Tag: Ruh

Before light there was Light - invisible, previsible. Moses asked to see the Light but how could he see with eyes? Light beyond light, Light beyond eyes.

Light’s mercy was to create shadow so that we might see light - a pale, obscure, wavering reflection.

Light’s mercy was to create eyes so that we might see yellow, red and blue. Light’s mercy was to create green so that we might see Beauty.

I am a Muslim who sometimes attends my local Quaker meeting. In England, Quaker meetings offer unstructured worship where one sits in silence until someone feels moved to speak. In my local meeting I can generally enjoy 30 mins of silent meditation or dhikr until someone speaks. In the silence, Quakers wait on God “as if none were present but the Lord” and the metaphors they commonly use to describe God are spirit and light, which map to the Sufi concepts of ruh and noor.

I want to offer a perspective on conceptuality and reason on the spiritual path. I will mainly draw on Buddhist source material, but will also include some references to Sufi Islam. In his ‘Root Text on the Mahamudra’, the first Panchen Lama, Losang Chökyi Gyaltsän, says

“The mind that is free from conceptualization Is merely a level of conventional mind; It is not the mind’s ultimate nature. Therefore seek instruction from qualified Masters.”

Islam places creativity and art at the centre of human existence. Everything humans produce has an aesthetic quality, even the way we drive or speak. Art is the ability to generate beauty and we can all be artists in whatever we do, by doing it beautifully. This is ihsan. For example, our relationships need the quality of ihsan. Sound relationships are creative, and are based on the recognition of others’ souls. Human beings are the summit of creation, not to exploit others but to help the rest of creation to flourish. The Muslim as khalifa is a gardener, an artist, a carer of ophans. If we behave in these beautiful ways we will naturally embue our surroundings with beauty, just as the “classical mosques were built in the form of peoples’ souls” (1) as natural expressions of beauty rather than deliberate artistic creations.

The spirit is impractical. The spirit is of no use. It cannot be used. Any attempt to use the spirit contravenes its nature. Impractical spirituality is based on this recognition. Rather than try to use the spirit, impractical spirituality enjoys the beauty of spirit for its own sake.

To directly seek practical applications of the spirit such as ‘spirituality in the workplace’ is to miss the point. Sure, we can appreciate the beauty of the spirit anywhere: in the home, workplace, in the car, or on a plane – but attempts to put the spirit to use in those places are like trying to form water into a chair.

The concept I want to introduce is the Hegelian concept of ‘Geist’. When talking at a macro level about the rise and fall of civilisations or empires, the concept of Geist can be illuminating.

The point is that all national, religious and organisational success factors that can be identified by conventional study are secondary factors, the manifestations of Geist. The primary cause of success is Geist itself and the secondary factors are, in a sense, incidental. Even if an organisation possesses many of the factors that have made other organisations successful in the past, it will not be successful without Geist.