The allusive science (ishara), by Kalabadhi

By Kalâbâdhî · November 27, 2022 · 5 min read

The sciences of the Sufis are the sciences of spiritual states. Now, spiritual states are the inheritance of works, and only the one whose acts are right inherits from works. To make acts right, the first thing is to know the sciences relating to them: that of the legal prescriptions, which form the object of the foundations of the law and their applications, such as prayer, fasting and all the other prescriptions, and that of social relations, such as marriage, transactions and all that God has imposed or recommended, as well as all that is indispensable for living. Each of these sciences is acquired through study, and what matters is to lavish one’s efforts on seeking to obtain this knowledge within the measure of one’s possibilities, one’s natural capacities and one’s faculties of understanding. […]

The disciple’s concern must be to use his knowledge and to put into practice what he knows. What is then necessary for him is first of all the science of the faults of the soul. It is a matter of knowing one’s soul, of orienting it and rectifying its natural inclinations. From there it becomes possible to foil the traps of Satan, the temptations of the world, and to find the means of being preserved from them. And that science is the science of wisdom.

Once the soul respects certain disciplines of life, it is easier for the disciple to rectify his personal dispositions and to purify their manifestations. The aim is to empty the soul of all that flatters it, to turn it away from the world and to detach it from perishable things. The disciple is then in a position to restrain his passions and to purify the depths of his conscience. Such is the science of self-knowledge.

Beyond that, there then come the sciences of what arises in the conscience, the sciences of contemplations and unveilings. It is these that constitute the science of symbolic allusion (ishara), which is proper to the Sufis and is obtained after those already mentioned.

Why speak in allusions

The term “symbolic allusion” is used because the contemplations of hearts and the revelations to the inmost core of beings cannot truly be expressed. What is more, being objects of knowledge only through “dwelling places” and “inner discoveries”, only he who travels through these states and resides in these spiritual stations knows them.

According to Abu Hurayra, the Prophet Muhammad said: “There is a kind of hidden science, known only to those who are learned through God. If they speak of it, only those who fail to recognise God contradict them.” Another hadith on the science of the interior (batin) evokes a divine word: “It is one of My mysteries; I deposit it in the heart of My servant and none of My creatures understands it.”

Each spiritual station (maqam) has a beginning and an end, between which there are different states. To each station corresponds a science (’ilm), and to each state corresponds a symbolic allusion. Each station, moreover, comprises an affirmation and a negation: all that is denied in that station is not denied in the one that precedes it, and all that is affirmed there is not affirmed in the one below it. It can therefore happen that a Sufi speaks of a certain station, formulating the affirmations and negations proper to it, before listeners who have not reached that station. What he denies will be precisely what they affirm, and they will immediately suppose that the Sufi is denying what traditional teaching affirms. These listeners will then brand what they have heard as error, heresy, even marks of impiety.

These things being well known in the history of Sufism, it is preferable to use symbolic expressions, understandable to the one who has reached a certain degree, but impenetrable to the listener who is not there yet. And then one of two things: either this listener will have a good opinion of the speaker, will accept what he says, will look within himself and judge himself incapable of grasping the expressions in question; or the listener will have a bad opinion of him, will consider that he is uttering extravagances and will treat him as a madman, which is nevertheless preferable for him than to reject or deny a truth.

A theologian asked Ibn ‘Ata’ al-Adami (died 922) why the Sufis used expressions that plunged their listeners into the greatest astonishment. Ibn ‘Ata’ answered: “We do this because our adoration of Him is too jealous and His greatness is too dear to us for others (non-initiates) to be able to taste its secrets.” He went on to recite these verses:

It is preferable that we clothe what He manifests, and which we know when the Truth appears in hearts.

This manifestation speaks to me of Him, and in my turn I speak to it of Him. I cover His radiance with that which will hide Him from the ignorant man who would corrupt its meaning in expressing it.

The latter could not employ the suitable words, nor even reveal an infinitesimal part of it, and would then go and report it to other ignorant men.

It is then that the cohorts of ignorance would appear, while the true science would disappear and its traces be effaced.

When people who speak the common language (’ibara) question us, we answer them with the expressions of symbolic language (ishara).

We bear witness to spiritual experiences while rendering them obscure, so that they cannot be translated into plain language.

But we bear witness to them above all through the joy that pervades every member of our body.

So you see that words are the captives of the “states”, just as erring men are the captives of the sages.

Kalabadhi (died 990), Treatise on Sufism*, Actes Sud editions.*