“So I call to witness the rosy glow of sunset, the night and its progression, the moon as it grows into fullness, surely you will travel from stage to stage.” Quran (84:16-19)
In Islamic spirituality, the aspect of God as Love and Light is particularly significant.
As far as love is concerned, it is asserted that, there are “People He loves and who love Him.” (Quran V, 54). The well-known sacred Hadith,“I was a Hidden Treasure and I loved to be known intimately, so I created the heavens and the earth that you may know Me intimately.” This places the very cause of creation in God’s “wanting” or “loving” to be known. “Here love is spoken not as an emotion, a feeling or sentiment rather love is seen as nothing short of the very unleashing of God onto this realm of being. It is through love that God brings the cosmos into being, it is through love that we are sustained, and it is by merging with the cosmic current of love that we are led back Home. Here God speaks in that intimate voice, the “I” voice—not the Transcendent “He,” not the Royal “We,” but the deeply personal “I”.“I was a Hidden treasure,” and the phrase translated, as “I loved to be known intimately” is read as expressing a host of divine desires, “I loved, I yearned, I desired to be known intimately.” It is as if the desire of love bubbled up inside God’s own heart, turning and churning, until even God could not restrain that desire anymore.
This love rises up inside of God, until it bursts forth as creation, a mighty big bang of love in the form of a desire to be known. There are many words in Arabic for knowledge, and the one used in this hadith,u’rifa, i.e. to know intimately. God doesn’t want to be known discursively, merely rationally, in the cool and distant intellect. God wants to be tasted and known in our bones. God is whispering to humanity, “I yearn to be tasted.” The knowledge spoken of here is something more intimate, immediate, and more primal. It is a knowledge that mingles in our hearts, uniting and uplifting all that makes us human.
Nowadays when we speak about love, we almost refer exclusively to romantic love. For the mystics, love is light; Love comes unabashedly, radiantly, in a thousand different shades and colors that still blend into One. According to these early mystics, human love was, in comparison with love for God, but a metaphor. It was as if we had to master the alphabet of human love before we would compose the great sonnet of divine love. That all changed with the eruption of the passionate path of radical love of mystics, sages, poets, and seekers. These were the luminous souls, who knew that there is ultimately One Love. This radical love is reflected in a beautiful poem in which Rumi talks about this overflowing, spilling over love, as one that mingles between God and humanity, humanity and humanity, this world and that world, here and there, now and forever. “Look, love mingles with Lovers, See: spirit mingling with body. How long will you see life as “this” and “that”? “Good” and “bad.” Look at how this and that are mingled. A love mingled and mingling.”
“These mystics (Sufis) saw themselves as reaching for the same mingled and mingling radical love and luminous mercy that pours out through the Qur’an. After all, does not every chapter of the Qur’an (except for one) start with a reminder of how God’s mercy, compassion, and tenderness enfold the universe the way that a mother contains an unborn child? While their path of a radical love is certainly one that is universally resonant, it also has an unmistakable fragrance of the ascension of Muhammad (PBUH). All Muslims aspire to emulate Muhammad’s (PBUH) actions. These mystics yearned for more. As Muhammad (PBUH) rose to see God face to face, they too seek to ascend to see God face to face. All humanity will encounter God in the hereafter. These mystics want to see the Face of God here and now. For these mystics, love is fire, a purifying fire that burns away selfishness, greed, anger, ego, and leaves behind nothing but God,” writes, Omid Safiin Radical Love.
One of God’s Names is al-Wadud, (He who loves) and Sufis usually refer to the Divine as the object of love. The term used for love by later Sufis is ‘ishq’ implying intense love, but the emphasis on the love that God has for man and the creation and that man should have for God can be found in the very sources of the Islamic Revelation. One of the Prophet’s names is ‘Ḥabib Allah,’ literally, friend or beloved of God and that Muslim saints over the centuries have seen in the love of God for the Prophet and in his love for God the prototype of all love between man and his Creator. God loved the Prophet (PBUH) so much that He addressed him in these words:-
“If thou wert not, I would not have created the heavens.” “No understanding of Islamic spirituality is possible without comprehension of the element of love for God, which marks all authentic expressions of spirituality. The Name of God as Light (al-Nur) is directly connected to those spiritual paths, which emphasize the way of knowledge, for according to the Prophet, “al-ilmunurun,” knowledge is light.
“God is the Light (nur) of the heavens and the earth.” (Quran XXIV 35). All light issues from His Light, from the physical light of the candle, to the light of the sun and even beyond the angelic and archangelic lights, which illuminate the soul. The reality of God as light has impacted Islamic Spirituality, Schools of Sufism and Islamic Philosophy.” —To continue.
—The writer is author of six books including “Islamic Spirituality and Mysticism, the Path and destination’ & ‘The Philosophy of Rumi and its relevance in the Present Times.
(muhammadtahir50@hotmail.com)
