The dimension of love
Only Adam, “blood clotted lumps” as says the Koran (40, 67), can make an offering to God of love freely. Besides, God requires nothing of the simple-minded, for he who has not the ability to choose can not be held responsible. Islam is not confined to the letter, a legal practice, or even ritual precepts, but opens with parables about the mystery.
Islam – in the sense of submission to God – the human, unlike other creatures, is an act of free will. It is not passive conformity but confident support in response to divine Love. For His love precedes human love, and encourages. “His mercy precedes his rigor” , as, according to tradition, it is written on the divine throne because “God is closer to man than his jugular vein [1] ” (Qur’an 50: 16). The theme of freedom is tied to that of divine Love. By this, it relates to the mystery of the last things to be.
Each dimension of the human being is governed by an order. According to a word that is sometimes attributed to the prophet Muhammad, the prototype model of achievement in the three human dimensions: “My Law (shari’a) these are my words; My Way (tariqa) are my spiritual states; My Truth (haqiqa), these are my noble character ” . It expresses the three modalities of being, giving for each rule that matches it.
The formal world that owns the body is governed by its sacred Law upon which his balance . In this area, that of the material that is related to space and time, the order comes from the series of secondary causes. The soul whose destiny is to rise to attach to the mind can follow a way of transformation or tariqa. But the world has another side, another side. In this beyond the forms, the world of the mind is the field of haqiqa , Knowledge. So the truth is hidden or revealed by what we are able to receive, collect, in ourselves, because the corporeal world is a reflection of a changing immutable reality.
The human being is a bridge between the two worlds. It occupies by its original position, the highest place in the order of creation. This place runs like a mirror in the manifested world, being the caliph of God on earth. It is easier to imagine things if we think of the waking state and that of the dream.The rules that make us understand the world disappear in the dream, yet it comes from us. In our sleep, we seem to make an incoherent and wonderful world in which is possible what is not in the standby state.
When we wake up, we believe that it was not real, that it was a fantasy of our soul, uncontrolled activity of our brain. But when we sleep, where is the reality? Sometimes in dreams, sometimes we realize that we are asleep, and even to get out of the dream. Some dreams leave a disturbing impression of reality. They remain in us forever inscribed in our muscles and senses. Some, reversing the mental habits, say life is perfect and that we wake when we die. So we’re aware that there is a order of things and that this order is different and often escapes us in the dream. This illustrates the existence of other states of consciousness governed by other laws.
The spirit of the law
Night and day, water and fire, the beginning and the end, the spirit and the letter inside and outside, the feminine and the masculine, health and disease, in the created world everything is dual and aspires to return to the primordial unity. The body defines a shape. It establishes a boundary between inside and outside, it individualizes us, sets us apart, shattered by the multitude unity of being. Harmony coherence of the world based on a cosmic order, a divine law that, in Islam, is called Sharia , that is to say “road”.
It is the way of the body, which orders and guides the nature behavior, outward reflection of an inner attitude. As revealed law, the shari’a establishes rules involved in the world order and constitute a protection, a direction to regain the lost unity. Being a woman or a man is a contingency that has meaning only in this determinism implies individual condition, as this is for the soul journey a starting point. In fact, all souls are feminine and sigh to one principle which is God and only sees the hearts, not equality.
When a man or woman has annihilated in God, he has no own existence. As the body after death return to dust, the concepts of “man” and “woman”, related to the cosmic function, disappear. Being a woman or a man therefore contributes to an awareness of the form taken by the soul, the implications of this state what it can and what it prevents in the world externality. In the world of interiority, that of haqiqa, this distinction no longer applies. But we are not pure spirits. Ignoring her sexual determinism cut the individual its formal nature and makes him unable to know himself.
Our body condition and the order governing are a springboard which should neither be denied nor be transformed into ball. “Mind you cleanse, rather than discussing the ritual way to ride a camel! ” said a great saint of Islam. God’s law is a way to reach God, a door, not a goal, much less an obsession. The Imam Ghazali warns against the dangerous confusion: “Those who are so erudite in some rare forms of divorce, can not tell you anything about the simplest things of the spiritual life, as the sense of sincerity in God or trust in Him ” .
The formal world and the law that governs is a means, a test sometimes because you have to patiently endure the limitations this imposes. There is no question, of course, focus on life science licit and illicit, but to understand humbly mercy who founded the spirit of the law. It is the traffic of our physical existence. The word Sharia is the equivalent of the Sanskrit word dharma . These terms refer to, as much in Hinduism as in Buddhism or Islam, revealed Law, the prescription written all in the formal world, that of the body and acts.
This is the path that follows every human being in his quest for the origin. The universe is organized according to a mathematical order, this harmony is based on the law and therefore, we can say that atoms such as celestial bodies, and obey all are subject to this law. It is the order of the world, universal it adapts to all cultures and in all times. The wisest is the one that manages to comply with the universal order. This compliance is an act of faith, proof of the confidence in the cosmic reason.It is not resignation, but love. It should not be confused, as is often the case, with the fiqh , Islamic law whose rules are the result of an attempt to human interpretation of the divine law, an interpretation which is plural, as the it relates to a school or other.
The spirit of the shari’a is far from that which ankylosis freezes for several centuries of Muslim religious thought, or what the media say. In the perspective of an initiatory teaching, it is considered as both the beginning and as the end of the initiatory path. At the end of the path, the body returned to its original form.
The disciple must be, as the Sufis say, “internally and externally with God with men”, realizing in himself the essential identity between Creator and creatures. The shari’a is the outer path, that thezahir, but it is justified within the bdtin , as the movement of our body has its origin in the depths of our soul. The human individual is obliged to leave the formal base to rise, first in the extensions of the same state, and then beyond.
So goes the world order, with outdoor and indoor, so that we know God in these two aspects that we ourselves have.
[1] The Arabic word is often rendered “vein” in reference to human anatomy. But the vein carries blood loaded with impurities. Some translators to express the luminous presence of God in man, so prefer the word ‘artery’.
