The
Language of the Ants
Chapter 1
Apercu Discussion Join
Apercu Sufi Therapy of
The Self
Some ants, from the lowest point of the concealed darkness i.e. their
first nest, hastily rushed in to the desert to search for food, when by
chance some shrubbery came into their field of view, droplets bedewed
upon the leaves at this dawn. One ant asked the other: What is this
(the dew)? And the other replied: droplets of water originally from the
earth. Some others said water was from the sea and at that a fight
broke out amongst them.
There was a wise ant amongst them who said: Wait a while and observe
which way the dew is inclined to go, for everyone is pulled by the
gravity of their original direction, yearning to rejoin their place of
origin. Everything, helplessly, is attracted to its origin, its root.
See if a rock is thrown in the air, eventually falls back on the
ground, since its origin is Safāla (Lowliness), and the governing law
being: Every object must return to its origin, hence the fallen rock.
Whosoever is inclined towards the darkness, therefore his origin was
darkness. And whosoever is inclined towards the light, therefore his
origin was light: Due to the Nur (Divine Light)
of 'Ulūhiyat
(Deification
via the gravity of love) this fact applies to the Noble
Jauhar (Essence)
of Man. (Man, no matter whom or in what circumstance
is always inclined towards the Light, yet the Nafs
towards the darkness)
The ants were arguing about this when the sun rose with great warmth,
consequently the dew evaporated skyward off the leaves, and the ants
came to know that the dew was not from the earth, for it was from the
sky and returned to sky:
Nur (Light)
upon Nur, Allah
guides to Hu's
Light whom Hu wills and
provides metaphors for people. [24: 35]
And indeed towards Allah is the
very end (humanity's final return).
[53:42]
Towards Hu
glides the good word, and the good deeds elevate it (or good
deeds elevated by Hu) [35:10]
End.
Spiritual Legend
Concealed darkness
The first nest
Hastily rushed
For food
Shrubbery
Field of view
Wise ant
Safāla (Lowliness)
Sun rise
Apercu:
Untired With Loving
This deeply moving mystical tale magnificently embroidered with
symbolism, contains connotations for return of Man's soul to his
original station.
Suhrawardi's ants start from their 'first station' i.e. the physical
body implying the departure of a soul from a body. These ants are
symbolism of the Sheikh's Hikmatul Ishraq (Philosophy of Illuminism)
philosophical concept of disrobing as in Theophany where through
Tazkiyah (Self-purification) physicality is disrobed from the Soul i.e.
the body is a gown wore by the soul.
And the ant's expeditionary departure takes place at the darkest part
of the night i.e. just before the dawn: Allah is the
Protector of those
who have faith: from the depths of darkness Hu
will lead them forth
into light
[2:257].
Believing and while traversing the darkness, Iman (Faith) is the first
stage of the ant's night travel into the light—The Sulūk (The Voyage).
And only by the Divine Will and Mercy this Voyage commences and ends.
The rising Sun is the concept of Tajalli (Lucent
Manifestation) and the
sunrays the effluent flooding of the light (Faidh) the concept of
Theophany.
To Allah we
belong, and towards Hu is
our return [2:156]—The 'first
station' as in 'we are here' and 'where are we to return to',
signifiers of 'where':
1. Here is 'I' and if we can depart from this place 'I'
2. We arrive There! The other world
Sufi wants to return to his/her roots, and wants that now and this
yearning to return to the origin is called Sulūk (The Voyage).
The Sālik (Voyager)
travels under the vision of Allah, where
the Path
is lit by Tajalli (Lucent
Manifestation), as in the case of the
Suhrawardi's ants they travel by the sunlight (Nurul-Qahar or the
Dominant Light),
and the frosted dew is the Man, the evaporating is the
Voyage vis-à-vis the selfless-ness: Fanā-fil-lāh (Evanescence in
Presence of Allah)
and the consequent everlasting-ness of Baqā-bil-lāh
(Subsisting solely upon Allah).
By Ismail Radpur
Apercu:
The Sufi Therapy of The Self
Mankind was created for:
1. Happiness
2. Eternity
Mankind was not created for torment or transience. Human Wujud
(Being-ness)
originated from the Nur (Divine Light),
the Light that
shone upon the Adim (top soil) of the earth to become Adam.
Adam and all his progeny are in perpetual agony and anxiety of a deep
primordial yearning to return to their origins: To exit from the Hadath
(Transient) darkness of corporeality into the Azal (Sempiternal) Light
of spirituality.
The pain, say from depression, is the gravitational (Jazab) pull of the
Divine Love that is pulling the human being from the darkness to the
light. Allah
did not create you to torment you with such psychological
pain, Allah created everything for your happiness, therefore conclude
and do that now: The stress, the depression, the anxiety attacks and so
on are calls to pull you from the evil of transience into the bliss of
eternity, from the darkness being called into the light, from
short-lived pleasures to eternal-pleasures.
'Innā-lil-lāhi (We belong to Allah) [2:156]
does mean 'we do not belong
to evil', 'we do not belong to transience'. La-Hu
(to Hu belongs all in
heavens and earth) [2:255] does mean the short-lived foulness that came
out of us does not belong to us, as we do not belong to it, the
Ma'refat (Gnosis) of this subtle fact gives you wings to fly to glide
to your true Beloved, free and cleansed from all the evil that emanated
from your Nafs (Self).
Suhrawardi's ants voyaged from the darkness of their nest into the
luminance of a Voyage
foraging for food: They moved from the vitiation
of darkness into the Light to
find the food for their starving
souls—Kamal (Perfection).
As the ants saw the dew evaporate, do behold the transient pleasures to
fade away, and as the ants concluded that that the water returned to
the heavens, do conclude that your fading transience is for you to
return to your place of origin: Your place of happiness and the place
of your eternity—Evaporation of the dew, the Fana (Evanesce) of the I.
Happily you voyage
basking under the light of Tajalli (Lucent
Manifestation), sadly you suffer enslaved within the darkling
dungeons
of Istitar (Darkening veils), for as long as you close your eyes to the
darkness i.e. for as long as you close your eyes to not to see
your Nafs (Self), you shall drown within the Nur (Divine Light)
and
you shall traverse the cosmos, and no obstacle no individual and no
army could delay your arrival to the courtyard of our Beloved:
And the Tabārak (blessed be) is there after Al-Ladhi (That
Which) to
remove the veils off the courtyard of Hu’s
(ITs) Jalāl (Momentous Glory) and to characterize Hu’s (ITs) ‘Azima
(Magnificence) and ‘Ihātat (Encompassment) over/around all objects and
‘in Whose Hand is Dominion’ is mentioned to enrobe manifestations via
attributes extracted the Divine Fa’l (Actualizations & Deeds).
(Tafsir Ruzbihan Baqli Shirazi)
فسير عرائس البيان في
حقائق القرآن/ البقلي
تَبَارَكَ ٱلَّذِي } فى هذه الأية تقديس الذات والصفات عن الادراك
وفيها اشارة غيب الهوية بقوله الذى لرفع الاوهام عن ساحة جلاله وفيها وصف
العظمة والاحاطة بكل شئ عجز الحدثان فى قبضة قدرته وفيها سر الالباس وظهور
الصفة عن الفعل بقوله { بِيَدِهِ ٱلْمُلْكُ
©
2006-2002, Dara O. Shayda, Ismail Radpur
