/lit/ - Literature

>>18439990
>this shitty thread again

>>18439990
reddit thread

>>18439990
>Ibn Arabi
>son of Arab
was he a bastard?

>>18440914
his mother was berber I think

>He literally states that people worshipping stones are still worshipping God, only in a more limited way.
God is everything that exists. Worshipping a rock *is* worshipping God, but from a position of ignorance

>>18439990
>HAHA I POSTED IT AGAIN

>>18441060
So fucking what? If this really is the Greatest Sheikh then Islam has nothing to offer.

Was it schizophrenia?

>>18441060
Sure, but even the most exoteric normie knows that it completely pales in comparison to God's essence that there's no point seeing it that way. But the major disagreement is that the rock is simply not in any way operative. It doesn't lead to salvation. So to save a lot of time people know just to assume it's not God, case closed.

>>18441277
>>18442402
The point of that is too be humiliated and humbled by everything your eyes lay upon. You are and everything is nothing but God and God's plan, you can never escape Him and you are entirely reliant upon Him.
His metaphor of Him being a light and us being the mere shadow, totally a part of Him but entirely dependent upon His independent existence encapsulates the profundity of this concept.
How this is banal is unknown to me, unless you take the position of self-worship upon receiving this knowledge.

>>18442633
>The point of that is too be humiliated and humbled by everything your eyes lay upon.

Why? Even poo? No one lives like this. It's poetic excess and shouldn't be made into philosophy.

>>18442692
>Even poo? No one lives like this
That’s where you’re wrong. Even poo is of God.

>The theological line that the Aghori put at the forefront, however, is the notion that everything in creation partakes of Parmatma, the Supreme Being, and that therefore all category distinctions belong merely to the As Lal Baba represented his own spiritual quest to me, he seeks to become “like that ideal Aghori, the sun, whose rays illuminate everything indiscriminately and yet remain undefiled by the excrement they touch”

>>18442841
Now I understand why India is filled with disease.

>>18442849
It’s all God.

>>18439990
Guenon sucks ass.

>>18439990
Who?

>>18443747
Ibn Arabi, famous Sufi mystic originating from Spain.

>>18439990
>But he has a very cringe, banal, and proto-boomer take on the diversity of beliefs/conceptions of God. He literally states that people worshipping stones are still worshipping God, only in a more limited way. He claimed Noah caused the flood because he didn't see that there's still God in idolatry, and also that Pharaoh is saved. He thinks recognizing God in all things, while still knowing that God transcends all things, is so profound when really it's banal. Taking this seriously, rather than poetically, makes it difficult to apply moral standards to religion and to critique others in a substantial way. Relativist garbage
These are all cornerstone of classical theology. Is Nikolaus of Cusa banal? What about Meister Eckhart? Since when is teophany a banal, relativist stance?

>>18444743
Nicholas of Cusa and Eckhart aren't classical, nor are they by any means essential.

>>18444792
I think that up to the Renaissance it's classical, then it's modern.
I haven't said that they're essential (although I would claim they are), I have asked you wether they're banal and relativists. If they're not, then neither Ibn Arabi is so

>>18444811
It's medieval. I haven't read Cusa, but Eckhart doesn't interest me. There's similarities with Ibn Arabi, but the latter doesn't flee from the world in the way Eckhart does. Ibn Arabi thinks multiplicity can point to unity, Eckhart does not.

>>18445000
Eckhart absolutely thinks that multiplicity points to unity (only God has substantiality), and he is absolutely a theophanic thinker who thinks that God is in its fullness in literally everything. His notion of deattachment requires you to obliterate every determination: if you think that an object is more "godly" than another, then you're already still attached to creaturality.
You can the same themes in the section on the good of Pseudo-Dyonisis De Divinis Nomibus.

>>18445020
Also regarding the unity part, he believes that there can be unity even between God and His creatures. This unity can even be deliberated and comprehended, as it is in the case of fully detatched spirits, who not only are in perfect unity with God, but who also know that they are in this unity (unlike, say, rocks, or attached men).

>>18441277
>Greatest Sheikh
Pretty sure most normal Muslims would regard him as a weirdo or even as a kuffar for his ideas. The Muslims I interact with IRL would read Kitab at-Tawheed than his books.

>>18445081
One of the ottoman sultans liked him a lot and he even made a decree that everyone who speaks bad of Ibn Arabi, will have his head cut off. When the Mahdi will come, all of this salafis will pay for the hereises they said and did.

>>18445020

>>18445177

>>18445184

>>18445107
Really? Ibn Arabi said he received the Fusus al-Hikam directly from Muhammad. The book is written by Muhammad according to him. This means that Noah actually is an idiot and Pharaoh actually is saved.

If this came from the Muhammad then it's not up for debate. But that is a massive gamble to believe Ibn Arabi.

>>18445215
I don't think that those stories should be taken literally. Fusus al-Hikam is a part of Muhammad's teaching, not the whole, and for sure it isn't for the average muslims.

>>18445249
Most didn't take Ibn Arabi seriously, or else they wouldn't have contested points in the Fusus. That said, I think there's a lot of truth to the claim that Ibn Arabi sucked the life out of Islam and fossilized it. After him Islam sort of just withered away. Maybe the Salafists are right about Ibn Arabi after all.

>>18445408
>I think there's a lot of truth to the claim that Ibn Arabi sucked the life out of Islam and fossilized it. After him Islam sort of just withered away
What? I thought that Ibn Arabi led to a flourishing of Sufism as many later Sufis were inspired by his works and would cite them. What do you mean by "withering away" Aside from Spain, basically all the regions that were Muslim then still are now

>>18445429
Read the pic. Ibn Arabi divorced Sufism from the real world and made it about secret esoterism. This influence pervaded throughought the Muslim world but resulted in them not accomplishing much afterwards. In other words, it stopped growing and fossilized.

To say that he led to a flourishing of Sufism is exactly the problem. The Sufism didn't produce anything, and they've remained under the influence of Ibn Arabi ever since, unable to shake off his ideas and develop new ones.

>>18439990
Ibn Arabi is based

>>18445451
>Read the pic.
Yes, he provides rhetorical attacks but no historical examples to actually support what he is alleging
>his influence pervaded throughought the Muslim world but resulted in them not accomplishing much afterwards.
Not doing much and having influence that pervades throughout the Muslim world are mutually exclusive. Is he saying that at a certain point their influence stopped? When exactly? Why would he say that when there are prominent Muslim teachers and figures who praise and promote Ibn Arabi today?

> stopped growing and fossilized.
Yes, the picture and you have alleged this, but you haven't given any evidence or examples, and I can find plenty counter-examples that would imply this conclusion is wrong

>The Sufism didn't produce anything,
What do mean? They produced many many writings, William Chittick has written about traveling to India to find many manuscripts written by followers of Ibn Arabi all the way over in India, to say nothing of all his followers in the Arabic world. Or do you mean produce material things like buildings, businesses etc? That's not the point of Sufism

>>18445451
>and they've remained under the influence of Ibn Arabi ever since, unable to shake off his ideas and develop new ones.

And I'll add that Ibn Arabi himself predicted this and seems to have desired it, with his theory about the seal of the saints in The Book of the Fabulous Gryphon. Ibn Arabi claimed he was the seal of Muhammadan sanctity, and no one else after him would receive knowledge directly from Muhammad. Basically, he claims he will be the final boss of Islam, while carefully avoiding, but coming dangerously close, to saying he is on the level of Muhammad. It really does sound like he thinks he has completed Islam. And as I said, afterwards Islam fossilized (in the Spenglerian sense). But isn't this what Ibn Arabi wanted?

>>18445408
>>18445429
Sufism is a sucking the life out of Islam. I don't of course mean the sufism of Ibn Qudamah who fought under Saladin, or the sufism of Ibnul Qayyim (both very popular figures with jihadists btw). I mean the sufism of boy gazers and hookah smokers and effete philosophers and grave ravers and profound morons who think Islam is about spinning in circles and saying everything is love and we are all one

>>18439990
How do you pronounce "Ibn"?

>>18445508
Ibin (most often this), Ibna, Ibne, Bin or Ibnu, depending on context, sometimes with an option

>>18445485
Bro, you're proving my point. After Ibn Arabi, Islam is just about Ibn Arabi. Saying that there are million exegetes of Ibn Arabi is exactly the problem. They're stuck in his domineering influence.

> Or do you mean produce material things like buildings, businesses etc? That's not the point of Sufism

Not vulgar materialism, but earlier Sufism still had a societal function. Post-Ibn Arabi, Sufis remained detached from the Islamic community, preferring to remain in their esoteric clubs. It's only fairly recently in the 19th century with the resistance to colonialism that Muslim societies have regained a sense of social purpose.

>>18445495
The more I read about Ibn Arabi and his influence, the more I think you're absolutely correct. And there are western orientalists like Louis Massignon and Anne-Marie Schimmel, who have absolutely nothing to gain from endorsing the Salafist take in Sufism and in fact dislike Salafism for multiple reasons, who back this interpretation up.

>>18445495
based

>>18445519
>but earlier Sufism still had a societal function
does not al-Ghazali write about Sufism as an inner spiritual path though, and not as a group/community endeavor?

>>18445495
>Sufism is a sucking the life out of Islam
How does smoking hookah, visiting graves or dancing suck the life out of Islam if Sufis do that on their own time? They are not intruding upon other people by doing so or getting in the way of other Muslims going about their day to day lives. Are you saying that you would rather them spend their time in other ways? This is starting to remind me of the Anglo obsession with working.

>>18445666
>How does smoking hookah, visiting graves or dancing suck the life out of Islam if Sufis do that on their own time?

If you can't see how, then I don't know what to tell you. Critiquing this is not at all like the the Protestant work ethic.

>>18439990
>he had many female spiritual teachers
cringe if true

>>18446096
The teacher/master he served the longest under was a female.

>>18446078
>If you can't see how, then I don't know what to tell you.
None of those things are haram as far as I'm aware, you can do all of those things while maintaining remembrance of Allah and while living up to Islamic ideals, what exactly is the problem?

>>18446114
cringe

>>18445408
where is that from?

Zaehner, who studied comparative mysticism, points how every tradition has a monistic flavor, but that it is ultimately trap that leads to spiritual pride.

>There is danger certainly; but only if we mistake the part for the whole, only if we mistake our own soul in its timeless unity for the living God. According to the great Muslim mystic, Al-Junayd of Baghdad, this is not only a danger, but a trap that the Lord himself sets for the mystic who has advanced so far that he has put behind him the fear of God -- who has forgotten that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10. 31). Such a man will mistake his own soul for God, and in very single mystical tradition, whether it be Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim, this will happen; and again in each of these traditions this mistake will be refuted by mystics who have had the two experiences -- that of the "isolation" of the transcendent and timeless "self" or soul and that of the overwhelming eruption into that soul of the love of God. The mistake is so easy to make; indeed, it is almost inevitable, for man was made "in the image and likeness of God", and unless he knows God either by faith or, better still, by experience, he can scarcely fail to mistake the image, once purified by asceticism and a total detachment from all temporal things, from the living God whom the image reflects. This "trap" that God sets for the unwary soul the modern Jewish philosopher and mystic, Martin Buber, discerned and warned against in unforgettable words:...

>... The second type of mysticism is the most strange; it is that described "from his own unforgettable experience" by Buber, and philosophically pin-pointed by the Samkhya-Yoga in India: the experience of the unfractionable oneness of the transcendent self, separate and isolated not only from the world of matter and mind, but also from all other "selves" and from all present knowledge of the living God. This we meet with among the Sufis; it is probably what the Buddhists of the so-called "Defective Vehicle" understand by nirvana. It can be tasted by all men, for this is the "image of God" in the human soul which even Original Sin could not blot out. It is this "image" that the mystic, as Buber saw, is almost bound to mistake for the godhead itself, as the non-dualist Vedantis did, and as Vivekenanda has done in recent times. It is the "trap" that a jealous God puts in the way of the spiritually proud.

>>18446114
>When a man loves a woman, he desires union, that is, the goal of union which exists in love.
In the elemental form, there is no greater union than marriage. (10) By this appetite
encompasses all parts. For that reason, complete ritual washing is prescribed after
intercourse. Purification envelops him as annihilation in the woman was complete in the
obtainment of appetite. Allah is very jealous of His slave if He believes that he finds pleasure
in other than Him. So man purifies himself by ritual washing in order to return to Him in
whom he was annihilated, since that is all there is.
I believe we all know what is meant by Ibn Arabi 'serving under a woman'

>>18446204
Wow, Zaehner sounds amazing.

The pic is from Louis Massignon's "Essay on the Origin of the technical language of Islamic Mysticism". I believe he was westerner to argue that Sufism emerged from the Quran, and not outside sources via neoplatonism/Hinduism. But like the pic shows, he's very critical of the Akbarian school of Sufism (Ibn Arabi's).

>>18446217
Yeah, he was probably fucking her all the time. Stuff he says about women makes him sound a bit like a coomer.

>>18446119
OP can you answer this question made here in this quoted post? It's disappointing to see you make these negative insinuations about Ibn Arabi and then back away from it and not be able to substantiate your claims when pressed.

>>18446461
They've been substantiated. You just keep going, "yea but so what?"

>>18446470
>They've been substantiated.
No they weren't, are you confused?

You said "If you can't see how smoking hookah, visiting graves or dancing suck the life out of Islam then I don't know what to tell you" You never gave a reason why these things should be considered bad, you have presented no argument whatsoever.

I challenged you and said that none of those things are haram (as far as I know) and that you can do all of them while maintaining remembrance of Allah and while living according to Islamic ideals.

You never presented a counter argument to this above position of mine. It's as though you just want other people to accept your own assumptions and bias as true even though you don't give us any reason to.

>>18446500
>You said "If you can't see how smoking hookah, visiting graves or dancing suck the life out of Islam then I don't know what to tell you" You never gave a reason why these things should be considered bad, you have presented no argument whatsoever.

I didn't say that. But you're still doing the same "Yeah but so what? That doesn't count" whenever someone makes an argument you don't like.

>>18446527
>whenever someone makes an argument you don't like.
You never made an argument, stop being dishonest. You just said and I quote “If you can't see how, then I don't know what to tell you.”

Guess what? That’s not an argument anon

>>18446204
What's the source of this Zaehner quote?

>>18446204
>points how every tradition has a monistic flavor, but that it is ultimately trap that leads to spiritual pride.
His argument is circular, it relies on the presumption that it's wrong to begin with, so it's not very convincing.

>>18447098
>"Yeah but so what? That doesn't count"

>>18447162
???

>>18447073
Christianity and Other Religions, around pages 129-131. It can be found on archive.org. Tell me if you have trouble finding the citations.

>>18447098
It is not circular, he cites another mystic and the experience of contrary experiences as refutation for the monistic view. You might want to disregard this but it is not circular.

>>18447326
>experience of contrary experiences as refutation for the monistic view
Yes, but the monistic mystics cite their own experiences as refutations of the dualistic view, so then it just becomes a "he said" vs "she said" without any argument for either side being right, unless and until another argument is brought forward

>>18447341
well Zaehner admits the validity of the monistic view, though he says it is that of a spiritually proud person falsely identifying two things, so the monistic experience is really experienced, real in itself, but not ultimately true. do monists admit the validity of dualistic views even though they disagree with it? monism can't admit any plurality, only 'levels' of illusion. they can never admit the dualistic experience is real in itself

>>18447315
Great, thanks. He's got a lot of interesting books it seems, especially on Hinduism and Islam.

>>18447365
>do monists admit the validity of dualistic views even though they disagree with it?
Some do, in fact the majority of Hindu schools which propound a form of non-dualism or monism say that both the unity and difference are both real in some way. For example Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita Hinduism says that duality and monism are both real. It's mainly the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism which says that duality, plurality, multiplicity etc are ultimately illusory.
>monism can't admit any plurality, only 'levels' of illusion. they can never admit the dualistic experience is real in itself
This claim is precisely what many Hindu philosophers deny.

>According to Rāmānuja, Brahman is the Self of all. However, this is not because our individual personhood is identical with the personhood of Brahman, but because we, along with all individuals, constitute modes or qualities of the body of Brahman. Thus, Brahman stands to all others as the soul or mind stands to its body. The metaphysical model that Rāmānuja thus argues for is at once cosmological in nature, and organic. All individuals are Brahman by virtue of constituting its body, but all individuals retain an identity in contradistinction to other parts of Brahman, particularly the soul of Brahman.
https://iep.utm.edu/ramanuja/

>>18447429
yes, im aware of vishishtadvaita, but i still don't know how ramanuja differs from aquinas. the fact our being is grounded in the Supreme Being doesn't make the identification of ourselves as God real, as Ramanuja and Aquinas would say. it is the strict monistic identification of advaita and other monisms Zaehner is talking about, the annihilationist monism of self identification and dissolution of personality.

>>18447474
>but i still don't know how ramanuja differs from aquinas.
Aquinas says (as far as I understand) that the world is contingent upon God, but distinct from Him. Ramanuja says that the universe is quite literally the body of God and so it is non-distinct from God in that manner (God isn't different from His body), but that within God's body there exist a real multiplicity of internal differences that make one part of God different from another in terms of being subject to certain conditions which other parts aren't; and the fact of all the parts being God's body doesn't mean that these internal differences are unreal.
>it is the strict monistic identification of advaita and other monisms Zaehner is talking about
Yes I know, I guess the point that I'm trying to make is you can only refute such a view by a) demonstrating that there is some internal logical contradiction in the doctrine by which they explain it, or by b) pointing out that it's a flawed exegesis of the scriptures in question which they derive that doctrine from. But citing experience isn't a refutation of everything because it's easy for the opponent to say "such and such person's experience is wrong and they are deluded."

Advaitins would in many cases deny that Advaita is monism btw because they say (like Aquinas, Madhva and most Islamic thinkers) that the world is distinct from God. Non-dualism as propounded by Advaita doesn't fit neatly into either the category of dualism or monism (which under most definitions would require that the world be identical to or non-different from God); but it belongs to a unique category of its own.

>>18447526
What do you get out of shilling advaita 24/7? Most of the time it sounds like you're only trying to convince yourself.

>>18447944
>What do you get out of shilling advaita 24/7?
I don't shill Advaita in terms of creating random threads about it often and telling everyone to read it, I typically just mention it when appropriate when there is a conversation about mysticism, Hinduism, consciousness, Traditionalism etc when it becomes very relevant to post about something from the Advaita perspective that is directly related to the conversation at hand in that thread.

I do enjoy debating Buddhists and pointing out what I consider to be the logical inconsistences and contradictions inherent in Buddhism, Advaita sometimes comes up in this process of debating Buddhists, but usually it's because Buddhists randomly bring up and attack Advaita to deflect from my criticisms of Buddhism, even when attacking Buddhism I'm not really shilling Advaita.

It's rewarding when I have the occasional interesting conversation with other anons knowledgeable in eastern philosophy and there have been many instances of people thanking me before and expressing gratitude for me helping them understand something. This is nice when it happens but ultimately I'm just here for my own amusement and not because I'm seeking to proselytize or to garner the praise of others.

>Most of the time it sounds like you're only trying to convince yourself.
I find it funny that you would say that. I'm fully convinced Advaita is true, although I have a perennialist viewpoint where I see the esoterism and mysticism of other religions as (not always) but sometimes pointing to the same thing. I have done a lot of research and I have not found anyone eastern or western, secular or religious who does a better job of describing the nature of consciousness than Advaita; and none of the other religious doctrines seem to have as logical explanations of how creation etc takes place compared to Advaita IMO. I've been known as a presence on this board as someone who posts about Guenon and Hinduism for the last 5 years (I post about other stuff too like fiction but people don't know that's me), do you really think I would spend 5 years posting about and defending something I didn't believe was true?

>>18448046
hi guenonfag

>>18439990
>Ibn Arabi is always making claims about his intellectual and spiritual superiority, while constantly claiming you shouldn't have any aspects of "Lordship" yourself, (ie you should be completely modest) to become close to God. He can't stop comparing his spiritual level with others (usually to denigrate them and say they're of a lower rank) and he believes he is the seal of Muhammadan sanctity, meaning he has received the fullness of the knowledge of Muhammad and no one after him will get knowledge of God directly from Muhammad. They will all have to get it directly from other saints/prophets, and only indirectly from Muhammad.

Peak prelest.

>>18441060
it doesn't make sense.

>>18448297
hello

>>18448656
this >>18442633
makes sense, but to assume that anything like this is happening when someone is worshiping stones is going a bit far as far as I can see. Everybody worships something, right? But not all worship is equal. If we say that the act of worship itself is always worship of God then there is literally no reason to even have knowledge of God. We all know fundamentally this is not correct.

>>18448694
>If we say that the act of worship itself is always worship of God then there is literally no reason to even have knowledge of God. We all know fundamentally this is not correct.

Exactly. Like this anon said. >>18442402
It's cheesy poetic excess, at best.