On the barzakh (3/3): fear and hope according to Qushayri

By Titus Burckhardt · June 2, 2021 · 4 min read

Contents

Qushayri (986-1074), in his Epistle, provides a compilation of certain technical terms proper to Sufism. Orientalists have wanted to see in these writings a sort of religious psychology, and this because, indeed, some of the terms commented on by Qushayri belong to the symbolism of the feelings. It is not wrong to see in this a ‘psychology’, that is, a science of the human psyche, since the valorisation and control of psychic elements or energies necessarily form an integral part of the way. However, one would be wrong not to realise the symbolic perspective involved in this Sufi science of the psyche, a perspective that gives it all its spiritual scope.

Fear and hope, contraction and expansion

If we apply the considerations formulated above concerning the barzakh to a few insights from Qushayri’s Epistle, the essentially metaphysical plane of what has been called a ‘religious psychology’ will easily emerge.

We have seen that the double nature of the barzakh is reflected in any cosmic plane by the alternation of the two phases of concentration and expansion. In the domain of the emotions, these phases are expressed most directly by the two primordial ways in which the psyche reacts to what it considers ‘reality’, namely on the one hand by fear, which is a contraction towards the centre of consciousness, and on the other hand by joy or hope, which is an expansion.

This expansion proper to joy finds a quite spontaneous expression in Arabic in the verb insharaha, ‘to rejoice’, which literally means ‘to broaden’, speaking of the chest filled with joy. The verb inbasata, which likewise signifies ‘to rejoice’, also contains, etymologically speaking, a sense of ‘expansion’. For the analogy between fear and contraction, verbal images could be cited from several languages; let us note only, as a particularly clear example, the kinship between the German word Angst, ‘fear’, and the Latin word angustus, ‘narrow’.

The ‘son of the moment’ and the names al-Qabid and al-Basit

Now, when it comes to consciously integrating these two phases into the universal order, they will have to cease referring to something conceived as external to themselves. When fear (al-khawf) and hope (ar-raja’) are oriented towards Allah, the universal Essence, they will not for all that be erased from the psychic domain, but will in a sense be given a rhythm, no longer subject to disorderly impulses. One might say that they will be determined, in a certain way, by the ‘present’ in time and by the ‘centre’ in space, the pole governing them and the goal towards which they tend having become one and the same reality.

If the phases of fear and hope are thus determined and absorbed by the permanent actuality of the immediate present, so that the Sufi disciple who realises them has become the ‘son of the moment’ (ibn al-waqt), they will manifest more essential aspects, and they will be designated by expressions containing a more general cosmological sense, such as ‘contraction’ (qabd) and ‘expansion’ (bast). It is thus that, among the names of Allah, are found al-Qabid, ‘He who contracts’ or ‘He who seizes’, and al-Basit, ‘He who expands’.

The two phases may then transform themselves into the complementary states of hayba, an expression we can only approximately translate as ‘awe of the majesty’, and of uns, ‘intimacy’.

Whereas it is said of the two phases of ‘contraction’ and ‘expansion’ that one is in proportion to the other, which indicates that they must be regarded as manifesting on a single and same plane, it is said of the state of hayba that it identifies with that of ghayba, ‘absence’ or ‘rapture’. Here takes place a passage from the horizontal to the vertical and, by the inversion through the narrow door of the barzakh, absence in the world of separativity (farq) becomes presence (hudur) in the world of union (jam’).

By way of synthesis, Qushayri cites the following words of Junayd (830-911), surnamed the ‘lord of the spiritual assembly’:

The fear of Allah contracts me (qabd), hope in Him expands me (bast);

the Truth (haqiqa) unites me and Justice (haqq) separates me.

If He contracts me through fear, He extinguishes me from myself (afnani ’anni),

and if He expands me through hope, He sends me back to myself.

If He unites me through the Truth, He places me in His presence (ahdarani),

and if He separates me through Justice, He makes me witness of the other-than-me, and thus veils me from Him.