Through Experience to Mysticism to Knowledge

I come to know about the world through experience. My senses inform me of objects I encounter in the world. I can investigate them and learn about them. I can read books about them, listen to someone explaining to me what it is I am looking at. So if experience is the means through which I encounter the world, it seems worthwhile to investigate these experiences; how do I experience the world? What are those experiences and what are the limitations of those experiences? For the limitations of my experience might very well be the limits of my knowledge.

Sometimes experiences are simple sensory ones; an object comes into my awareness through sensory experiences. But yet this is not all there is to an experience. When I see the ocean waves crashing on the deck of my ship, trying to grasp it like hands pulling it into the dark of the ocean, I don't just see the waves. It doesn't end there. The entirety of sensual input moves me. It stirs some emotions within me. I might feel scared, or a sense of awe for the majesty and power of the water.

After the storm has subsided and the sun rises early in the morning, shining its warm light over the water, letting it sparkle like thousands of little diamonds floating on the surface I might feel gratitude and bliss for having survived the storm and seeing the beauty of the sun.

I experienced something more than just the water, I experienced something beyond myself as well. I experienced something bigger than myself. These experiences are not rare at all. Feeling connected with something beyond ourselves is something we have rather often; laughing with a stranger or crying with a friend. It makes us feel connected. Like we belong. I might feel the magic of life when staring at the stars at night, laying on my back and seeing them slowly float across the night sky.

These experiences of connection, awe and wonder might be called mystical. It feels as if the world makes more sense. At these moments I understand, at least at a deep non-linguistic level, my place in the universe. How I relate to the world. Everything starts to make a little bit more sense.

These experiences, although mystical in nature, are just glimpses of the potential of mystical experience. According to the mystics of Sufi Islam mystical experience brings us closer to God and is a way of receiving knowledge. It gives us metaphysical knowledge of the world. We gain knowledge of God through experience. How do we get these experiences to know him? Sufis say through practise, for practices will help us to have the right experiences in order to get closer to God. These practices are described in the Quran, which is a gift from God to guide us to know Him and so for Him to know Himself. As there is no difference in kind, only in degree, which means we are like God, although we are not God. Creating creation and creation learning to know itself is a way for God to know himself.

So the scripture of the Quran is of great importance for the Sufi mystics. We know this has to do with the fact that it is a gift from God to get to know him, but how did that translate to the scripture? Hamadani, a Sufi master from the 11th century, drew a comparison with the human ontology: a human consists of a body + a soul. Scripture consists of paper & ink, which makes the body of the text. But to make it complete, Godlike, it needed the part of the soul. Scripture is a physical text but with a metaphysical speaker, which is God. He can be found between the lines. If you read carefully you can find the spirit of the text. So it depends on you, the reader, what you read. As an infidel, you will not hear god speaking. So in that sense it is not your fault if the Quran does not speak to you and you are not convinced, for you did not know how to listen. The Quran is not the letters on the page, but God's word in a metaphysical sense. It has both internal and external meaning.

For no exact words can capture the divine, just as mystical experience can not be put into words. Even everyday experiences are hardly caught in words. I may describe the situation in which I had the experience of fear and awe for the ocean, but my words can never carry the experience to another. It is only if you have had similar experiences that you can somewhat understand what I am talking about. But words never capture the experience in itself, they can only point towards it and sometimes you know how to walk that direction and sometimes you do not. If you do not know the way, you won't be able to find it. The same is certainly true for mystical experience as well. Words can only hint at what hides behind the veil of the ordinary world. The best way to get the message across is by means of poetry: it is emotive language, it moves and stirs you, it points the way and if you are open for it leads you a bit along the way. Poetry is the entry to experience and is thus the best tool we have for describing and conveying the experiences of the mystical. So through scripture and poetry we get to (mystical) experience, which in turn gives us metaphysical knowledge.

But do we always get this knowledge, automatically? The Sufis tell us we do not. We are not the acting agent, God is. We can walk the stairs to the higher levels through practice, but God can still decide to keep the doors shut. It is only if God wills it that we have access to this knowledge. This is in contrast with the philosophical worldview which descended from neo-platonism, where we are the actors and God is the stage. We walk the stairs through practice and philosophical discourse and when we get to the next level the doors are open for us to enter. It entirely depends on us, and not on the will of God. God is passive. He creates, but does not partake.

We all know Rumi; he was doing exactly this; trying to let us get a glimpse of his mystical experiences through poetry. In the next blog I will take a closer look at Rumi.