Suluk

Moreover, in order to complete the journey or path (suluk) towards the truth (haqiqa), one must exercise a certain degree of craziness, madness, and insanity in order to drive away and repel everything except for the essence. Hence, to complete the journey or path towards the truth is to be alone with the essence (majzoob). As one poem states: 

Alone with a lone God he is alone;

One he remains, for his Desire is One.

So I have seen them, each in his degree. 

Those solitary seekers; and lo, he

That travels farthest nearest is to goal. 

One from the witnessed world, with zeal of soul,

Turns, and soars upwards, upwards in his flight

Alone, alone in all his suffering,

Another upwards from his soul doth spring

In lonely ecstasy. Another breaks

The clinging bonds of selfhood, and awakes

Alone, yet not alone: the bounteous Lord

Receives His own elect with love outpoured.

Love in its interpersonal form is a manifestation of the absolute essence in its finite form (Tajalli). As one poem states:

The absolute overflows.

Infinite possibilities

concatenate into finite, 

travelling configurations,

yearning a return

to absoluteness. 

And to love is virtually the same as contemplating the beloved and to place the beloved above all else. Also, from contemplation arises a range of possibilities. But there is something beyond mere appearances which goes into love. As Ibn Arabi wrote: “For through the knowledge which arises in contemplation he turns to face what is beyond each appearance: the Truth beyond appearances. For the Apparent One, though He is one in essence, is infinite in aspects. They are his traces in us.” 

In turn, what is manifest is thus one possibility which has come to realization or reality out of a range of possibilities. Why this as opposed to something else? As a result, creation – which contains within itself infinite possibilities – is distinct from manifestation, given that manifestation is just one of these infinite possibilities contained within creation. As René Guénon argued: “Metaphysically, manifestation necessarily presupposes certain possibilities capable of being manifested; but if it proceeds thus from possibility, one cannot say that it comes from ‘nothing,’ for it is obvious that possibility is not ‘nothing.’”

Guénon added: 

“But perhaps one may object that this is then precisely contrary to the idea of creation. The answer is easy: all possibilities are contained in total Possibility, which is but one with the Principle itself; it is thus ultimately in this latter that the possibilities are really contained in a permanent state and for all eternity; and, besides, if it were otherwise they would truly be ‘nothing,’ and there could no longer even be a question of possibilities.” 

As a result, there are possibilities and realities which are non-manifest but actually exist, even though they are not manifest as in the current manifestation of reality. And what manifests comes out of an infinite number of possibilities which could manifest themselves. Now, imagine all that it took in order to get to where one is at the moment. Everything had to work in conformity with the one possibility which has manifested out of an infinite number of possibilities in order to get us to where we are now and to get us to the current level of knowledge and understanding and thus the current level of being and consciousness which we have now reached in concert with and in reaction to the current manifestation of reality. 

Another definition of “possibility” in relation to the dichotomy of creation and manifestation is from Frithjof Schuon, where he writes: “Possibility is nothing other than the Infinitude of the Real. To speak of Infinitude is to speak of Potentiality: and to affirm that Possibility as such, or Potentiality, both veils and unveils the Absolute, is simply a way of expressing the duo-dimensional nature – in itself undifferentiated – that we can discern analytically in the absolute real.” In essence and in short, the possibility of bliss and love and their actualization and realization as a result of a methodical journey and path.