The Inner Book

A feature article by Sharon Marcus, Apr 10, 2008         

These letters of mystery written on the heart by a pen dipped in light form the inner book we have to learn to decipher and read. Just as we have to build the inner mosque before we can learn to pray, learn the meaning of true prayer, the resonance which comes from God and returns to Him, we also have to learn how to open the inner book before we can approach the experience of our life to learn the secrets, unravel the mysteries and know who we are. The outer book placed in our hands, something we can study and memorize, recite and quote to support a range of ideas, philosophies, attitudes, prejudices and presumptions, might or might not be the message as it came from God, the truth as God intended. Just take the history of the Bible, certainly a compilation of sacred texts, but translated from uncertain or ambiguous sources, transposed, lopped, cut and burned by councils, committees and decrees, some texts deliberately suppressed, others condensed or distorted. It is hard to know what to accept and what to hold in reserve.

Even when we can have confidence in the accuracy and validity of the written document, (the Qur’an was transmitted by revelation to the prophet Muhammad then verified by him as it was transcribed) we need the wisdom of grace to understand the depth and range of meaning, to know with certainty that when the Qur’an prescribes cutting off a hand as punishment for theft, we have to recognize it is not talking about the physical hand, the outer hand, it refers to the hand of desire, the hand that reaches out with longing for things it is not entitled to. There is no question of mutilation or torture when we see that it is desire which must be contolled and cut off. Similarly, we are to understand that the only sword to be used in the spread of Islam is the sword of iman, the sword of absolute faith ratified and sustained by the certitude of truth and the commitment, the insistence of wisdom. During the lifetime of Muhammad the use of any outer sword was in self-defense, under great duress, although in the years after his death this was not a principle so scrupulously adhered to, as the true meaning of Islam was submerged in a multiplicity of sects and institutions, much like other religions.

It is one thing to recite a text from memory which we might or might not actually understand, which might or might not be valid, it is another thing to have wisdom, knowledge of the divine. There is a well-known tradition which tells us that even as he gave his dedicated, loving followers the words of Allah in the Qur’an, Muhammad urged them to go all the way to China if necessary in the pursuit of ‘ilm, divine knowledge, to learn the things they needed to learn, to understand the things they needed to understand. This means we have to travel beyond the outer, we have to go to the secret, mysterious inner places of the heart where wisdom is first ignited and then allowed to grow, to take form in words, thoughts and acts. We must search for a teacher of divine knowledge, a teacher of truth, a qutb who brings the divine revelations in his very existence, who can show us the alphabet of our body, letters like the alif, lam, mim, ha’ and dal which write alhamd, the heart of our truth, the purified heart of praise, the physical heart turned upside down so that the point is directed up to God.

ADVERTISEMENT:

When we understand that our own body correctly understood holds the keys to unlock mysteries, then we have to learn how to read it, recognize that here we have an authentic source, a revelation of sacred letters which compose a text we should learn to read, a text of hieroglyphs we need to decipher, each of us, individually. We will be given guidance, the path leading within must be illuminated by the grace of Allah and the light of the qutb, His nur of wisdom, but the work is ours, the effort is ours. The commitment to this effort is the first thing we have to understand; the acknowledgment there is work to be done, that changes in our words, our assumptions, intentions and our actions must follow from the things we discover on this inner navigation comes next. If we merely talk about this, think it sounds interesting, attractive, a good thing to contemplate but take no steps to change who we are on the basis of what we find here, we are merely running in place: nothing happens because nothing changes.

The supportive, elemental structure, the earth, fire, air, water, ether or space configuration needs to be analyzed, understood and maintained, but the inner book is related to our sixth aspect, the ray of light which is our soul, the essence of life flowing from before to beyond, merely passing through space and time for a brief interval. We come here to learn the truth about ourself and God, to learn in what sense the world is a reflection of the divine intention and purpose, and in what sense it is irrelevant to the liberation of our soul, its return to God, our realization of the illuminating wisdom which will take us back to our beginning, to the permanence of no beginning and no ending. The path we take is the path of purification because purity alone can approach perfection, the totality of One. Learning to read the letters of the inner book is the process of purification, there is no Rosetta stone; it is water carving its own path, fire burning away the diseased or unnecessary, earth absorbing impurities and air, the transforming dhikr, the la ilaha ill-Allahu breathing its remembrance of God with every breath.

We read now the underlying causes of our successes and failures on the path to Him, eliminating the fires of imperfection, transforming the outer senses into instruments of divine perception. We see with eyes which see as He sees, looking only at light; we hear with the inner ear which hears only His sounds, His truth; we taste with a tongue which tastes only His food of divine wisdom, which utters His words alone; we catch the fragrance of the divine with the inner nostril of grace, the scent of roses or jasmine when there are no flowers; and we read the truth of who we are in the radiant light of the purified heart which examines our own faults and mistakes instead of seeing what is less than perfect in someone else. This is vanakkam, bowing down to His qualities and actions, to the words of truth brought by the messengers, the prophets and qutbs, greeting His justice with our hands pressed together and our head inclined.

With the wisdom of Moses we have climbed the mountainous heights of mind and desire, we have learned to harness them so that the conversation with God can begin. We learn to read the meaning of alif, lam and mim on mi‘raj, the haqiqat state of ascent, the truths of the inner book written in a text we can now decode and decipher. We can hear Him and He can hear us.

Excerpt from the book The Sufi Experience.

Email this page to a friend Display printer-friendly version Rate this item / View member comments Report irrelevant / inappropriate content Return to the Alumbo! home page