruled for a period by half-Greeks, and associated with the
best Hellenic culture. Here the Neoplatonic schools of philosophy and, later,
the Christian theologies of Clement, Origen, Methodius, and other Fathers
appeared. Here reasoned attitudes combined with inward experiences; here Europe
and Asia and Africa combined their highest dreams and truths to produce the
wisdom of Alexandria.
63
When Alexander started the building of Alexandria
in 332 b.c., he opened the way for Zenodotus to open the doors of the celebrated
library in 280 b.c.
64
Ancient Alexandria kept its religious
independence, kept religion but put it where it belonged. It honoured
philosophy. That is why the ignorant rabble from the slums lynched Hypatia.
65
Alexandria was an extraordinary product of the
creative imagination and far-sightedness of Alexander. In a short time it quite
astonishingly became a world centre, a meeting-place of Africa, Asia, and
Europe. It established several reputations, each along quite different lines. We
know that all it was a centre of philosophy, erudition, and research - it was in
fact the greatest cultural centre in the ancient world of its time. We do not
all know that it became reputed also for its artists, its traders, and its
manufacturers.
66
Alexandria, the quarrelsome city which mobbed and
slew Hypatia, also produced celebrated Neoplatonists, talented Greek-speaking
Christian Fathers, and gifted librarians who culled knowledge from several
lands.
67
Alexandria, in Roman imperial days, became a great
centre of commerce and crime, learning and sects, magnificent buildings and
lowly slums, the noble Neoplatonic philosophy and the vile poisoner's art.
68
As a centre of Hellenic culture, Alexandria was
larger and more active than Athens.
69
This signet ring was made in Alexandria and bears
on its face the head of the god Serapis, with his bent nose and curved helmet.
It is interesting to speculate that when Alexandria flourished the sarcophagus
of the city's founder, Alexander, was brought to the great temple there and that
Serapis, to whom the temple was dedicated, was depicted with black pupils and a
white iris gazing fixedly at the worshipper.
70
Stonehenge was built in relation to sun, moon, and
eclipses. Babylon and Egypt also built temples on an astronomical basis.
71
The eye symbolized secrecy and occultism to the
Egyptians of old. Hence its free use in their mystic chambers, paintings, and
hieroglyphics.
72
The ancient Egyptian mystic hieratic posture was
like an Indian's except that palms were lying flat upon the knees.
73
If we compare Hebrew with Egyptian texts the
coincidence of whole sentences is startling.