Toshihiko Izutsu

THE THEOPHAN1C EGO IN SUFISM

An Analysis of the Sufi Psychology of Najm al-Din Kubra
Sufism is a complex
H
is to r ic a lly a s w e ll a s s tr u c tu r a lly
phenomenon. In the earliest periods of its development, the Sufis
were not at all interested in theorizing and thinking; the main
emphasis was naturally laid on the practice of ascetism and devotion.
But soon outstanding mystics began to appear, who could very well
be considered each an independent thinker with peculiar ideas of
his own about mystical experience, based on an original interpreta
tion of the esoteric aspects of Islam. The sayings and doings of these
early masters, remembered and recorded by their followers, gradu
ally gave rise to what is now called the Sufi tradition. This spiritual
tradition came to produce in the subsequent periods divergent
schools and orders which often widely differ from one another in their
teachings. As a matter of fact there is no uniform system of ideas
which we might consider the Sufi doctrine, so wide a divergence of
opinion prevails among individual thinkers and among the schools
and orders to which they belong.
Structurally too, Sufism shows a bewildering complexity. There
are so many different facets to it in terms of both praxis and theoria. It
is hardly possible to present Sufism in a nutshell and give a simple and
clear-cut account of it as a uniform system. Choice must necessarily
be made as to which definite aspect of Sufism we are to deal with and
from which particular point of view. Thus any exposition of Sufism
will be heavily conditioned by the choice we are forced to make at the
outset with regard to these points.
Note: This is the third o f the series o f three lectures on the ego-consciousness in
Eastern religions delivered in New York for the C. G. Jung Foundation, November 6,
1975.
24 Sophia Perennis, Volume IV, number 1
Now my topic in the present paper is the problem of ego-
consciousness in Sufism. This would mean that of all the divergent
factors which go to constitute Sufism I shall be mainly concerned with
its psychological aspect. And this again will naturally determine to a
great extent my choice as to whom I shall turn to, from among all the
famous Sufi masters, in getting primary materials to draw upon for my
exposition. I have decided to turn for my purpose mainly to Najm
al-Din al-Kubra (usually known in Iran as Najm Kubra),1 one of the
greatest masters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the founder
of a very important Sufi order called after him Kubrawiyah or the
Kubra-School. What characterizes Kubra and his school is the extra
ordinary attention accorded to the psychological process which the
Sufi aspirant goes through stage by stage until he reaches the final
state of spiritual perfection, commonly known as unio my shea. In
fact, Kubra himself seems to have been the first in the history of
Sufism to attempt an objective phenomenological description of what
a mystic actually experiences at every stage of the spiritual discipline
as it gradually transforms his inner self. What he offers as a result is a
detailed description of the transformation-process of the ego-
consciousness of the Sufi. His description of this process is rendered
the more valuable because it is directly based on an attentive observa
tion of his own experience as a Sufi and the experiences of his
disciples under his guidance. In this respect nothing could supersede
his work for all those who are interested in the formation and struc
ture of ego-consciousness in Sufism.
Approaching Sufism from the psychological point of view, we
are struck first of all by the fact that, as was the case with Shamanism
and Taoism which we dealt with in previous papers, imagery plays an
exceedingly important role. Everything, as far as it is positively
experienced by the Sufi, is experienced in the form of an image. A
single perusal of Najm Kubras work will leave upon every reader an
overwhelming impression that the esoteric world as experienced by
the Sufi is essentially an image-world or rather, an imaginal
world. And this holds true not only of Najm Kubras inner experi
ence, but applies with equal truthfulness to Sufism in general. We
might express the same thing by saying that the mythopoeic function
of the mind is fully at work in Sufism. And this latter formulation
immediately brings Sufism close to Shamanism. The Sufi world, in
other words, is no less a world of imaginal or mythopoeic visions than
the Shamanic world whose structure I analyzed in my second lecture.
Moreover, Sufism bears a superficial resemblance to Shamanism
in that its theory and philosophy are based on the belief in the
Toshihiko Izutsu 25
existence of a spiritual entity called soul . The concept of soul plays
an exceedingly important role in the theoretical formation of both
Sufism and Shamanism. In this respect and to this extent there is no
difference between the two. But a remarkable difference begins to
appear as we examine more closely the way they actually treat the
soul.
A Shaman is, as Mircea Eliade says, The great specialist in the
human soul . He is thoroughly acquainted or at least is supposed
to be acquainted with the drama of the soul; by profession he
knows its essential instability and precariousness. He is also
acquainted with the geography of the extraterrestrial regions to
which the soul can be carried away. With regard to his own soul, he is
a man who can freely and at will send it out from his body so that the
disembodied soul might have its own peculiar experience in a region
lying beyond the physical limitations of empirical experience.
It is remarkable that, in order to actualize his Shamanic ego, the
Shaman must send out his soul from the body into far distances. His
soul, thus separated from his body, encounters extraordinary things
and beings such as he never comes across in the ordinary world. The
soul in such a state is the Shamanic ego. And the world in which the
Shamanic ego as a vagrant soul roams about is a world of unusual
images.
Thus a Shaman characteristically lives in two entirely different
worlds. One is the empirical world of mundane affairs, in which he
experiences ordinary things as a normal, non-shamanic ego. The
other is a world of unusual and fantastic imagery, in which he is
conscious of himself as a shamanic ego, a true master of his own
image-world. His soul comes and goes between these two different
worlds, in each of which he is quite a different person.
Quite unlike this is the structure of the Sufi experience of the
soul. The Sufi, to begin with, does not send his soul out of his body
with the aim of letting her experience the fantastic things of the
image-world. At least he is not interested in such a practice. He is
interested in intentionally going down into the depths of his own soul,
exploring its ever darker regions, visualizing the essential make-up of
the deep strata of the soul in the form of mythopoeic images which are
spontaneously evoked out of these inner regions as he goes on purify
ing his soul through a systematic spiritual discipline. The images that
emerge in the process reflect and visualize the otherwise invisible
depths of his soul. They are a mirror of the soul. And herein lies the
significance of imagination for the Sufi.
26 Sophia Perennis, Volume IV, number 1
Thus in the case of Sufism particularly as conceived and
systematized by Najm Kubra all images and visions are considered
spiritually significant insofar as they function as visual forms in which
the different dimensions of the soul are disclosed to the Sufi. Each
image or each group of images is for him a symbolic reference to a
certain stage which he is actually going through in the course of
spiritual discipline.
There is, in this sense, a perfect correlation recognizable bet
ween a group of images and a spiritual stage on the Sufi Way. Ones
actually experiencing a certain image or image-group is directly and
by itself indicative of ones being at a certain stage of inner maturity.
It will be clear, then, that, although the Sufi world is a world of
symbolic images like the Shamanic world, the images and imagina
tion play conspicuously different roles in these two religious tradi
tions.
But in order to further elucidate this point, I must begin by giving
a somewhat more detailed explanation of the Sufi theory of the soul
itself. For the Sufi view of mythopoeic imagery entirely depends upon
the Sufi view of the structure of the soul. In fact, all archetypal images,
whether visual or auditory, that are perceived by the Sufi in the course
of his spiritual discipline are attributed to the soul in the sense that
they are considered to be inner experiences of the soul. The soul is the
subject of these imaginal experiences. That is to say, the soul is the
ego which experiences the imaginal forms as they arise out of its
own depths in the course of its spiritual metamorphosis.
Fora full understanding of the significance of this observation we
would do well to remember that there are in Islam two different
currents of thought concerning the nature of the soul : one is the
theory of the soul that was propounded and developed by the
scholastic philosophers, and the other is that which is peculiar to the
Sufis.
The scholastic conception of the soul belongs to the Aris
totelian tradition of De Anima. It is represented in Islam by Ibn Sina
(Avicenna, 980-1037) who for the first time in the history of scholas
tic philosophy, Western as well as Eastern, put forward in this section
of the traditional Aristotelian philosophy a remarkable view in which
he established the self-evident nature of the existence of the soul in
such a way that it could be interpreted as an assertion of the self
evidence of ego-consciousness.
Let us imagine, Avicenna says,2that a man is created all of a
 Toshihiko Izutsu 27
sudden, in a perfect form except that his eyes are veiled so that he
cannot see anything in the external world. He is created floating in the
air or rather in the void so that he does not feel any pressure of the
air which would force his sense of touch into action. His arms and legs
are separated from one another, there being no direct contact bet
ween them. Now suppose, Avicenna continues, the man thus
created reflects upon himself. Will he in such a state affirm the
existence of his own self? Yes, he will, no doubt. He will surely affirm
it without, however, affirming the existence of any part of his
body . . . If, being in such a situation he were able to imagine a hand
or any other bodily member, he would not imagine it as an integral
part of himself.
This intuitive awareness of the self which maintains its identity
throughout a mans life, regardless of whether he be in a waking state
or dreaming, intoxicated or asleep, is in the view of Avicenna, the
psychological ground for the persistence of mans ego-consciousness
(anniyah, lit. I-ness).3 And for Avicenna, it is this intuitive aware
ness of the ego that proves the self-evidence of the existence of the
soul .
Thus, for the Muslim philosopher, that which establishes man as
an existential subject, i.e., that which constitutes the I or ego of each
individual man is the soul . The soul, in other words, is the
locus of the ego -consciousness. And its primary function lies in letting
man directly and intuitively become aware of his I am . The soul ,
once established in this way as the subject of human existence, is then
recognized as the central principle of all the motive, vital, emotive
and cognitive functions. And from here on the Muslim philosopher
follows in the main the Aristotelian teachings of De Anima, which
have no direct relevance to the topic of the present paper. Without
going into details I would simply point out here that the scholastic
concept of ego which is based on such an understanding of the soul
is nothing but the concept of the empirical ego. It refers to the subject
which comes into contact with the objective world through the
five senses, perceives things, estimates them, feels, imagines and
thinks, exercising all these functions in the dimension of empirical
experience.
From the Sufi point of view, the I or ego posited in this way as the
empirical subject of empirical experiences is but an illusion, a mere
figure of speech. The illusory image of the I emerges and asserts itself
as the subjective center of human personality because one is unaware
of Something divine that lies hidden in his existential depths. When
28 Sophia Perennis, Volume IV, number 1
thou regardest thyself as existent and dost not regard Me the divine
as the cause of thy existence, I veil My face and thine own face
appears to thee, said a Sufi on behalf of God.4 That is to say, your
own face appears to you simply because God veils Himself behind
your human face; Your human face only remains visible and the
Divine face disappears and you become conscious of yourself as the
center and ground of your existence. This precisely is the empirical
ego which the philosopher speaks of. In reality, however, the exis
tence of such an ego has in the eyes of the Sufi but an imaginary or
merely imagined existence (hasti-ye mawhum).5
Sufism, too, admits the existence of the soul in man. Indeed
Sufi psychology is theoretically a psychology of the soul . Sufism
recognizes also the existence of all the functions which philosophy
attributes to it. However, Sufism makes a conspicuously different
approach to the soul . In other words, the emphasis is placed
on those aspects of the soul which philosophy pays little or no
attention to.
Sufism structures the soul in an entirely different way from
philosophy, around a different center, on a different principle, dis
posing its various functional spheres into a different form of
stratification.
Of all the so-called mental functions that are generally attributed
to the soul, it is perception that plays in Sufi psychology the most
interesting and original role from the viewpoint of the present paper
which is mainly concerned with imagination . The kind of percep
tion, however, in which Sufism is interested is not the ordinary
perception of external objects. The ordinary perceptual event is for
the Sufi devoid of significance. Suppose a Sufi perceives a blazing fire,
for example, as indeed Sufis often do. Of course it may come to pass
that he perceives through his physical organ of sight a fire actually
burning in the external world. But such an event does not interest him
at all. What is of vital importance to him is a perceptual event of a
different order. Regardless of whether or not there is a fire burning in
the external world, he often perceives vividly a blazing fire as a matter
of actual experience it is such an event that is important to him.
The perception of fire of this kind is important to him because, as I
have said before, he considers it an extemalization of the spiritual
state in which he happens to be. The perception of fire assumes a
symbolic significance to him as visualization of his inner state.
It will be interesting to observe in this respect that Sufism
assumes the existence in man of two different sets of sense organs:
one exoteric and the other esoteric. The exoteric sense organs are
 Toshihiko Izutsu 29
nothing other than our ordinary physical or bodily organs of five
senses, whose activity depends upon the stimuli coming from the
external world, whereas the esoteric organs of perception are non
physical organs whose working is based on the creative potentials of
mythopoesis, that function of the psyche whose nature it is to per
ceive and project archetypal images. The esoteric organs of percep
tion are supposed to work independently of the exoteric.
Thus in the view of Sufism, every man is endowed with, for
example, two different sets of ears: one is the exoteric, i.e., physical
ear with which he hears physical sounds, and the other is the esoteric
ear with which he hears super-physical sounds. And the same applies
to the rest of the sense organs.
An esoteric organ is called in Sufism latlfah meaning literally a
subtle one, that is, a subtle organ of a luminous nature in
contradistinction to a gross (kathif) organ of a material, physical
nature. As a comprehensive complex of all such esoteric organs, a
human being is represented as a subtle body of luminosity in
distinction from the gross body of material turbidity. Man in this
sense is possessed of two bodies, subtle and gross, or luminous and
dark, and essentially he is a being of Light. And the soul in its
original purity is to be understood as the spiritual core of the Man of
Light as distinguished from the Man of Darkness. The whole problem
of ego-consciousness in Sufism centers round this idea.
All this, however, will become fully understandable only when
we have understood the Sufi view of the structure of the soul and
the nature of the technique of spiritual discipline that has specifically
been devised by the Sufis for the purpose of transforming the empiri
cally given dark soul back into the state of its original luminosity.
To this problem we shall now turn.
The soul as conceived by the Sufis has a multilayer structure
consisting primarily of three principal strata. Let me first enumerate
them without a detailed explanation, keeping in mind only that
although each of these three is given an independent name as if there
were three independent entities, they are, in the view of the majority
of Sufis, nothing but three different dimensions or stages of one and
the same soul .
The first stratum is technically called nafs ammarah meaning
literally the commanding soul, that is, that aspect of the soul
which instigates man to evil. It may be translated as the lower soul
or appetitive soul . It is an inner locus of immoderate desires and
fiery passions. It is, according to the Sufis, in this dimension that the
30 Sophia Perennis, Volume TV, number 1
ego-consciousness of the ordinary man is constituted as the sensuous
and sensual I.
The second stratum is called nafs lawwamah, literally the blam
ing soul . It refers to that aspect of the soul which blames or
criticizes itself, that is to say, which becomes aware of its own evil
nature which it manifests in the first stratum just explained. In this
sense it is the locus of moral conscience. And the ego which is formed
in this dimension is principally a rational ego, the subject passing
critical judgments upon itself and others. In this respect the concept
partially covers what the philosopher calls aql,reason or intellect.
The third stratum is nafs mutmainnah or the pacified soul ,
designating the mode of being of the soul in which the turbulence
of desires and passions has been calmed down and the agitations of
thoughts and concepts reduced to stillness. This dimension of the
soul is more generally called qalb, the heart . Qalb is one of the
most important technical terms of Sufism, concerning which many
things have been said and written by the Sufis. Here I would simply
point out that the qalb is no other than what I have referred to above
as the spiritual core of the Man of Light, as an integral whole of the
subtle, esoteric organs for perceiving the esoteric aspects of things.
The qalb is a supersensory organ of cognition through the activation
of which is realized what is usually known as mystical experience.
According to the Sufi theory of the soul , the qalb which is its third
stratum is the threshold of the divine dimension of Being; it is
essentially of a luminous nature, and the world which is disclosed by
the activity of the qalb constitutes ontologically the middle domain
between the world of the pure Lightof God, and the world of material
Darkness under the dominion of Satan.
But Sufism recognizes within the qalb itself two deeper layers.
The first is called ruh, the spirit and the second which lies still
deeper than the spirit and which therefore is the deepest of all the
strata of the soul, is sirr, meaning literally the secret i.e., the
innermost recess of the soul.
The spirit is mythopoeically represented by the image of an
incandescent Sun whose dazzling light illumines the whole world of
Being. As the sun in the physical world rises from the eastern horizon
and illumines all things and activates their life-energy, so the divine
Sun, rising from the spiritual East,6illumines the infinitely wide world
of the spirit and animates all the energies contained in the spiritual
faculty of this subtle organ of supersensory cognition. Subjectively
the mystic feels at this stage that he is standing in extreme proximity
to God.
Toshihiko Izutsu 31
Thesirr, secret , on the other hand, is the inmost ground of the
soul, the deepest layer of consciousness which is in reality beyond
consciousness in the ordinary sense of the word. It is the sacred
core of the soul , where the divine and the human become united,
unified and fused. In other words, it is in this dimension of the soul
that the so-called unio mystica is realized. The ego-consciousness
which is actualized in this dimension and which naturally is the
highest form of ego-consciousness in Sufism is no longer the con
sciousness of the mystic of himself as the human I. It is, as we shall see
in more detail later, rather the consciousness of the divine I.
The Sufi who, as a novice, starts with the consciousness of his
human I finally ends by losing sight of it and finding in its place the
divine I. This is the whole track of his spiritual journey. And the
existential tension caused by the mutual relationship between the
human I and the divine I, underlies all the unusual inner events which
the mystic encounters on his way. Sufism as a spiritual praxis consists
in effectuating the transference of man from the dimension of the
purely human to the dimension of the purely divine, from Darkness
to Light, through the process of the transfiguration of the soul from
the stage of the appetitive soul to that of the secret .
Such a radical transfiguration or we might say, transubstantia-
tion of consciousness would be extremely difficult, if not absolutely
impossible, if it were not for a systematic method of spiritual training
to help the inexperienced on the way. In the earliest periods of the
history of Sufism there seems to have been no definite technique of
meditation; that is to say, each individual Sufi was in a large measure
on his own in this matter. Gradually, however, the Sufi masters came
to devise for themselves as well as for their disciples a number of
systematic methods of meditation, among which by far the most
important is the dhikr-practice.
Dhikr (meaning remembrance) is a highly developed techni
que of one-pointed meditation on God consisting in the Sufis con
stantly and continuously repeating to himself, either verbally or
silently, the name of God, somewhat like the practice of nembutsu in
the Pure Land School of Mahayana Buddhism. The novice is
admonished to endeavor to keep his mind directed with the utmost
degree of concentration toward the object of meditation, so much so
that he becomes totally absorbed in the thought of God.
The simplest and perhaps the earliest form of dhikr consisted in
the repetition of one single word signifying God: Allah repeating
Allah! Allah! Allah! unceasingly.7 Later a number of more com
plicated dhikr-formulae were proposed by different masters. That is
32 Sophia Perennis, Volume TV, number 1
to say, the word Allah became amplified into various phrases and
sentences, each containing the name of God as its innermost con
stituent. From among all these dhikr-iormvl&e which developed in
the course of the history of Sufism, there is one which has come to
occupy an especially privileged position, being appreciated by the
majority of the leading masters as the best theme of dhikr-
meditation. It is La ilaha ilia Allah, meaning: There is no divine
being except God .
As a theme of concentrated meditation on God, this formula has
a very conspicuous semantic advantage. As is easy to see, the sen
tence is divisible into two halves; the first part, la ilaha meaning
there is no divine being or god, and the second, ilia Allah meaning
except God . The first section is negative in its semantic structure,
negating as it does all elements in the consciousness that are other
than God. When activated as part of the dhikr-meditation, it serves
the purpose of sweeping off the mind the dirt of all profane images
and thoughts of God arising from the dimension of the appetitive
soul .
The second half except God on the contrary, is positive;
it brings into the purified space of the mind prepared by the action of
the first part, a pure image of God. So the formula taken as a whole
first negates everything other than God and then affirms and estab
lishes God, and God alone. Metaphysically it reflects the whole
process of creation as understood by the Sufis: the things other
than God emerge out of His unfathomable depths; then their
ontological reality as things other than God having been negated,
they all return to Him as their sole and true Reality.
What is far more important for our purpose, however, is the very
original way in which this formula has traditionally been used in the
actual dhikr-practice by the Sufis. Without going into unnecessary
details, I shall give here a brief exposition of it, condensing it into a
typical pattern.8
The Sufi who intends to engage in the dhikr-practice begins by
accomplishing a two-fold purification, cleansing his body by absti
nence and ablution and purifying his mind from all sinful desires and
thoughts. Then, he enters a dark, quiet room, preferably burns frag
rant incense and sits cross-legged. Laying his hands open on his
thighs, with his eyes closed,9 he starts with the negative part of the
afore-mentioned dhikr-formula: la ilaha (There is no divine
being). With intense concentration he pronounces the first word Id,
pushing it up, as it were, out of the underside of his left nipple or
according to Day eh, out of the root of the navel. Having produced the
 Toshihiko Izutsu 33
word of negation, la, in this fashion, he prolongs it in a forcefully
suppressed voice until he reaches the next word, ilaha which he
pronounces in such a way that in his imagination he throws it down to
his back over the right shoulder.
This is immediately followed by the second, i.e., positive, half of
the formula: ilia Allah. The Sufi, without relaxing his inner concentra
tion, begins to pronounce the first word ilia, producing it from the
upper part of his right shoulder, and then, summoning up the whole of
his spiritual energy, strikes the word, Allah, down into his heart as if
with a hammer. The wordAllah thus forcefully driven into the heart is
supposed to awaken the soul from its natural slumber and make it
realize its own self in a deeper, non-empirical dimension. And the
whole process of dhikr, repeated assiduously and continuously day
after day will end up by disclosing the qalb which, as I have explained
earlier, is the subtle esoteric organ of supersensory cognition. The
qalb will be completely disclosed, and through it the divine Light will
begin to stream into the soul . The soul will finally be immersed
in the divine Light. It is in this dimension of pure luminosity that the
Sufi will encounter, and become identical with, his Alter Ego, the
inner Man, the Man of Light. Let us note that he is not identified with
God. He is merely, identified with his other Ego.
Our remaining task will consist in correlating stage by stage the
process of the dhikr-discipline with the process of the transfiguration
of the soul which we have summarily described above. Each stage
of the transfiguration of the soul is clearly marked by the spontaneous
emergence of images that are peculiar to, and characteristic of, the
spiritual stage. It goes without saying that from the viewpoint of the
theory of mythopoesis, this is the most interesting part of the Sufi
experience.
Let us begin with the first dimension of the soul, that of the
lower or appetitive self, the nafs ammarah, which is the ground and
locus of the empirical I.
The empirical I, prior to being subjected to the dhikr-discipline,
that is, as long as it exists under ordinary conditions, is naturally
unaware of its own state. Desires and passions are swirling and
swarming in the soul at this stage. Najm Kubra compares it to a
house littered with filth in which all kinds of brutes live, dogs, pigs,
donkeys, leopards and elephants. But the empirical ego does not
realize its own existential misery except on rare occasions and that in
a very superficial manner.
However, to the spiritual eye of a novice in Sufism who has
34 Sophia Perennis, Volume IV, number 1
already made some progress in the dhikr-exercise, the actual state of
his appetitive soul discloses itself in a number of characteristic
images. The first image that emerges is that of a deep pit or well (bir).
He finds himself at the bottom of the well. An impenetrable darkness
reigns all over. There is no light. Nothing is discernible. The dark pit is
a mythopoeic visualization of the bodily, physical, and material
aspect of human existence.
From time to time, piercing through the thick darkness there
flashes a mysterious red light. It is the flickering fire of the Devil.
Unlike the limpid and serene fire of a spiritual nature which we shall
encounter at a later stage, the fire of the Devil is strangely turbid, says
Najm Kubra.10The Devil himself is a personified configuration of the
uncontrollable lust and pleasure-seeking (called in Arabic haw a)
which is often compared in Sufism to a foul dog filled with frantic
passions, a dark force which, residing in the lower soul, instigates it
to immorality.11 The Sufi-aspirant, when he witnesses the diabolic
fire, feels unusual heaviness in his whole body, the breast pressed
hard, and the four members as if crushed by a stone.12
Sometimes the lower soul itself projects its own image on the
mental screen of the Sufi. Its color is blue, sky-blue. The image gives
the impression of blue water continuously welling up from a spring.13
In the scheme of the color symbolism of Najm Kubra, blue is the color
of the appetitive soul as it is active with an exuberant vitality,
whereas green is the highest color, being as it is the sign of the full
vitality of the qalb, i.e., the soul in its third dimension.14
As the Sufi-aspirant moves on a little further in the dhikr-
exercise, that which was at first utter darkness reigning over the
bottom of the pit changes its appearance and begins to coagulate.
Suddenly it assumes the form of dense black clouds. And as he still
moves on, the Sufi begins to notice something like a crescent faintly
observable through the clouds. And finally the crescent fully discloses
itself in the rip of the clouds. The emergence of the image of the
crescent is a sign that the soul has to a great extent been purified by
the force of the dhikr-formula that has continuously been penetrating
into it. The soul is already getting into its second dimension. In the
corresponding sphere of mythopoeic imagery, the black clouds are
gradually transformed into heaps of white clouds.15
The soul at this stage visualizes itself in the image of the rising
sun, except that it rises in a very peculiar manner. The Sufi notices a
red sun rising out of his right cheek. The impression is so vivid that he
feels the burning heat of the sun on his cheek. The sun ascends to the
level of the ear, sometimes to the level of the forehead, and some
Toshihiko Izutsu 35
times again above the head. When this is actually experienced, the
soul is definitely in its second dimension. That is to say, it has been
transfigured into the blaming soul .
The Sufi has not yet come out of the dark pit in which he found
himself confined in the beginning. He is still in the well. But he stands
now closer to the exit. This situation too is visualized in the form of an
image. In the midst of darkness filling up the pit he notices a beautiful
green light. As I said above, green occupies the highest position in the
color symbolism of Najm Kubra. The green light is a reflection of the
light emanating from the Emerald Stone which in the mythopoeic
cosmology of Sufism marks the highest point or the Center of the
Universe, which is directly connected to the sacred space, and which,
therefore, is the gate of entrance to the Presence of God.
Led by this supernatural green light, the Sufi goes out of the well.
And therewith his soul reaches the third stage, that of the pacified
soul or the qalb, the heart . The event marks the opening up of the
divine dimension in man. And the soul thus transfigured produces
its own image. Let me quote Kubras own words concerning the
imagery peculiar to this stage.
Sometimes (while your soul is in this stage), says Najm
Kubra, you witness your soul emerging in front of you as a circle
which gives you an impression of a huge spring of Light emitting
brilliant rays in all directions. It often happens that you, in a state of
ecstasy, perceive your soul appearing as the circle-image of your
own face, a circle of pure light somewhat like a well-polished mirror.
And as this circle comes up toward your face, it absorbs your face into
it. When this is experienced, you may be sure that that image df your
face is (the image of) the pacified soul.16
The last sentence of the passage just quoted, which as it stands
may be obscure, in reality expresses a very important idea relating to
the basic structure of the ego-consciousness in Sufism. For.the Circle
which emerges in front of the Sufis face and into which his face is
absorbed is a visualization of the alter ego of the Sufi himself .'With the
realization of the pacified soul , your soul , i.e.,, your empifical
ego, becomes absorbed into the Circle of Light which is nothing other
than the visual image of your true Ego. The two egos become com
pletely unified into one, your empirical ego disappearing into the
figure of your alter ego, your true Ego. That which hap been split into
two egos by the force of the physical and fnaterial structure of
existence goes back to its original, primordial unity.
The image of The Circle plays an important role in the process
leading to the final emergence of the alter ego. Already in the earlieir
 36 Sophia Perennis, Volume IV, number 1
stages of dhikr-practice before the Sufi reaches the stage we are now
dealing with, he witnesses various circles: two luminous circles cor
responding to the two eyes, for example, appearing everywhere, in no
matter which direction he may turn, right or left, and the circle of
sacred light appearing between the eyebrows and the eyes, etc. All
these circles are unstable; they constantly become larger or smaller
and change the intensity of their luminosity corresponding to the
inner states of the Sufi. But the most important of them all is the
just-mentioned Circle of the face announcing the appearance of the
alter ego which Najm Kubra calls the Witness in Heaven (al-shahid
fi al-sama), that is, the individual Sufis celestial I. Concerning the
Circle of the face Kubra writes:
When the Circle of the face becomes pure and limpid, it begins
to effuse bright light which issues forth from it just as water gushes
forth from a spring, so much so that the Sufi himself becomes aware of
the effusion of the light from his own face. The effusion occurs from
between the two eyes and the two eyebrows. Then, as the Circle
absorbs his entire face, there appears in front of his face another
irradiating Face, effusing, this one too, brilliant light. And behind its
thin veil the Sufi perceives a Sun moving forward and backward like a
swing. This Face is in reality your own real face, and this Sun is the
Sun of the spirit ruh (one of the deeper layers of the qalb) moving
this way and that in the body .17
It is at this point that the image of a luminous human figure
appears to the inner eye of the mystic. It is the afore-mentioned
emergence of the Man of Light {shakhs min nur, shakhs anwari), the
mythopoeic carrier of the true Ego (ananiyah ox anrii, the true I-ness).
Thus the alter ego of the Sufi, his Witness in Heaven appears to him
assuming the form of a Man of Light who dwells in him and who
mythopoeically represents his true I.
Then an atmosphere of spiritual serenity covers up the whole of
your body, and you witness before you a Man of Light effusing out of
himself effulgent light. Correspondingly you feel yourself also effus
ing light. It often happens that at such moments the veil is torn apart
so that your true I becomes completely disclosed .18
The Man of Light, the Witness in Heaven is, Najm Kubra
emphatically asserts, no other than your true self Anta huwa
literally meaning You are He . This alter ego at the final stage of
dhikr-practice completely absorbs into itself what has falsely been
posited as the empirical ego, the ordinary I. The mythopoeic experi
ence on the part of the Sufi of the unification of these two egos which
is effected as the alter ego absorbing into itself the empirical ego,
 Toshihiko Izutsu 37
marks the birth of the Theophanic Ego. It is called theophanic
because the celestial Witness of man as conceived by Najm Kubra is
the inner locus of tajalll, theophany. Metaphorically it is a Mirror in
which the Hidden God reflects Himself, thereby changing Himself
into the self-revealing God. This Mirror is like transparent water; it
reveals something beyond itself. That Something is God as He man
ifests Himself (mutajalli) through the Mirror. The Ego of the mystic
thus actualized as the divine Mirror is the Theophanic Ego. At first,
that is, from the viewpoint of the ordinary man, it was his alter ego.
But now it is no longer his alter Ego, for it is the only Ego that
subsists in this dimension, there being no trace here of the empirical
ego.
And now, only at this stage is the mystic in a position to stand in a
I-Thou relationship wih God. This relationship assumes the form of a
dialogue between the I and the Thou. The Theophanic Ego, in other
words, comes into a very special dialogical relationship with the
Divine Ego. Let us recall at this point that Islam is a monotheistic
religion of Semitic origin standing parallel to Judaism and Christiani
ty. Thus in Sufism as Islamic mysticism, the deification of man
cannot go to the extent of man becoming God, or man being transubs
tantiated into God. Except in some aberrant cases, unio mystica is
conceivable only in the sense of God manifesting Himself in and
through man, i.e., theophany. In terms of the Sufi theory of con
sciousness, it is the afore-mentioned sirr, the secret, the deepest
layer of the soul, which is the real locus of such theophany.
In order to get into a dialogical relationship of I-and-Thou with
God, the soul must be brought up to the Divine Presence. Subjec
tively this is experienced by the Sufi as an ascension to Heaven. It is
interesting to observe that here again we encounter the Ascension-
theme, the Celestial Journey, which is so familiar to mythopoeic
mentality all over the world and through all ages.19
The Ascension of the Sufi in the technical sense of the word
begins at the level of the spirit the above-mentioned ruh that
is, when the transfiguration of the soul attains to the deeper layer of
the qalb. Says Najm Kubra: Here the concentrated energy of the
d/ukr-formula bores a tiny hole in the right side of the body of the
Sufi. It leaves its trace there looking like a cicatrix, which effuses the
irradiance of the energy of dhikr. Then the cicatrix begins to move
and turns to other parts of the body corresponding to the gradual shift
of the concentration-center of dhikr in the heart. Thus, beginning
with the right flank it gradually moves on and ends by reaching the
38 Sophia Perennis, Volume IV, number 1
back of the body. The Sufi all the while has a vivid sensation of both
the inside and the outside of the cicatrix. And from this narrow
aperture the transfigured soul emerges out of the body, and goes
upward . . . until finally it attains to the sacred regions of God .20
For the Theophanic Ego thus actualized at the end of the dhikr-
discipline, God is no longer the third person, He, the transcendent
Absolute standing aloof from the man. God is here primarily the
second person and in that capacity he enters into a dialogical relation
with the Theophanic Ego of the Sufi. The I and Thou are the two
terms of this relationship. As a matter of actual experience on the part
of the Sufi, the I and Thou are at this stage confusingly close to each
other. It is in such a dimension of sanctification in which the I is hardly
distinguishable from the Thou that secret dialogues (technically cal
led munajat) take place between the two.
Says the famous Sufi, Abu Mansur al-Hallaj (executed in 921
A.D.) in one of his poems:
How surprising the relation between Thee and Me!
Through Thy Thou, hast Thou annihilated My I from Me.
Thou hast brought Me so nigh unto Thee that
I imagine Thy I were my own I.21
The intimacy between the two is indeed so close that they are
almost interchangeable with one another. It is as if each of the two
contained the other within itself. This situation is admirably expres
sed by Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273 A.D.) in the well-known quat
rain:22
Between us the Thou and the I have ceased.
I am not I, Thou art not Thou, nor art Thou I.
I am at once I and Thou, Thou art at once Thou and I.
As we see, the Thou and the I are here separated from one
another by an extremely tenuous veil. Negatively speaking, there is
almost no separation between the two. Yet, positively, we must admit
that the distinction between the Theophanic Ego of man and the
Divine Ego of God is still maintained. How could there be any
dialogue otherwise? A dialogue, being essentially bifurcation of
logos, is conceivable only where there are two persons, one who
addresses and the other who is addressed. As long as the Sufi here
addresses himself to God, saying that the Thou and the I have
Toshihiko Izutsu 39
ceased between us, i.e., that there is no longer two distinguishable
terms of a dialogical relationship, it is still a dialogical relationship. It
is evidently not a monologue.
However, the Theophanic Ego is theophanic. If the emphasis is
shifted to this part of the semantic complex, then everything will
immediately turn into pure theophany. There will then be absolutely
no trace left of the Ego, no matter how transfigured and deified an ego
it might be. Besides, strictly speaking, the co-subsistence of two egos
is impossible in the spiritual space of Divine Presence whose structure
we are now discussing. The coexistence of two or many egos is a
matter pertaining properly to the empirical level of human existence;
it is characteristic of, and peculiar to, the personal relations that
obtain between man and man in the social space of their day-to-day
existence. The immediate implication of this statement would seem
to be this. Of the two egos here in question, i.e., the Theophanic Ego
and the Divine Ego, the former is fundamentally a false ego,
although, to be sure, it is the real Ego of the Sufi if it is viewed in
comparison with his empirical ego. And as a false ego understood
in this sense, it is something to be done away with, something to
disappear ultimately. The dialogical relation of the I and Thou is also,
consequently, to disappear. The coming to an end of the dialogue
between the Theophanic Ego and the Divine Ego is given an impres
sive description by Bayazld Bastami in the following dialogue
between him and God.23 It will hardly be necessary to point out that
the speaker here is the Theophanic Ego of Bastami describing the
process of its own nullification.
Once God lifted me up [reference to the celestial Ascension by which
the soul is transubstantiated into a Theophanic Ego] and placed me
in His presence. He said to me: O Bayazld, My creatures long to
behold thee. I said: Adorn me, then, with Thy all-comprehensive
Unity and clothe me in Thy I [anariiyah, I-ness] and raise me up to Thy
absolute Oneness [the primordial state of undifferentiation where
there is nothing discernible, not even potentially], so that when Thy
creatures behold me, they may say they have seen Thee [God]. But
then, there will be only Thou there; I [Bastami] shall have completely
disappeared.
The impossibility of the co-subsistence of two egos in the divine
region of Being is theoretically explained by Rumi in a typically Sufi
manner as follows. In the presence of God two Is cannot possibly
subsist. You say T and He says T . Either you must die before Him,
or He must die before you, so that there might remain no duality.
That God should die, however, is factually impossible and rationally
40 Sophia Perennis, Volume IV, number 1
inconceivable. For He is the Living, the Immortal. Of course He is
so gracious that He would gladly die for your sake, if it were at all
possible, in order to nullify the duality. Since, however, it is impossi
ble for Him to die, you must die so that He might manifest Himself in
you thereby bringing duality to naught.
Thus at the height of mystical experience, the duality which at
the previous stage sustained the dialogical relationship between the I
and the Thou completely disappears. That is to say, the Theophanic
Ego of the Sufi disappears and there remains only the Divine Ego. It
is now the Divine Ego that assumes the role of the Theophanic Ego.
This means that the Divine Ego in such a state speaks in the first
person through the mouth of the Sufi. It is then that the Sufi utters
what sounds to uninitiated ears as sheer blasphemy. Many such
scandalously blasphemous words have been recorded and come
down to us as shatahat, ecstatic utterances, of the Sufis, the most
famous of all being among others, Ana al-Haqq (I am God!) of
Hallaj andSubhani, ma azama shani (Glory to Me, how great is My
state!) of Bayazid Bastami.
Because of utterances of this nature many a Sufi was put to
death. We must remember, however, that the first person in these
utterances is not the I of the Sufi, not even his Theophanic Ego. The
speaker is the Divine Ego. Hallaj cries out Ana al-Haqq I am God!
not because he feels himself completely deified, or that he has
become God. The preceding analysis of the Sufi experience will have
made it clear that the utterance is not an outburst of rapturous
exultation arising from the conviction that he is now God. Quite the
contrary. He says I am God because he, Hallaj, is no longer there.
Instead of being a glorification of his ego, it is an absolute glorification
of God through an expression of the total absence of the human ego
even in the form of the Theophanic Ego.
Let us observe in ending that Najm Kubra used to regard Sufism
as a spiritual alchemy (al-kimiya).24 We now see that the final end to
which leads this alchemical process is the transfiguration of the
human ego into its absolutely unadulterated essence, which is nothing
other than its own annihilation in the presence of the Divine Ego.
And this must be the Theophanic Ego in the final and absolute sense
of the word, i.e., God appearing as God to God Himself.
Toshihiko Izutsu 41
Notes
1. Najm al-Din al-Kubra (ca. 1145-1221 A.D.). His major workFawaih al-Jamal
wa-Fawatih al-Jalal was edited and published by Fritz Meier (Franz Steiner
Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1957). All references to Kubra in the present paper are to
this edition of this book;
2. Kitab al-Nafs (Shifa, Physica VI) Chap. I, edbyF. Rahman, Oxford, 1959, p.
16. Almost the same description of the man in the air is found also in
Al-Isharat wa-al-Tanblhat, (Physica ) ed. by S. Dunya, Cairo, 1957, pp.
319-320. The Avicennian image of the floating man became very famous in
Mediaeval philosophy in the West; it is regarded by some historians of Western
philosophy as the precursor of the Cartesian concept of the ego as established by
the famous Cogito ergo sum.
3. Al-Isharat (op. cit.), p. 320.
4. This is an utterance of a wandering dervish of the tenth century, Niffari. The
quotation is from R. Nicholson, The Mystics o f Islam, London, (reprint) 1963,p.
85.
5. On the illusory and imaginary nature of the existence attributed ot the empirical
ego, see Muhammad Lahljl: Mafatih al-Vjaz fi Sharh-e Gulshan-e Raz, ed.
Kayvan Samli, Tehran, 1957, p. 154. Lahljl was a famous head of the
Nurbakhshiya-Order in Iran. He died in 1506/7 A.D.
6. The East (mashriq) in Sufism is a symbol of spiritual illumination, whereas the
West, the place where the sun sinks and disappears, is a symbol of material
darkness.
7. See, for example, the technical admonition given by Sahl al-Tustari (d. 896
A.D.) to one of his disciples, Hujwin: Kashf al-Mahjub, ed. by Zhukovski,
Tehran reprint, 1336 A.H. (solar), p. 245.
8. The description is based on two books. The first is al-Qushashi, al-Simtal-mafid,
Hyderabad 1327 A.H., p. 149. The gist of the passage was translated into
German by Fritz Meier in the Introduction to his edition of Najm Kubras major
work (op. cit., see Note 1). The second is Mirsad al- I bdd of Najm al-Dln al-Razi
(d. 1256 A.D.), widely known by his surname, Day eh. The book is considered
authoritative in the Kubrawiyah School.
9. The sitting posture here described is of course not the only one; there are variant
forms. For example, in the present-day Nimatullahl Order according to an
explanation given by its master himself, the Sufi kneels on his heels with the right
hand on the left thigh, the left hand grasping the wrist ofthe right, so that the
body as a whole and the hands and feet bent inwards assume the form of the
Arabic letter La. See Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh: The A im and Method o f Sufism,
Tehran, 1974, p. 13.
10. Op. cit., 7, p. 3.
11. See, for instance, Hujwiri (op. cit.) p. 262.
12. Najm Kubra (op. cit.) p. 262.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 13, p. 6.
15. Ibid., 7, p. 3; 35, p. 26.
16. Ibid., 56, p. 26.
17. Ibid., 66, pp. 31-32.
18. Ibid.
42 Sophia Perennis, Volume IV, number 1
19. The most famous example of this phenomenon in Sufi literature is the Ascension
experience (mVraj) of Bayazld BastamI (commonly and mistakenly known
in the West as BistamI, d. 875 A.D.)- On Bastamis Ascension see Hujwiri (op.
cit.) p. 306; Sarraj; Kitab al-Luma (ed. Nicholson, Leyden-London, 1914), p.
384.
20. Najm Kubra (op. cit.), 50, pp. 23-24.
21. Le Diwan dal-Hallaj, ed. Louis Massignon, Paris, 1955, pp. 30-31.
22. I expressly quote this quatrain as it is found in Cassirers opus magnum, in which
this famous philosopher refers to it as expressing the idea of a pure correlation
between God and man . There is no denying that many of the leading Sufis
themselves recognize such a correlation, i.e. a mutual existential dependence,
between God and man. But the point is that Cassirer does not properly deter
mine the dimension in which man comes into such a relation of mutual
dependence. See Ernst Cassirer: The Philosophy o f Symbolic Forms, vol. 2,
Mythical Thought , Tr. R. Manheim (Yale paperback), New Haven-London,
1953, p. 231.
23. Sarraj (op. cit.), p. 382.
24. Tanq-na tariq al-kimiya, op. cit., 12, p. 5.