TOPGhazali's moderating influence won for Sufism a respected if always somewhat suspect place in the Sunni household. But as the Sufi movement continued to develop, instances of what Juyawni would doubtless have considered "indiscreet curiosity" and "useless expressions" continued to occur in Sufi circles, and even the fate of Hallaj did nothing to dampen the adventuresome thought of some Sufi masters. When accompanied by continuing vigil on the part of the Sunni authorities, however, awareness of Hallaj's end may have counseled some mystics to resort to the somewhat safer ground of allegory or inference.
One of the more prolonged and celebrated of the Sufi allegories is a long poem in Persian, The Conference of the Birds, written by Farid al-Din Attar in 1177 C.E. Its premise is that the birds of the world collect to go in search of an ideal king. In the end they discover him, but not before they tell and have told to them a great number of stories illustrative of the Sufi life, whose path they are themselves in fact allegorically tracing.
Attar's allegorical birds finally reach their goal, the abode of a mythical king called Simorgh, whose Persian name derives etymologically from si= "thirty" and morgh = birds.
A world of birds set out, and there remained But thirty when the promised goal was gained, Thirty exhausted, wretched, broken things, With hopeless hearts and tattered, trailing wings. …
The king's herald counsels them to turn back: The herald said: "The blaze of Majesty Reduces souls to unreality, And if your souls are burnt, then all the pain That you have suffered will have been in vain." They answered: "How can a moth flee fire When fire contains its ultimate desire? And if we do not join Him, yet we'll burn, And it is for this that our spirits yearn— It is not union for which we hope; We know that goal remains beyond our scope." …
Though grief engulfed the ragged group, love made The birds impetuous and unafraid; The herald's self-possession was unmoved, But their resilience was not reproved— Now gently he unlocked the guarded door; A hundred doors drew back, and there before The birds' incredulous, bewildered sight Shone the unveiled, the inmost Light of Light. He led them to a noble throne, a place Of intimacy, dignity and grace, Then gave them all a written page and said That when its contents had been duly read The meaning that their journey had concealed, And of the stage they'd reached, would be revealed. …
The thirty birds read through the fateful page And there discovered, stage by detailed stage, Their lives, their actions, set out one by one— All their souls had ever been or done. …
The chastened spirits of these birds became Like crumbled powder, and they shrank with shame. Then, as by shame their spirits were refined of all the world's weight, they began to find a new life flow toward them from that bright Celestial and ever-living Light— their souls rose free of all they'd been before; the past and all its actions were no more. Their life came from that close and insistent sun and in its vivid rays they shone as one. There in the Simorgh's radiant face they saw Themselves, the Simorgh of the world—with awe They gazed, and dared at last to comprehend They were the Simorgh and the journey's end. They see the Simorgh—at themselves they stare, And see a second Simorgh standing there; They look at both and see the two are one, That this is that, that this, the goal is won. They ask (but inwardly; they make no sound) the meanings of these mysteries that confound their puzzled ignorance—how is it true that "we" are not distinguished here from "You"? And silently their shining Lord replies: "I am a mirror set before your eyes, and all who come before my splendor sees themselves, their own unique reality." (Attar, Parliament of Birds) [ATTAR 1984: 214–219]
The image of the face in the mirror was not original with Attar. It had appeared in one of its most striking forms in the writings of the dominant figure in all of Islamic mysticism, the Spaniard Muhyi al-Din ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240 C.E.). It is introduced at the very beginning of his Bezels of Wisdom, in the expression of one of his fundamental themes: the ultimate and primordial unity of Reality or Being, polarized into the God and the Cosmos only after and because of the Reality's desire to experience itself in another.
The Reality wanted to see the essences of His Most Beautiful Names, or, to put it another way, to see His own Essence in an all inclusive object encompassing the whole (divine) Command, which, qualified by existence, would reveal to Him His own mystery. For the seeing of a thing, itself by itself, is not the same as its seeing itself in another, as it were in a mirror; for it appears to itself in a form that is invested by the location of the vision by that which would only appear to it given the existence of the location and its [that is, the location's] self-disclosure to it.
The reality gave existence to the whole Cosmos (at first) as an undifferentiated thing without anything of the spirit in it, so that it was like an unpolished mirror. It is in the nature of the divine determination that He does not set out a location except to receive a divine spirit, which is also called "the breathing into him" (Quran 21:91). The latter is nothing other than the coming into operation of the undifferentiated form's (innate) disposition to receive the inexhaustible overflowing of Self-Revelation, which has always been and will ever be. …
Thus the (divine) Command required (by its very nature) the reflective characteristic of the mirror of the Cosmos, and Adam was the very principle of reflection for that mirror and the spirit of that form. (Ibn al-Arabi, Bezels of Wisdom, "Adam") [IBN AL-ARABI 1980: 50–51]
Here the image is turned around, and it is God who is the mirror.
If you are a believer, you will know that God will manifest Himself on the Day of Resurrection, initially in a recognizable form, then in a form unacceptable (to ordinary belief), He alone being the Self-manifesting One in every form, although it is obvious that one form is not the same as another.
It is as if the single Essence were a mirror, so that when the observer sees in it the form of his belief about God, he recognizes and confirms it, but if he should see it in the doctrinal formulation of someone of another creed, he will reject it, as if he were seeing in the mirror His form and then that of another. The mirror is single, while the forms (it reveals) are various in the eye of the observer.
None of the forms are in the mirror wholly, although a mirror has an effect on the forms in one way and not in another. For instance, it may make the form look smaller, larger, taller or broader. Thus it has an effect on their proportions, which is attributable to it, although such changes occur only due to the different proportions of the mirrors themselves. Look, then, into just one mirror, without considering mirrors in general, for it is the same as your beholding (Him) as being one Essence, albeit that He is beyond all need of the worlds. Insofar as He is Divine Names, on the other hand, He is like (many) mirrors. In which Divine Name have you beheld yourself, or who is the one who beholds? It is only the reality of the Name that is manifest in the beholder. Thus it is, if you will but understand. (Ibn al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, "Elias") [IBN AL-ARABI 1980: 232–233]
Ibn al-Arabi returns to the relationship of the Reality and the Cosmos, now in terms of light and shadow.
Know that what is "other than the Reality," which is called the Cosmos, is, in relation to the Reality, as a shadow is to what casts the shadow, for it is the shadow of God, this being the same as the relationship between Being and the Cosmos, since the shadow is, without doubt, something sensible. What is provided there is something on which the shadow may appear, since if it were that that whereon it appears should cease to be, the shadow would be an intelligible and not something sensible, and would exist potentially in the very thing that casts the shadow.
The thing on which this divine shadow, called the Cosmos, appears is the (eternally latent) essences of contingent beings. The shadow is spread out over them, and the (identity of the) shadow is known to the extent that the Being of the (original) Essence is extended upon it. It is by His Name, the Light, that it is perceived. This shadow extends over the essences of contingent being in the form of the unknown Unseen. Have you not observed that shadows tend to be black, which indicates their imperceptibility (as regards content) by reason of the remote relationship between them and their origins? If the source of the shadow is white, the shadow itself is still so [that is, black].
This is how the universe exists; Ibn al-Arabi then begins to move from its existence to our way of knowing both this world of ours called the Cosmos and its source.
No more is known of the Cosmos than is known from a shadow, and no more is known of the Reality than one knows of the origin of a shadow. Insofar as He has a shadow, He is known, but insofar as the form of the one casting the shadow is not perceived in the shadow, the Reality is not known. For this reason we say that the Reality is known to us in one sense and unknown in another.
We are, then, seriously misled about the "real existence" of the sensible universe.
If what we say is true, the Cosmos is but a fantasy without any real existence, which is another meaning of the Imagination. That is to say, you imagine that it [that is, the universe] is something separate and self-sufficient, outside the Reality, while the truth is that it is not so. Have you not observed (in the case of the shadow) that it is connected to the one who casts it, and would not its becoming unconnected be absurd, since nothing can be disconnected from itself?
It is, Ibn al-Arabi immediately continues, in the mirror we should look.
Therefore know truly your own self [that is, your own essence], who you are, what is your identity and what your relationship with the Reality. Consider well in what way you are real and in what way (part of) the Cosmos, as being separate, other, and so on.
Thus God is seen in many different modes: in one way—"green"—by the ordinary believer relying on the givens of Scripture, in another— "colorless"—by the theologian with his refined deductive portrait. And they are both correct, and, of course, both wildly wrong.
The Reality is, in relation to a particular shadow, small or large, pure or purer, as light in relationship to the glass that separates it from the beholder to whom the light has the color of the glass, while the light itself has no particular color. This is the relationship between your reality and your Lord; for, if you were to say that the light is green because of the green glass, you would be right as viewing the situation through your senses, and if you were to say it is not green, indeed it is colorless, by deduction, you would also be right as viewing the situation through sound intellectual reasoning. That which is seen may be said to be a light projected from a shadow, which is the glass, or a luminous shadow, according to its purity. Thus, he of us who has realized in himself the Reality manifests the form of the Reality to a greater extent than he who has not. …
God created shadows lying prostrate to right and left only as clues for yourself in knowing yourself and Him, that you might know who you are, your relationship with Him, and His with you, and so you might understand how or according to which divine truth all that is other than God is described as being completely dependent on Him, as being (also) mutually independent. Also that you might know how and by what truth God is described as utterly independent of men and all worlds, and how the Cosmos is described as both mutually independent with respect to its parts and mutually dependent. (Ibn al-Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, "Joseph") [IBN AL-ARABI 1980: 123–126]