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Imagination As Theophany in Islam” Author: William Chittick Source: Temenos Academy Review 6 (2003) Pp

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Imagination As Theophany in Islam” Author: William Chittick Source: Temenos Academy Review 6 (2003) Pp THE TEMENOS ACADEMY “Imagination as Theophany in Islam” Author: William Chittick Source: Temenos Academy Review 6 (2003) pp. 65-82 Published by The Temenos Academy Copyright © William Chittick, 2003 The Temenos Academy is a Registered Charity in the United Kingdom www.temenosacademy.org Imagination as Theophany in Islam* Wrrrrena C. CSITTICK fmagination in Islam is a vast topic. One way to approach it would be Ito offer a few exampies of how Muslims have put it to use in the creative arts, such as poetry, music, or calligraphy. Today, however, I want to look at the theory of imagination as developed by some of the many thinkers who have discussed it, though I will also take advan- tage of the occasion to cite a few lines of poetry. Especially important here is Ibn Arabi, the great thirteenth-century theologian, philosopher, jurist, and Sufi whose focus on imagination is well known, largely thanks to the writings of Henry Corbin.' By choosing to speak about 'imagination as theophany', I wanted to highlight a point thar can get lost or obscured in studies of imagina- tion that fail to draw from the Muslirn theoreticians themselves or that isolate the topic from its broader context. This point is that tatahtd - the assertion of the unity of God - underlies the Islamrc understanding of imagination, just as it informs all theoretical writings and creative expressions that have a claim on Islamicity. My title is meant io suggest that the concept of imagination largely overlaps with that of theo- phany. In other words, many Muslim theoreticians understand imagina- tion primarily as an expression of the divine unity. I need to begin by defining ,orrr" ,.r-s. The Arabic word that is commonly rendered into English as'imagination'is khayal.' In analys- ing the human soul, the Muslim philosophers use the word to des- ignate one of the inner senses or faculties. Typically they make it one of " 'fext of a lecture given at the 'Iemenos Academy, London, z6 }une zooz. r. See especially corbin, creclfitle Imagination in the Su;l:ism of Ibn Ara.bl (Princeton: princeton bniversity Press, 1969). See also Chittick, The sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-Arabt's Metaplrysics of Imagination (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989) and idem, Imaginal Woilds (Albany: SUNY Press, t994). z. There are other important technical terms whose meanitt5is overlap with those of khafil, but none of thern has the same inclusiveness, and discr-rssing them would take nreloo far afield. These include ruahm, mithal, sura, and zahir. 66 wILLIAM c. cHITTICK the basic types of perception or comprehension. They say, for example, that we perceive things in three ways - by the senses, by imagination, and by intellect. The senses perceive things that are actually present in the physical world. Imagination perceives the same things, but inside the soul rather than outside. The intellect, which is the spiritual core of the individual, perceives the intelligible essences of things, without the intermediary of senses or imagination. The philosophers differ among themselves in many details, but they all make the point that imagination is a faculty situated somewhere between the senses and the intellect. Its most obvious property is its in-betweenness, or the fact that it brings together the characteristics of the soul's highest and lowest powers. \Atrhat I have just said about khayalis not too far from the basic mean- ing of the word imagind.tion inEnglish. There is one connotation of the fnglistr word, however, that is not present in the Arabic. This is the idea of ireativity. It is of course acknowledged that imagination does not simply replicate what the senses perceive, and that it is able to synthe- size various disparate elements and to make novel forms. But the word klayaldoesnotimmediately suggest a creative powel When Corbinwrote about ,creative imagination'in Ibn'Atabt, he did not have the Islamic understanding of imagination in mind. I am not suggesting that Corbin misrepresents Ibn 'Arabi here, but it should not be thought that ibn 'Arabr would use the wofi khayalnthe sense that Corbin uses the expres- sion'creative imagination'- or that Ibn'Arabt, or some other Muslim thinker, uses a corresponding Arabic pfuase (such as al:aql al-khall.aq). So, one meaning of the word khayal is the faculty of imagination. This is a technical meaning that was established by thinkers who were analysing the nature of human perception and cognition. When we look at the non-technical use of the word, we find that the earlier and more basic sense of khayal is not 'imagination' but 'image'- When dictionaries explain the meaning of the word, the examples they cite include reflections, shadows, and scarecrows. When we look in a mirror, we are seeing a khayd.l, an 'image', and we are not simply imagining things. The image is actually there, though obviously not in the same way that the observer or the mirror is there. Of course, dictionaries also cite dreams and mental images in general as examples of. khayAl. In this case the 'image' is also 'imagination'. In pre-Islamic poetry, the poet is commonly visited by the khayal of his beloved, and one does not get the impression that he is simply IMAGINATIoN AS THEoPHANY IN ISLAM 67 thinking about her. Rather, her image really cornes to him and actually makes itself present to him. In Sufi poetry, the same word is used - by Rumi, for example - to designate a visitation by the divine beloved. In this sense, the beloved's image can be perceived as having more reality than the world and everything it contains. The world is then seen as an image of an image. Ibn 'Arabi puts the image of God at the very heart of Islamic spirit- uality. Following a standard classification that goes back to the Prophet, he divides the religion of Islam into three basic levels: islAm or sub- mission to God through practice, Imd.n or faith and understanding, and ihsaru or'doing what is beautiful'. The Prophet defined doing what is beautiful by saying, 'It is that you should serve God as if you see Hirn, for, if you do not see Him, He sees you.' Ibn'Arabi reads this state- ment as voicing the indispensable role of imagination for achieving focus on God. He points out that the phrase 'as If' (ka-anna) designates khayal, for it is precisely the faculty of imagination that allows us to see God as ifhe were actually present. Ibn 'Arabi is saying that proper devotional activities and contem- plative techniques lvill turn the God that we picture in our minds into the actual presence of God. Then it rviil no longer be a question of 'as if', for at that point there wiil be an actual encounter with God's reality. The imagining soul somehow merges with the divine image, and the divine image is somehow identical with God himself. Ibn 'Arabr's basic proof-text for this is a famous hadtth qudsl, which he cites more often than any other saying of the Prophet: My servant never ceases drawing near to Me through supereroga- tory works until l love him. Then, when i love him, i am his hearing through which he hears, his sight through which he sees, his hand through which he grasps, and his foot through which he walks. Let me now turn to the *ora tnrr)t',any. TheGreek original obviously means the appearance or manifestation of God. I have in mind the Arabic word tajalh, which in itself does not suggest that God is involved. The basic meaning of the word is to become clear, apparent, manifest, evident. I normally translate it as 'disclosure' or 'se1f-disclosure.' The importance of the term in Islamic thought derives from the Koranic verse in which Moses asks God to show himself. God replies that Moses 68 WILLIAM C. CHITTICK will not see him. He then tells him to look at the mountain. If the mountain stays in place, he will see him. The verse goes on to say, 'When his Lord disclosed Himselftothe mountain, He made it crumble to dust, and Moses fell down thunderstruck' (7:t43). This Koranic passage has been the subject of endless meditation and debate. Its interpretation has always played an important role in the hotly disputed theological issue of the vision of God (ru'ya).In the philo- sophical Sufism favoured by Ibn 'Arabi and his followers, the term is used in discussing both the vision of God and the ontological status of the universe. The connection between tajallt and khayal is not difficult to see. Tajallt means disclosure, manifestation, showing, and, when God is the explicit or implied subject, it means a divine showing, a theo- phany. Although the word khayalcan denote imagination, the faculty that perceives images, even more basically it designates the image itself, that is, what is disclosed, what is shown, what appears, and this is precisely the meaning of tajalh. In the Koran, the idea that both the universe and the human soul are theophanies is a basic theme, though the word tajallt itself is used only twice (trn the other verse, g2:2, the subject is not God but rather 'daytime'). The Koran most commonly expresses the notion of theo- phany with the word A.ya, sign or mark, which is used almost four hundred times. In the transparent universe described by the text, every- thing is a sign of God. The book repeatedly refers to natural pheno- mena as signs, and it wonders why people fail to reflect upon the heavens, the earth, the mountains, the birds, and why so many of them are unable to see the evidence of God's reality wherever they look.
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