Book
AN EXCERPT FROM
Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari's "The Sufi Path of Light" explores the central concept of divine Light in Sufism. Drawing from Islamic scriptures and Sufi wisdom, he examines the various manifestations of this Light, emphasizing the heart as
the center of spiritual illumination.
Al-Karkari guides readers to recognize divine Light as omnipresent,
positioning it as the essence of spiritual awakening and the
ultimate goal of Sufism.
By Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari
Translated from the Arabic
by Dr. Yousef Casewit and Khalid Williams
Originally published by Les 7 Lectures
In the terminology of the Karkarī Order, the ʿayn (The Arabic word ʿayn means “eye; spring; source; identity; entity,” all of which meanings are relevant here) as an “entity-in-itself ” is the secret of the trace and the holy essence of a thing. It is the disclosure-site of the universal will from which the manifestations of relative and perspectival traces spring forth. It is the root of the branch, the seed of the tree, the law of existence that demarcates the contours of separative entities. It is the subtlety that can only be perceived in the illusory realm of the senses. Wherever the trace is, there is the entity-in-itself; the locus is one, but the perspective differs.
Concerning the ʿayn as eye, Al-Ghazālī says:
There are two eyes (sing. ʿayn): one outward, another inward. The outward eye is of the sensory and visible world; the inward eye is of another world, the spiritual realm (malakūt). Each eye has a sun and a Light which makes it able to see properly. One of these suns is outward, the other inward. The outward sun is of the visible world, i.e. the physical sun. The inward sun is of the spiritual realm; it is the Qurʾān and God’s revealed Scriptures. When this is fully unveiled to you, the first door to the spiritual realm will be opened to you. This realm contains wonders that make the visible world seem trifling.
The one who does not travel to this world, but is held back by his shortcomings in the lowlands of the visible world, is still a beast and is deprived of the distinguishing characteristic of man. Indeed he is even lower than a beast, for the beasts do not have the potential to ascend to this world. Thus God says, Such as these are like cattle. Nay, they are even further astray (Q Anʿām 7:179). The visible world in relation to the spiritual world is as the husk to the kernel, like the body to the spirit, like darkness to Light, like below to above. This is why the spiritual world is called the higher world, the world of the spirit, the world of light, as opposed to the lower world of corporeality and darkness. (Mishkāt al-anwār, p. 10)
God says, Did We not make for him two eyes (Q Balad 90:8) ? This alludes to the eye of Lights and secrets, and the eye of the senses and alterity. The possessor of the luminous eye of the heart sees existence as Lights overflowing from the magnificent oceans of the Essence, descending to the meadows of the spiritual world, then to the receptacles of the physical kingdom. He sees nothing but the Lights of the Real, and beholds creation as a mirror for the Creator’s self-disclosures, moons upon whose essences the sun of existence shines. The oneness of uncreated reality does not veil him from beholding the multiplicity of creation, for although these entities are immutable in God’s pre-eternal knowledge, they are nonexistent in the realm of illusory exist- ence. They are affirmed but have no existence; they possess affirmation in the realm of illusion, but have no existence in the imagal or imaginary realm. They do not catch a whiff of exist- ence whatsoever, even though they are witnessed by the pre-eternal eye, and distinguished within it in their nonexist- ence and in their composition, without being separate from the realm of possibility.
In contrast, the sensory eye discerns delimited things and spatial directions that are harbored in the realm of illusion. The one who beholds delimited things is unable to look upwards to behold pure meaning. Such a person seeks proof for the Real in illusory things, and for necessity in possibility, and for the Cre- ator in creation, and for subsistence in annihilation. How strange! Can there be proof for Him in that which is attributed to Him? This eye is sensory and can see only what is sensory; it is delimited by its lids and lashes, conquered by the bow of the eyebrow above it; delimited by the lids, veiled by the brow.
It its material composition, the eye is the locus of opposites, for it combines the opposing colors of white and black. This is why the eyes of the Universal Man ﷺ are described as having very black pupils and very white whites; for he ﷺ truly brought together opposites. The shape of the eye also brings together opposing arcs, which delimit the eye both horizontally and ver- tically. This is why it is the gate to the body and the spirit. The eye is thus the prophetic allusion and the Muḥammadan tiding for those who possess lordly gnostic sciences, disclosures of the All-Merciful, and holy secrets, as he ﷺ said, “I am the City of Knowledge, and ʿAlī is its gate. He who would enter the city must go through the gate.” (Mustadrak, 4574)
The word ʿayn is also used in the terminology of those who are worthy of the Presence to mean the Perfect Man, the source (ʿayn) of sources. For he is the very source of existence, having realized the nature of the supreme isthmus. He is the locus of the Gaze, the eye-witnessed reality transcendent beyond alter- ity and otherness, the demonstrative proof of direct witnessing without conjunction or disjunction of his All-Merciful breaths, the ultimate root of delimitation and nondelimitation, and the essence of all things. Every ʿayn draws from his ʿayn, whether it knows it or not. Indeed he is every ʿayn, for he proceeds from every soul and rules over every spirit. Every kind of ʿayn belongs to him: the boiling spring (ʿayn āniya) (Q Ghāshiya 88:5) , the flowing spring (ʿayn jāriya) (Q Ghāshiya 88:12), the eye of certainty (ʿayn al-yaqīn) (Q Takāthur 102:7) , the murky spring (ʿayn ḥamiʾa) (Q Kahf 18:86), the fount of molten copper (Q Sabaʾ 34:12), the coolness of the eye (qurrat ʿayn) (Q. Sajda 32:17, et al), and so on.
The folk of presence say that there are seventy ʿayns, as per the number of the veils between God and creation. Therefore the eye has seventy veils and seventy languages. The vastness of the cosmos and the sum of all sensory things are engraved within it. When it is decorated with the kohl of eternity by the hand of a lordly Mediator, and its Light shines forth, the eye of inner vision gains master over it and it becomes the door to the spirit.
The Prophet ﷺ said, “Beware the believer’s perspicacity, for he sees by the Light of God.” Then he recited, Truly in that are signs for those who discern (Q Ḥijr 15:75. Tirmidhī, Jāmiʿ, 3071). The luminous eye has the power to read the language of the eyes, plunge into their depths, and discern the veils through the colors of the lens.
The great principle behind this is the blessed prophetic ḥadīth narrated by Abū Razīn al-ʿAqīlī, who said, ‘I asked the Messenger of God ﷺ, “Where was our Lord before He created the heavens and the earth?” He replied, “In a Cloud with no air above it and no air below it (Ibn Ḥibbān, Ṣaḥīḥ 6275).”’ The secret of perspicacity lies in the word ʿamāʾ (cloud), which is the code for deciphering the languages of the eyes, by the Light of God.
ʿAmāʾ is composed of the letters ʿAyn, Mīm, Alif, and Hamza. The secret thus begins with the letter ʿAyn, whose numerical value is seventy, corresponding to the number of veils between God and creation. Then comes the Muḥammadan Mīm, which expresses a circle of annihilation that changes from one name to the next; for the name is the designation of the individual’s existence. Then comes the subtle flow of the Singular Alif, qual- ified by the Hamza in motion.
Therefore our master the Messenger of God ﷺ is the true Universal Man, the first one to fully comprehend the true meaning of his name. When the first letter of his name, the Mīm whose value is forty, was complete, he went into seclusion in the Cave of Ḥirāʾ and plunged into it with his entire being, which was the sensory Mīm. God then transformed this Mīm into an essential Alif, and so he is Muḥammad on earth and Aḥmad in Heaven.
