91 - Lahut - The Divine Inheritance

            As we know, perhaps the main thrust in Pir-o-Murshid's teaching is gaining awareness of one's divine inheritance which he calls the seed of our personality. In Sufism it is called Lahutiya.

            The one who is conscious of one's earthly origin is an earthly person, one who is conscious of one's heavenly origin is the child of God.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            You may think of yourself as a plant in which only a little bounty latent in the seed is manifest. Yet in you the seed that caused the whole existence - God - is to be found. The seed out of which the trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and fruit are made arises again at the end of the cycle. The same God so little of whose perfection manifested in the plant arises again and again in its pursuit of excellence trying to emerge as perfectly as possible in the midst of human imperfection.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

            For the Sufis, as soon as we do this, we discover the bounty of what they call the divine names, asma ilahi. For the Sufis, the word 'names' (the sound of the Wazifa) carries a particular significance (also for Hinduism: nama rupa), because we are talking of the divine language. Each object has its specific signature-tune - each object is the configuration of a composition of vibrations which we perceive as sound. We try to reproduce these sounds in our Mantrams or Wazaif.

            Then God makes him journey through his Names (that is His archetypes) in order to show him His signs. Thus the server comes to know that he is designed by every name. It is through these names that God appears to the server.

Ibn 'Arabi

            If you have followed the previous KIT's, you will have noticed that the Sufis distinguish different kinds of signs, ayat, through which God reveals something of Him/Herself by means of clues. The first one in alam al nazut was through the forms of the world; the second in Arwah, by dint of that which transpires through our nature of the divine nature. Now at the Lahut level, after passing though the Jabarut state where we forego our conscious act to give vent to the divine point of view, the divine nature is revealed directly notwithstanding any signs that might have been culled in our personality.

            We remember that the forms of the world and the idiosyncrasies of our personality were signs - clues as to the formless Reality. Now that any vestige of forms has faded away, it is the divine attributes (which the Sufis call His Names), namely the archetypes of which our idiosyncrasies the exemplars, that reveal themselves.

            Is it possible, realistic, to see things from the divine vantage point? Let us remember that we are describing here a very advanced level that can only be reached after experiencing the previous ones leading up to it. It is that transit that we need to look into. At some point Ibn 'Arabi said: one only knows the archetype through the exemplar. What meaning does roundness have for us if not through round objects? Our minds extrapolate between the experience we have of the round objects experienced. Somehow when we see a round object, what is common between all the round objects we have previously perceived is subsumed: that is what we mean by the archetype. The question is: could we have any notion of roundness without having experienced round objects? It may well be that it is just because roundness is written into the software of our minds that we recognize roundness in objects. But how can we reach it? What do the divine attributes mean to us? This is the complementary way of grasping the attribute in the divine mind. Such is the significance of a method used by an early church father, Tauler, which proved invaluable to Martin Luther. It is called significatio passiva.

            In the presence of the Psalm verse in justitia tua, libera me (may Thy attribute of Justice liberate me), he experienced a movement of revolt and despair. What can there be in common between this attribute of justice and my deliverance? And such was his state until the young Luther perceived in a sudden flash that his attribute must be understood in its significatio passiva, that is to say: Thy justice whereby we are made into just men, Thy holiness whereby we are hallowed... Similarly in the mystic theosophy of Ibn 'Arabi, the divine attributes are qualifications that we impute to the Divine Essence... as we experience it in ourselves.

            To grasp the divine archetypes, Martin Luther was extrapolating between the two poles of the same reality: the archetype and the exemplar - which is what one does at the Malakut level...

            Know that there is no form in the lower world without a likeness (mithl) in the higher world. The forms in the higher world preserve the existence of their likeness in the lower worlds. Between the two worlds there are tenuities which extend from each form to its likeness.... These are like ladders for the angels, while the meanings that descend in these tenuities are like angels.

Ibn 'Arabi

            This realization establishes a new mode of relationship between God and the creature (or sentient being), the two poles of the same reality are the nature of the relationship between the lord and the vassal originating in the Iranian chivalry: futuhat.

            The divinity seeks for a being whose God it is. The divine sovereignty has a secret and that is thou.

Sahl Tostari

            We establish God's sovereignty by our recognition of our divine office which facilitates God's manifestation of His/Her qualities, sifat.

            Each manifest being is the form of a lordly Name 'ism rabbani'. The Rabb becomes a reality in relationship with a being who is designated in the passive form.

H. Corbin

            The divine suzerainty has a secret (sirr robbubiya) and that is thou.

Sahl Tostari

            By actuating the divine nature in my personality, I confer upon God a mode of existence.

Ibn 'Arabi

            However, if one has reached the perspective of the Lahut level, one proceeds more radically: one captures directly the seeds of those qualities we inherit irrespective of what we have made of them in our personality so that in the Tawhid one will be able to customize them in one's personality in a new dispensation while disintegrating one's previous personality rather than adapting it, which could be a compromise.

            There is no way in which we can gain a clue as to the divine magnificence vested in our divine inheritance, or even of what it is, unless we reverse our vantage point and look at things from the divine point of view. This is indeed the main objective of Sufism. To achieve this, one needs to let go of one's personal self-image, which is an outgrowth of what one really is. If we cease identifying with it, it will dissolve to give way to a fresh dispensation from the seed which is our divine inheritance.

            Oh God! Do away with my Nasutiyat (human idiosyncrasies), so that Thy Lahutiyat may replace it.

Al Hallaj

            The soul acquires only those qualities in which it is interested, and the soul keeps only those attributes in which it is interested. However many undesirable attributes a person may have, one can lose them all if one does not approve of them.


Pir-o-Murshid

            Here, at this level we are overwhelmed by the inexhaustible bounty of possibilities of which so little ever materializes at the existential level. It is called by the Sufis sometimes the level of possibilities, imkan.(Buddha refers to this level in the arupa meditations - meditations beyond form which he encountered on the way to illumination). In Islam, it is the treasury.

            There is no thing whose treasuries are not with Us.

Qur'an 15-21

            I am not authorized to give you the key to the divine treasury, you have to discover it yourself.

Niffari

            For clarity sake, let us recall that at the Arwah level, we were facilitating the unfurling of the potentials of our being in the process of becoming. But here, at the Lahut level, since our notion of time as an arrow has collapsed, we are experiencing conditions that favor our being aware of the immortal dimension of our being. The Sufis refer to a different causal chain than Laplacian determinism; they are talking of what one might call a horizontal chain of cause and effect.

            When one says that the Truth most glorious comprehends all beings, the meaning is that He comprehends them as a cause comprehends its consequences, not that He is a whole containing them as His parts...

Jami

            In our meditations, if we can let go of our personal identity, and reverse our consciousness so that instead of looking for God as the object of our cognizance, we try to open ourselves to God's revealing His\Her vision in pre-eternity, Azaliat, irrespective of ourselves in our temporary state, we will find ourselves in sync with the following perspective of al Hallaj who left an unforgettable testimony of what was revealed to him in a meditation:

            In His Self He contemplated in His pre-eternity (Azaliayat) all the invisible... This is the original state in the absence of all creatures, of all qualities... Then He entertained a dialogue through a thought, by means of all His thoughts. He conversed with Himself. Then He contemplated Himself in the attribute of love, because in its essence, the essence of all essences is love. Then He contemplated in His attribute of love all the other attributes of His Being. Then He glorified Himself in Himself... He looked into pre-eternity and created a picture. This picture is His picture, the picture of His essence. And when God beholds anything, He creates His picture in it for all eternity.... Then He saluted it and congratulated it for its splendid countenance.

Al Hallaj
