Theoretical Gnosis and Doctrinal Sufism and Their Significance Today

With What Does Theoretical Gnosis Deal?

Before turning to the significance of theoretical gnosis and doctrinal Sufism, it is necessary to mention a few words about what subjects this Supreme Science treats. And before delineating the subjects made known through theoretical gnosis, one needs to know how one can gain such a knowledge. The knowledge of the Supreme Reality or the Supreme Substance is itself the highest knowledge and constitutes the very substance of principial knowledge. As Frithjof Schuon, one of the foremost contemporary expositors of gnosis and metaphysics has said, “The substance of knowledge is Knowledge of the Substance.”59 This knowledge is contained deep within the heart/intellect and gaining it is more of a recovery than a discovery. It is ultimately remembrance, the Platonic anamnesis. The faculty associated with this knowledge is the intellect (al-‘aql), the nous, not to be confused with reason. The correct functioning of the intellect within man is in most cases in need of that objective manifestation of the intellect that is revelation.60 In any case its attainment always requires intellectual intuition, which is ultimately a Divine gift, and the ability to “taste” the truth. In the Islamic tradition this supreme knowledge or gnosis is associated with such qualities as dhawq (taste), hads (intuition), ishrāq (illumination) and hudūr (presence).

Those who are able to understand gnosis must possess certain intellective gifts not to be confused with powers of mere ratiocination. Also in Islam gnosis has always been related to the inner meaning of the revelation and its attainment of the initiatic and esoteric power of walāyah/wilāyah which issues from the fountain of prophecy and about which so many Muslim gnostics from Ibn ‘Arabī to Sayyid Haydar Āmulī and from Āqā Muhammad Ridā Qumsha’ī to Muhammad ‘Alī Shāhābādī to Ayatollah Khomeini have written with differing interpretations.

Turning now to the subjects with which theoretical gnosis and doctrinal Sufism deal, we must mention that it is not our intention here to expound its teachings, but only the subjects which are of concern to this School.61 The supreme subject of gnosis may be said to be the Supreme Principle or Reality which is absolute and infinite and not even bound by the condition of being absolute and infinite.

The gnostics often write that it is Absolute Being without even the “limitation” of absoluteness. It is therefore the Reality which is both Beyond-Being and Absolute Being. Later gnostics called this supreme subject wujūd-i lā bi-shart-i maqsamī, the totally unconditioned Being which is the ground for all divisions and distinctions. Gnosis, therefore, deals not only with ontology but with a metaphysics that is grounded beyond Being in the Supreme Reality of which Being usually understood is the first determination. It begins with the Divine Ipseity or Dhāt that is above all limits and determinations and that is sometimes referred to as al-Haqq (the Truth). It also deals with multiplicity within the Divine Order, that is, the Divine Names and Qualities which are so many Self-Determinations and Self-Disclosures of the Supreme Essence.

This Supreme Science (al-‘ilm al-a‘lā) that is gnosis also deals with manifestations of the Principle, with all the levels of universal existence

from the archangelic to the material but views all that exists in the cosmic order in light of the Principle. It descends from the Principle to manifestation and deals with cosmology as a science of the cosmos in relation to the Principle, as a form of knowledge that provides maps to guide and orient human beings who are situated in the confines of cosmic existence to the Metacosmic Reality. This Supreme Science also deals of necessity with the human state in all its width, breadth, depth and height. It contains a most profound “science of man”, which one could call an anthropology if this term were to be understood in its traditional and not modern sense, as well as a “science of spirit” within man or pneumatology which is absent from the worldview of the modern world. Finally, gnosis deals with the Principle and all the levels of manifestation from the point of view of the unity which dominates over all that exists and which is especially central to the Islamic perspective. One might say that Islamic metaphysics or gnosis is dominated by the two basic doctrines of the “transcendent oneness of Being” (wahdat alwujūd) and the universal man (al-insān al-kāmil) which includes not only a gnostic anthropology but also a symbolic cosmology on the basis of the correspondence between the microcosm and macrocosm.

Theoretical gnosis is also concerned in the deepest sense with the reality of revelation and religion. The question of the relation between gnosis and esoterism on the one hand and the formal and exoteric aspect of religion on the other is a complicated one into which we cannot enter here. What is clear is that in every traditional society gnosis and esoterism have been inextricably tied to the religious climate in which they have existed. This is as true of Luria and Jewish esoterism as it is of Śankara and Hindu gnosis as well as everything in between. In any case in this essay, which deals with gnosis in the Islamic tradition, we need to mention the profoundest concern of the gnostics with the realities of religion and explanation of its teachings on the most profound level as we observe in many Sufi treatises on the inner meaning of the Islamic rites.62

Theoretical gnosis is concerned not only with the practical aspects of religion, but also with basic Islamic doctrines such as creation, prophecy, eschatology, etc. Islamic masters of gnosis speak of both the why and the how of creation. They speak of “creation in God” as well as creation by God.63 They expound the doctrine of the immutable archetypes (al-a‘yān al-thābitah) and the breathing of existence upon them associated with the Divine Mercy which brings about the created order. They see creation itself as the Self-Disclosure of God.64 They also discuss the renewal of creation (tajdīd al-khalq) at every moment.65 Furthermore, theoretical gnosis speaks extensively about the end as well as the beginning of things. The deepest explanation of Islamic eschatology based on the Quran and Hadīth is found in such writings as the Futūhāt al-makkiyyah of Ibn ‘Arabī.

In all traditional religions and cultural climes gnosis also provides the basis for the science of forms including artistic forms and makes comprehensible the language of symbolism. Although dealing at the highest level with the Formless, it is gnosis and metaphysics that provide the basis for the science of symbols especially in a world where the “symbolist spirit”

has been lost.66 In Islam treatises on theoretical gnosis do not usually deal explicitly in a separate section with forms and symbols but expound the principles of this science which are then applied when necessary. The writings of Ibn ‘Arabī and Rūmī are replete with such examples. Such masters provide the science of spiritual hermenetics (ta’wīl) as well as apply it to diverse religious and artistic forms, symbols and myths including of course those found in the Quran itself.

Gnosis is illuminative and unitive knowledge and therefore it is natural that theoretical gnosis be concerned with knowledge as such, primarily sacred knowledge and knowledge of the sacred but also with the grades and the hierarchy of knowledge.67 It is true that most traditional philosophies, including the Islamic, also deal with this issue, but it is only in works on theoretical gnosis that one finds the most universal treatment of this subject including of course supreme knowledge that is gnosis itself. Theoretical gnosis or scientia sacra is also the metaphysics that lies at the heart of perennial philosophy understood traditionally. It has been sometimes called theosophy, as this term was understood before its modern distortion, and is also related to what is called mystical theology and mystical philosophy in Western languages. In the Islamic tradition it has provided the ultimate criteria for the judgment of what constitutes philosophia vera. It has been foundational in the development of both traditional philosophy and the traditional sciences and is key to the deepest understanding of all traditional cosmological sciences including the “hidden sciences” (al-‘ulūm al-khafiyyah or gharībah).

The later traditional schools of philosophy that have persisted in the Islamic world to this day, chief among the School of Illumination founded by Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191) and the Transcendent Theosophy/Philosophy established by Mullā Sadrā, are closely associated with ‘irfān. One might in fact say that while after the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in the West philosophy became more and more wedded and also subservient to modern science, as we see so clearly in Kant, in the Islamic world philosophy became ever more closely associated with ‘irfān from which it drew its sustenance and whose vision of reality served as basis for its philosophizing. One needs only read the works of Mullā Sadrā such as his al-Shawāhid alrubūbiyyah or the treatises of Āqā ‘Alī Mudarris such as his Badāyi‘al-hikam to ascertain the truth of this assertion. Many of the works of the later Islamic philosophers are at the borderline between hikmat and ‘irfān although the two disciplines remain quite distinct from one another.