SUFI JOURNAL
Issue 109
EDITOR
Alireza NurbakhshMANAGING EDITOR
Safoura NourbakhshSENIOR EDITOR
Jawid MojaddediEDITORIAL BOARD
Jairan Gahan, Mary Gossy,
Dani Kopoulos, Robert SternauART DIRECTORS
Martin Harris, Chara Nelson
artdirector@sufijournal.orgART & DESIGN
Rita Fabrizio, Hamed ShahirDEVELOPER
Reza MamatiSUBSCRIPTIONS
Rita Fabrizio
subscriptions@sufijournal.orgCOVER ARTWORK
Photo montage by Martin Harris based on a photo by Matheus Bertelli on pexels.com
SUFI Journal (ISSN 0955-7385) is published under the auspices of Khaniqahi Nimatullahi New York, a New York not-for-profit organization. SUFI has been in print and distributed in the US since 1988. 2020 is the first year for the end of the printed magazine and the beginning of exclusively digital SUFI. Copyright on all articles is held by Khaniqahi Nimatullahi unless otherwise indicated. The views expressed in this journal are those of the individual authors and not necessarily those of the Editor or Khaniqahi Nimatullahi.
EDITORS' NOTEIn this issue of SUFI, we present themes both timeless and timely. Some pieces speak
directly to our times, while others express ancient wisdoms in fresh language.
The discourse of Alireza Nurbakhsh is about Sufism’s antidote to the tribalism that
continues to divide humanity and ignite conflict. Mary Lane Potter’s book The Body
Leads the Way also fits in with our contemporary reexamination of the body in a positive
and non-dualistic light. In her book and interview Potter explores rituals as embodied
experiences essential in fueling imagination and creating "liminal spaces."
We also revisit foundational Sufi concepts through the voice of William Rory Dickson,
professor of religion and culture, whose accessible and engaging style introduces
readers new to Sufism to its essential teachings with clarity and joy. Old Sufi tales
appear anew in this issue, translated and adapted into modern narrative forms,
accompanied by audio-visual elements that invite a fuller sensory experience.
As always, our readers can enjoy selections of mystical poetry often recited by the
poets themselves.
In these divisive and uncertain times, we hope this issue of SUFI continues to offer a
wellspring of hope, connection, and unity.
Based on Photograph: ©Pixabay - Pexels.com
POETRYLiberation
Alireza Nurbakhsh
The storm erupted in the clamour of night,
The lashing wind crashed against my door,
A message of rage,
Of wrath, and of the violence of space and time
In the howling wind,
A broken and incoherent voice,
A melancholic moan,
And the agonising cry of a forsaken human being
With a trembling hand,
I opened the door
A man was there on the other side,
From the tribe of “others”
I, being from the tribe of “us”
stepped back, subconsciously
His god, wrathful and vengeful — my god, compassionate
He preferred free-will; I was inclined towards determinism
He was immersed in reincarnation, while I desired the dissolution of my individuality in the absolute
The color of his skin was different
To my ears, the stories of his tribe sounded like unpleasant illusions
I stepped aside, and he entered
From within me, I heard a voice saying “be kind to him”
He realized that I am from the “us” tribe
I read hesitation and bewilderment in his eyes
Our eyes locked
Suddenly, deep in his eyes,
I found friendship, and I tasted kindness,
I realized that He was of my kind, and I of his,
That we are both from the same tribe
The human tribe
ALIREZA NURBAKHSH received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a retired solicitor in London, UK. He has been the Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order since 2008, and the editor of SUFI Journal.
Recited by Dani Kopoulos
Image: Mart Production | pexels.com
DISCOURSETRIBALISM & SUFISMALIREZA NURBAKHSHTribalism is the belief that one’s culture and values are superior, leading to loyalty towards one’s tribe at the expense of outsiders. This instinct has evolutionary roots—early humans depended on their tribes for survival. The amygdala, the brain’s fear center, reinforces this tendency, making us naturally cautious of those who seem different.
While culture can either amplify or weaken this instinct, in today’s world, tribalism often fuels prejudice, discrimination, and conflict. Religion can act as both a divider and a unifier, either deepening divisions or fostering harmony.
Overcoming tribalism requires mindfulness, self-awareness, and rational thinking.
Sufism offers a path beyond tribal divisions. Rather than rigid beliefs, it emphasizes attitude—encouraging self-improvement, kindness, and spiritual growth. At its core is the recognition that all human beings are equal, as they originate from the same divine source.
Central to Sufism is the principle of Oneness: all existence is a manifestation of a single reality. When one experiences this unity, divisions between “us” and “them” disappear, leaving only the One. To the one who realizes unity, all distinctions fade—there is no “us” or “them,” only Oneness.
ALIREZA NURBAKHSH received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a retired solicitor in London, UK. He has been the Master of the Nimatullahi Sufi Order since 2008, and the editor of SUFI Journal.Video Collage (Chara Nelson): 1. background ©Sasushkin/Getty Images Signature & UnratedStudio/Pixaby 2. ©Flavio Villinars /Getty Images Signature/ Canva Pro; 4. ©Nicolas Rizzon/Pexels;
4. ©wildpixel/Getty Images / Canva Pro
INTERVIEWInterview with Mary Lane Potter
by Safoura NourbakhshThe Body Leads the Way not only challenges our dualistic framework of pitting the body against the mind, the material world against the spiritual realm, but it also invites us to embrace ritual as the liminal space between the two sides, as a place of meeting, imagination, and reconciliation, a place "that can interrupt habitual ways of living and open up a holy between."
MARY LANE POTTER is the author of the historical theological study John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology, the midrashic novel A Woman of Salt (a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection), the story collection Strangers and Sojourners, the memoir Seeking God and Losing the Way: Revolution of the Heart, and the recently published essay collection The Body Leads the Way: Ritual, Liminality, and Imagination. Her stories and essays have appeared in SUFI Journal, Parabola, Image, River Teeth, Tablet, and many other journals. After receiving her PhD in theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School and serving as a professor of historical and constructive theology in several Christian seminaries, she converted to Judaism at the age of 40 and left academia. She then turned to writing fiction and creative nonfiction, earned an MFA, and taught creative writing for the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, Hugo House in Seattle, and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She’s always looking for new ways to bear witness in words to that which cannot be contained in words: the wondrous life of spirit in our midst. Photo: Mary Lane Potter ARTICLEThe Body Leads the WayRitual, Liminality, and ImaginationMary Lane PotterThe following excerpt is from a collection of essays The Body Leads the Way: Ritual, Liminality, and Imagination, a book which is also the subject of our interview with the author, Mary Lane Potter.
Homo Liminalis and the Power of Imagination
What makes it possible for ritual, in the broad sense we’ve been using it, to open us to liminal experiences like these? It is our existence as liminal beings, homo liminalis.
Ibn ‘Arabi uses the term Supreme Barzakh (al-barzakh al-a’la) as a synonym for Nondelimited Imagination, by which he means the entire cosmos, which is the realm of possible things in his worldview, things which in themselves are neither necessary nor impossible, neither infinite nor finite, neither visible nor invisible. In other words, for Ibn ‘Arabi, the entire cosmos, or what we so blithely call “the creation,” is a liminal state.The Real is sheer Light and the impossible is sheer darkness. Darkness never turns into Light, and Light never turns into darkness. The created realm is the barzakh between Light and darkness. In its essence it is qualified neither by darkness nor by Light, since it is the barzakh and the middle, having a property from each of its two sides. That is why He “appointed” for man "two eyes and guided him on the two highways" (Koran 90:8-10), for man exists between the two paths. Through one eye and one path he accepts Light and looks upon it in the measure of his preparedness. Through the other eye and the other path he looks upon darkness and turns toward it.1Human beings, as microcosm, participate in all three worlds or presences. We are spirit, body, and soul. Though all three belong to the cosmos understood as barzakh, with respect to human existence we may say that the soul or imagination is the barzakh that joins body and spirit.
Soul or imagination, then, refers to intermediate realm, neither luminous nor dark, neither alive nor dead, neither subtle nor dense, neither conscious nor unconscious, but always somewhere between the two extremes. Through imagination, the high and low interpenetrate, the bright and dark unite. Imagination is neither high nor low, lumininous nor dark, spirit nor body. It is defined by its "in-betweenness."2 Like the image of oneself in a mirror, "imagination is neither existent nor nonexistent, neither known nor unknown, neither negated nor affirmed. And one who sees oneself in a mirror is neither a truthteller nor a liar in [saying the] words ‘I saw my form, I did not see my form."3 Both are true. The person experiences these two different truths in a new unity in the intermediate realm of soul or imagination, similar to Noe’s third state of metainstability in perception, in which the image of a duck and a rabbit are both held in by the perceiver in a new unity of unstable ambiguity.
What Ibn ‘Arabi calls "soul" and or “imagination” is where spirit and body meet. Again, we need not accept Ibn ‘Arabi’s full ontology or anthropology to be inspired by his view of imagination as a between, a distinctive fertile meeting ground, one might say, of the body and mind. It’s essential to note here that Ibn ‘Arabi, like Merleau-Ponty and many contemporary philosophers, is not a dualist. For him, as Chittick points out, spirit and body are "qualitative distinctions of the microcosm."4 Or, more to my liking, they are powers that enable us to engage the world in different ways. Imagination, for example, is the power of the soul that "bridges the spiritual and the corporeal."5 It is active, creative. As Liminal beings, we are always moving back and forth between the invisible and the visible worlds or presences, bridging the two in fresh ways. Chitiick quotes one of Ibn ‘Arabi’s disciples as saying, "The barzakh is a world where the outward becomes inward, and the inward outward."6 This seems to me a handy way to speak of ritual as well: Ritual is a space where the outward (act) becomes inward (thought) and the inward outward. Perhaps ritual is one of the ways we remind ourselves we are liminal beings and intentionally open ourselves up to the power of transforming ourselves and our way of being in the world.
For though we are gloriously complex creatures, liminal beings, we struggle to live at peace with ourselves. As many philosophers and cognitive scientists have argued, dualistic concepts and images that divide body and spirit or body and mind have tainted and continue to taint our ideas and our experience of ourselves.7 Many binaries are rooted in the body / mind hierarchy: the inner and outer life, the sacred and the profane, religion or spirituality and the secular world, nature and nurture, women and men, queer and straight, the enslaved and the free, the beautiful and the ugly, Black or Brown and White, the Other and ourself.
One way to resist this perceptual, cognitive, and cultural drag toward dualism is to reflect on our existence as liminal creatures, our experience of living between, living in an uneasy, destabilizing tension between two elements, two worlds, two pulls, two forces, two perspectives, two ways of being the same reality, like wave and particle, like the self in the mirror and the self looking at the mirror. Whatever we may name these two-matter and spirit, body and soul, body and mind, instinct and consciousness, outer and inner, nature and culture-it is that tension between them, the tangled existence we find ourselves in that I honor and explore in relation to ritual, for ritual is one of the ways we enact and nourish our existence as liminal beings.
As liminal beings, we're unstable, pulled in two different directions. We find it hard to inhabit or remain aware of that between, whether we imagine it as a barzakh, or twilight creation, or as Noë's idea of a third state of perception that alters our view of two different images. In our anxiety, we try to resolve the instability we experience, to halt the teeter totter of existence, so we deny that we are liminal, and choose one image of ourselves as the definitive one, the duck or the rabbit, the self in the mirror or the self-looking at the mirror. For some of us, that means landing in our bodies, tending to them, following their lead always, and ignoring anything beyond the realm of the physical because it is beyond our reach or comprehension. For others of us it means living the life of the mind or the ethereal life of the spirit and ignoring the body, giving it its due, but treating it as a second-class citizen at best. Most of the time we find it hard to hold the two together. Rare is the person who doesn't live as if one side of this challenging, de-stabilizing experience we call human being doesn't exist or doesn't really matter. One of the most difficult challenges of being human is learning to live at home in our bodies, to reconcile our bodies and our minds, nature and spirit, which we experience often as irreconcilable.
What if, as many scientists, philosophers, and mystics have argued, matter is coming to consciousness through us, the human creature? What would our task as human beings look like then? Not to give ourselves over to the needs and limitations and desires of our bodies and the physical universe, just sinking into it, whether by addictive behaviors or ordinary habits. Nor to transcend matter by leaping into the spiritual realm, escaping or transcending the limitations of the material world by getting "high" through prayer or meditation or other spiritual disciplines. Our task is much more challenging: It is to live in such a way that these two irreconcilable ways of being are reconciled in our every feeling, thought, and action. Why are we here? For this, says Pir Vilayat Khan: "the materialization of spirit and the spiritualization of matter."8 Martin Buber says it this way: "In their true essence, the two worlds are one. They only have, as it were, moved apart. But they shall again become one, as they are in their true essence. Man was created for the purpose of unifying the two worlds."9 This is Ibn 'Arabi's view of the barzakh, liminal human being.
Ritualizing is one of the ways we are nourished and encouraged in this task of unification of our two distinct ways of being, of learning to hold them together in however unstable a whole. Perhaps it is this very anxiety at our difficult two-at-onceness, our dis-ease with the coexistence of incommensurates, our being a problem to ourselves, that gives us a hunger for ritual, in the sense I have described it, as a way to open up a liminal space we can enter to remember and enact our complex, dynamic way of being, to remind ourselves that mystery of our existence cannot be comprehended by reducing our lives to our bodies or our minds, to remind ourselves that we are homo liminalis, the meeting ground where spirit is materialized and matter is spiritualized.10 Ritual is a powerful way to remember and experience our liminal existence, to nourish ourselves as liminal beings, through the power of imagination.
Notes:
1- Ibn 'Arabi, al- Futühât al-makkiyya, 1911 edition, 3:274.28. Tr. and quoted by William C. Chittick, "Ibn' Arabi" in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2008/revised 2019) [https:/ /plato.stanford.edu/entries/ibn-arabi/#Bar].
2- Chittick, Imaginal Worlds, p. 25. For a full discussion, see Chapter 7, "The In-Betweenness."
3- Ibn 'Arabi, al-Futühât al-makkiyya I:304. Quoted in William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds, p. 112.
4- Ibid. p. 25.
5- Ibid. pp. 71-72.
6- Ibid. p. 106.
7- See George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, The Philosophy of the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
8- Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, The Call of the Dervish. Sante Fe, NM: Sufi Order Publications, 1981, p. 155.
9- Martin Buber, The Way of Man According to the Teachings of Hasidism. Chicago: Wilcox & Follett, 1951, p. 44.
10- This is perhaps an example of Hans Joas's statement about the "creativity of action" in The Power of the Sacred: that "in her relationship to her environment, the human being as organism experiences problematic tensions that must
be dealt with and that this forms the point of departure for new variants of action that are then incorporated into a routinized repertoire of action." (p. 238)
Links to Order the Book:
- https://www.amazon.com/Body-Leads-Mary-Lane-Potter/dp/B0DPJKQMRD
- https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-body-leads-the-way/be7beff1d6e8cb68
MARY LANE POTTER is the author of the historical theological study John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology, the midrashic novel A Woman of Salt (a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection), the story collection Strangers and Sojourners, the memoir Seeking God and Losing the Way: Revolution of the Heart, and the recently published essay collection The Body Leads the Way: Ritual, Liminality, and Imagination. Her stories and essays have appeared in SUFI Journal, Parabola, Image, River Teeth, Tablet, and many other journals. After receiving her PhD in theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School and serving as a professor of historical and constructive theology in several Christian seminaries, she converted to Judaism at the age of 40 and left academia. She then turned to writing fiction and creative nonfiction, earned an MFA, and taught creative writing for the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, Hugo House in Seattle, and the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She’s always looking for new ways to bear witness in words to that which cannot be contained in words: the wondrous life of spirit in our midst. Photo:© Jr Korpa | unsplash.com POETRYThis very momentChris HoffmanThis very moment
unfolds from now to now
like a flower blossoming
right before our eyes.
Like bees we rummage about
and plunge for the deep nectar.
Between the petals
of thinking of one thought
and the thinking of another
there is always a gap
through which peace and love
unowned by any of us
can become great waves
that reach the farthest shore.
Chris Hoffman is an ecopsychologist, poet, climate justice advocate, retired organization development consultant, and licensed professional counselor. He is the author of The Hoop and the Tree (ecopsychology/spirituality) and four books of poetry. His most recent, Son of the Earth, has received over 50 five-star reviews on Amazon. Website: www.hoopandtree.org.
Recited by Chris Hoffman
Video: ©cookelma - Getty Images / Canva Pro
ARTICLETHE SUFI WAY
Falling in Love with RealityWilliam Rory DicksonThe Sufi worldview is encapsulated in the Islamic creed: la ilaha illa allah.1 This, most basically, means: “there is no god except for God.”
“Fair enough,” we might say, or at least the card-carrying monotheists among us, who nod like, “well yes, of course — we’ve been saying that for years, actually.”
According to a deeper understanding, a kind of ‘going down the rabbit hole’ of this creed’s implications, the Sufi perspective simply points out that God alone has real being and is thus the only real; the only actual being. Hence, the creed can also be understood to say: “there is no being except for Being; no real except for the Real.” God is the only being there is.
We may, in response to this, look around and say: “That’s an interesting statement, but I can’t help but notice many, as in hundreds upon thousands, actually billions of beings and entities and objects and things and stuff and sensations: indigestion, ecstasy, war, cacti, and movie sequels. I mean, even furniture alone — just so many things. So, pardon my audacity but there are obviously a great many beings; lots of stuff; unbelievable amounts of things happening.”
Well, the Sufis might respond, “there certainly appear to be.” Ah, there’s the rub.
The existential implication or profound meaning of la ilaha illa allah is that multiplicity (i.e. the world) only exists in appearance.
It is probably worth exploring what “appearance” means a little further here. The Cambridge Dictionary (due apologies to Oxford) defines appearance in several interesting ways germane to our discussion, though I will focus on two of them. First, “appearance” is a word we use for someone’s short-term presence, when they show up for a brief period only. If we unfamous ones were to appear on a celebrity-oriented late-night talk show, for example, we would but “make an appearance” for a few minutes, before the host invites someone more important (not really more important, of course) for a longer conversation. Similarly, your beloved introverted cousin will show up to the party (maybe), but only for a quick hello, sweating nervously through some almost unbearable small talk, before loudly exhaling once out the door and rushing home to their impossibly adorable cat. They might come to the party, but they will only make an appearance.
We’re already some of the way down the road: we can see that multiplicity, all of the beings and things and furniture that make up our world, make an appearance only. And then they go away. Eventually, if we wait long enough, there is not even a trace of them left. Where do they go? (Whew, now there’s a question. Let’s bookmark that for another discussion).
The second meaning of appearance is connected to the first: it is when something looks like it is there, but actually, not really. A good example of this occurs should we decide to find a suitable backyard or forest for a campfire, and there proceed to take a stick and light the end of it (as one does) and draw a circle with it in the night sky, by rapidly waving the stick around in a circular motion. The eye certainly sees the circle, but we also know that the circle only appears to exist, and it’s really just a mildly burning stick spinning around fast enough for the visual effect of a circle to take place.
Sufis suggest that our world is appearance in both meanings of a) ‘just dropping in for a minute’ and b) the campfire sky circle: appearing to exist without having a substantial reality of its own, apparent but not really real. Everything, including us and all those coffee tables and dining room chairs, are in the process of disappearing, forever, not having any sort of permanent, independent existence.
Although this is about as simple of a statement of fact as one can make — it is just the situation as it is — it can come off as a bit concerning, or maybe even kind of a downer. It can lead us to ask: “Wait, so how real were we ever in the first place? What is truly real? Is there something beyond these disappearing appearances?”
“No!” An angry little voice shouts, “it’s all just meaningless flotsam and jetsam!” The Sufis will simply chuckle and shake their head at this angry little fellow with his seafaring terminology and point out that appearances, though only “making an appearance” all share one thing — which is that they are genuinely found and encountered, and this, they will note, means there is someone or something finding and encountering them.
They will then direct us to a single Arabic word that encapsulates both this subjective experience of finding and all of the objective stuff found: wujud, which I will simply translate here as “being.” This takes us to the second part of la ilaha illa allah. We’ve covered the “no god” or, in Sufi terms, “no reality” or “no being” part, in noting the apparent (as opposed to truly real) nature of the world and all of us in it. But the second part is that there is something truly real, which for convenience’ sake we’ll call the Real.2
Although the world (with all its people and furniture) only makes an appearance, or only appears, it is not totally without substance, as we can easily affirm by simply noting our own experience, which is at least something. “Okay fine,” we might say, “but what is it?” Well, that’s actually a very good question. One approach to addressing it would be to consider what is it that each moment of our life shares, regardless of emotional tone or experiential texture? What is it that literally everything has in common? What is the connecting thread of all and everything forever? The Sufis now point us back to wujud, or being / isness, what our Buddhist friends call “suchness.”3
The Sufis tell us that Being in and of itself is indivisible and self-subsistent, though when briefly projected as a display of myriad dependent (and interdependent) beings, it appears to become many, but as the many do not really exist, they do not thereby compromise its singularity (much like the word “appearance” does not become two words when used in two different ways).
If this sounds outlandish, the Sufis point out that there are ways to confirm it firsthand, though they can take some time. One tried and true way is to dive into the nature of reality through our most immediate access point: the portal of our own self. Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240), one of the greatest of Sufi masters, who made his appearance in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, asks us to consider what of us is appearance and what reality? Who, exactly, is the awareness reading this right now?
If this line of inquiry seems as impossibly boring as our introverted cousin’s cat is adorable, then, by all means, proceed to pursue other activities while you still have some time. However, the Sufis tell us that if we stick with this question long enough, we might just discover that our own self, with all of its experiences and activities, its sufferings and triumphs, is the surface appearance of a timeless, infinite ocean of Being, with a depth of meaning, beauty, reality, and love beyond our wildest imaginings.4
Considering the various challenges, violence, and darkness we see in the world, we might ask here, “what’s love got to do with it?”5 Why should we talk of love? Well, something interesting happens when we follow the implication that there is only one Real, or one Being, to the conclusion that there is only one Love, one Beloved, one true Lover. This takes us to one of the most important aspects of the Sufi method, path, or way.
Ibn ‘Arabi famously writes in his Arabic ode, tarjuman al-‘ashwaq (The Translator of Passionate Longings):
Mine is the religion of love, whichever direction love’s caravan turns, that is my religion and faith.6
Sufism has, in various places, been called the madhhab-i ‘ishq or din al-hubb, the “Way of Passionate Desire,” or “Religion of Love.” Love is key to its method and way. We do well to turn again to Ibn ‘Arabi to take us even further down this path. He writes:None but God is loved in the existent things. It is He who is manifest within every beloved to the eye of every lover — and there is no existent thing that is not a lover. So, the universe is all lover and beloved, and all of it goes back to Him… No one loves anyone but his own Creator, but he is veiled from Him by love for Zaynab, Suʾad, Hind, Layla, this world, money, position, and everything loved in the world.7This may seem like a bit of a stretch. Ibn ‘Arabi is suggesting here that our world is a) nothing but lovers and beloveds, b) all of which are rooted in one Beloved. But if we link our minds back up to what we have just covered about beings and Being, you can see why this makes sense. Each day we wake up and pursue beloveds: breakfast burritos and sartorial experiments, donations to animal shelters, romance, spiritual experiences, and vacation properties. We pursue them all because we love them; they are our beloveds. As we noted above however, all these beings, objects and experiences, these many beloveds merely make an appearance for a few moments, each bringing forth an infinitesimal fraction of what Being itself really is. Each beloved, everything and everyone we pursue and love, are all pursued and loved for reflecting in even a small way the one true Beloved at the heart of everything.8
One of the methodological implications of this is that you can measure a circle from any point on its circumference; you can dig anywhere in the world and eventually hit water.9 If we want to discover what’s truly real, if we want to find God, we can start right where we are.10 It is not as though we need to somehow escape our everyday living reality in order to find the truly Real, as there is no place that God cannot be found. If we look close enough, going to the very depths of life, whether inwardly through self-inquiry, or outwardly in pursuing our beloveds with everything we’ve got, totally opening our heart to the world, we may eventually discover the outrageously, sublimely beautiful Love / Lover / Beloved at the heart of it all, and fall completely in love with reality itself.
Now for some of us who have been bruised by religion or seen it bruise others we might wonder what religion has to do with any of this: “what’s religion got to do with it?” we might ask. It does not take much in the way of reading history to appreciate why this question can arise: there is a lot of bad religion out there.
The Sufis would respond by suggesting that religion is something like a national cuisine: it is only as good as the chef who prepares it. Whether we think of Nigerian, French, or Peruvian cuisine, each kind of food has myriad possibilities of sustenance and deliciousness — just ask Anthony Bourdain (may he rest in peace). And yet those possibilities can be unlocked only by a properly trained chef, one steeped in the cuisine’s rich history, tradition, and method. If you try a country’s proudest dish, but it’s prepared by an impish imposter, a kind of kitchen crasher who dresses up in chef’s gear but only knows food from ordering it, you will rightly wonder what all the fuss is about and maybe even decide that you very much dislike that particular cuisine. Religion is exactly like this hypothetical cuisine in that it can be a delight or disaster depending on who is preparing it.11
This brings us to the second part of the Islamic creed: muhammadan rasul allah, “Muhammad is the Messenger of God.” This basically means that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in particular, but also a larger class of humans throughout history, have gained (or been given) a deep knowledge of the first part of the creed (the only Real). Known as prophets in the Abrahamic traditions, these blessed people have then been tasked with communicating not only the recipe (scripture and its explanation) but also the cooking instructions, the practical methods (spiritual practices) for preparing the dishes of knowledge of the Real, and the love that inevitably follows from it.12
The recipe is disseminated widely, but the deep, intuitive art of peak cooking tends to be transmitted person to person, involving a smaller number of super committed chef-types. Over time the recipes inevitably get misunderstood and the limited number of real chefs means that the best of the cuisine gets lost in the mix and we end up getting some highly questionable food; half baked concoctions and such.
Despite this very real problem, culinary training persists. The method of Sufism, the school of love, continues to train excellent chefs.NOTES
1. This is technically the first part of the creed, the second of which is muhammadan rasul allah or “Muhammad is the Messenger of God” (which we will address a little bit later in this discussion). Also, perhaps a bit of a sidebar, but Arabic does not capitalize letters, and hence I have not in my transliterations here.
2. The Qur’an expresses this in a verse beloved by Sufis: “All is perishing and yet abides the Face of your Lord,Majestic, Splendid” (55:26—27). As this verse suggests, the good news is that, although all appearances are disappearing, there is something genuinely real, and it is unimaginably good, sublime, and beautiful. One of the Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God in the Islamic tradition, particularly beloved by Sufis, is al-haqq, which means, simply, “the Real.”
3. In the Buddhist tradition, the original Sanskrit term is tathata which means something along the lines of reality ‘as it is,’ free from conceptual overlay or subject-object distinctions; the true nature of things.
4. We might say that this self and world are the something like the (mostly imaginary) edges of infinite.
5. With a nod to Tina Turner’s (may she rest in peace) classic song, of course.
6. Tarjuman al-Ashwaq (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1966), 43-44.
7. Ibn ‘Arabi, Futuhat al-Makiyya II.326. As quoted in William Chittick, Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 181.
8. If we consider how deeply beautiful and meaningful the relationships and experiences that we encounter in this world are, we can start to get a sense of the mind-blowing immensity of what we’re dealing with when we refer to what they are a tiny fraction of.
9. I have heard this said before, but after writing it, wondered if it is in fact the case. So, I began doing some ‘digging.’ Thankfully, the American Water Surveyors confirm “if you dig deep enough down into the Earth’s crust, you’ll certainly find water.” These intrepid American surveyors of water note that the world’s deepest hole in Murmansk, delightfully named the Kola Superdeep Borehole, is 7.5 miles deep (this is the American water surveyors I’m quoting, after all, so excuse the mileage) and took 24 years to drill: and it has water in it. Gerald Burden, “There’s Water in the World’s Deepest Hole,” American Water Surveyors, April 30, 2019. https://wefindwater.com/thereswater-in-the-worlds-deepest-drilled-hole/
10. As Charles Fort nicely puts it: “If there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere. Lo! (London: John Brown, 1997 [1931]).
11. Perhaps one other analogy would be to imagine a kind of implement that either polishes or scrapes, depending on how it is held. Religion is like this implement, and it can be used to polish the window of the self so that it can see or scrape it up until it is just totally opaque and unable to transmit any light whatsoever. Along similar lines, Sufism’s most famous poet, Rumi (d. 1273) writes in his epic poem Mathnawi (3.4210), “For many have been led astray by the Qur’an: by (clinging to) that rope a multitude have fallen into the well. There is no fault in the rope, O twisted one, as you had no desire to reach the top.” See http://www.masnavi.net/1/25/eng/3/4210/
12. The Islamic tradition suggests that this is because the Real is a hidden treasure that loves to be discovered.
Dr. William Rory Dickson is Associate Professor and Chair of Religion and Culture at the University of Winnipeg. His research focuses on Sufism and contemporary Islam. His books include Dissolving into Being: The Wisdom of Sufi Philosophy (2024), Living Sufism in North America: Between Tradition and Transformation (2015) and (co-authored with Meena Sharify-Funk) Unveiling Sufism: From Manhattan to Mecca (2017).
Video - Golden Spiral /Getty Images
Photos (in order of appearance 1. ©AgsAndrew/Getty Images;
2. ©David Kasza /Getty Images Pro; 3. ©AgsAndrew/Getty Images SUFI STORY
The Meaning of ChivalryOn a quiet afternoon, the renowned Sufi master Abu Sa’id (d. 1049) stepped into the warmth of a public bathhouse, seeking respite from the dust of his travels. The air was thick with steam, the scent of soap and damp stone filling the chamber.
As he settled onto the stone bench, a bath attendant approached with practiced hands, carefully scrubbing away the layers of dust clinging to the master’s back. Each stroke of the attendant’s hands revealed traces of dirt, which he silently gathered on his own arm so that the master could see the dirt that was being removed.
Curious, the attendant broke the soothing silence. “Master,” he asked, “what is the true meaning of chivalry?”
Abu Sa’id, his eyes half-closed in reflection, smiled gently. “Chivalry,” he said, “is not showing a man the filth you have washed from him.”
Adapted from Asrar al-Tawhid fi Maghamat al-Sheikh Abusa'id
©Sufi Journal POETRYWhat
Love
Calms
Only with
Nakedness
Bill Wolak
I said, “Look how suddenly love vanished again from my arms.”
You said, “The tighter you cling to dreams, the more night escapes you.”
I said, “What love calms only with nakedness, that’s what I crave.”
You said, “Everything love attracts with undressing is only a spark’s smile.”
I said, “Someone poisoned the moonlight!”
You said, “Better an aftertaste of ashes than cold lips that lie.”
I said, “Just listen to the sigh lingering over that silk buttonhole.”
You said, “Only where there are no tongues are there no secrets.”
I said, “But I can’t breathe without kisses.”
You said, “Nevertheless, mouths seek always the promise of song.”
I said, “Look at how love’s disappointments have led me to despair.”
You said, “Along this path, even the mad become worthy.”
I said, “Whenever I hear footsteps, I’m still filled with anticipation.”
You said,”Well, you never know where the friend is gathering candles.”
BILL WOLAK is a poet, collage artist and photographer who has published his eighteenth book of poetry entitle All the Wind's Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions.
Recited by Bill Wolak
Photo: ©cottonbro studio - Pexels.com
ARTICLEA Lens, BendingHASSAN NOURBAKHSH
ABU AMIRBAYATWe never truly see the world itself.
We see an image—filtered, formed, predicted. And somehow, we forget there’s a difference.
There’s something strange about perception. It arrives so fast, so fluently, that we believe it’s immediate—as if our eyes were transparent windows and reality poured through them. But perception isn’t a window—it’s a lens. And the lens is alive.
Built from layers of memory, expectation, and silent motor knowledge, the lens interprets every flicker of light before we know we’ve seen anything. It guesses, compares, projects—telling us what something is before we even ask. And because it all happens beneath thought—smooth, seamless, invisible—we call it truth.
But what if we could interrupt it?
What if we could slow down the process just enough to notice not what we’re seeing—but how?
Because sometimes it happens.
In moments of beauty, in altered states, in childhood, or even under the right kind of duress, we suddenly become aware that we’re not seeing reality—we’re seeing through something. And that awareness changes everything.
Imagine a simple object: an apple. We don’t just see its shape or color.
We feel—without noticing—the way we could reach for it, hold it, bite into it. This isn’t thought. It’s not even conscious. It’s motor knowledge—enactive memory. What the body knows before the mind catches up. Psychologists call this affordance—the silent knowledge of what things offer us. And it’s one of the hidden foundations of perception. To see something is also to prepare to act on it. And action—or at least, the readiness for it—shapes what we see.
This is the lens.
But what happens when the affordance is disrupted?
An apple surrounded by snakes.
A glass of water just out of reach.
A familiar street walked backwards.
Even wearing a uniform on the wrong day.
These dissonances jar the filter.
They make us aware—even briefly—that we are interpreting. That perception isn’t passive. That the image is always already shaped. And in that awareness, something shifts. The apple is no longer just an object. It becomes an image—and we become witnesses.
There’s a psychological experiment involving Rorschach inkblots. Participants are asked to name what they see—rapidly, without pause. The trick is in the speed. With no time to settle into perception, they begin to project. Some blots yield almost-pictures—a butterfly, a mask, a bird. Others remain abstract, resisting meaning. And yet the mind fills in the gaps. What emerges isn’t just data. It’s a brief window into how we create the world. Perception and imagination blur. The internal and the external mix.
That blurred boundary—between projection and perception—creates a strange lightness.
A kind of artificial clarity, like slipping into a dreamstate with your eyes open.
Freud once wrote that consciousness is what tells us whether something is from inside or outside. And when that boundary flickers, we enter a liminal state. Not asleep, not awake. Not dreaming, not quite real.
This, too, is the lens. But now we’re watching it move.
Why does animation sometimes feel more beautiful than life?
A rusted building drawn by hand.
A dull lamppost rendered in a sky.
We know it’s not real—and that’s what makes it resonate. Because we know it was created. Because we sense the presence of a consciousness behind it. And because we are also conscious that we are perceiving a representation.
It is beauty as echo.
Not in the object, but in the awareness that it is image.
This awareness, some say, can be trained. Not by changing the object, but by changing the filter. Shift the context. Disrupt the affordance. Change the role, the environment, the posture of the body. Each of these alters the lens. But not all change is slow. Some suggest that rapid alternation—switching quickly between modes, scenes, or filters—can momentarily confuse the short-term memory that stabilizes perception. And in that confusion, we catch a glimpse of the lens itself.
This is not hallucination. It’s recognition.
A flicker of clarity that says: this is not the world—this is your version of it.
There’s a story from the Masnavi. In a contest between Chinese and Greek artists, each paints a side of a wall. The Chinese use color, pattern, and detail. The Greeks polish their side into a mirror. When the veil is lifted, the Chinese art reflects in the Greek mirror—but brighter, more luminous.
Why does the mirror win?
Because it shows without owning.
Because it reflects without interference.
Because it doesn’t say “mine.”
The mirror is what the lens could become—if it let go of itself.
There is a kind of ghost that lives in our body—the phantom of what used to be, or what could be. In patients who lose a limb, the mind still feels its presence. This is not madness; it’s a clue. The body isn’t just flesh—it is also a map in the mind. And the map doesn’t update just because the terrain has changed.
This means the way we feel the world, and even our own form within it, is filtered not just through eyes, but through internal simulations. The beauty we feel may in part be the echo of an action we almost took, a movement rehearsed silently in the dark theatre of the brain. The phantom limb is real in sensation, even if it is no longer there in form—much like a mirage. Not an illusion in the sense of “fake,” but in the sense of being stitched from inference.
The desert shimmers.
The air warps.
And our mind completes the picture with water.
The error is not in the eyes, but in the model that tries to make sense of something unfamiliar.
The same happens with people, with memories, with love.
When we look, we do not see. We fill in—an image that aches in the absence of reality—or the mirage—a projection mistaken for presence. Our perception is full of echoes.
And yet, these echoes are not empty.
They are the trace of something deeper: the possibility that beauty is not in the thing, but in the way we are moved by it.
Not because it is real—but because we recognize it as image.
And in that recognition, we feel the presence of another.
The final refinement is not about seeing more.
It’s about seeing less of ourselves in everything.
The lens was never just optical.
It was always personal.
Built from every interaction, every model, every habit of survival. It filtered the world through predictions, and gave us a kind of stability. But it also trapped us in it. It made perception feel like reality.
We mistake the image for the thing.
The beauty for the object.
The thought for the self.But sometimes, the lens flickers.
We glimpse something unfiltered.
A moment when the image is beautiful not because of what it is—but because we know it is an image.
We feel the presence of the one who made it.
The consciousness behind it.
Like a hand drawn in animation.
Or a reflection in a mirror.
It’s not real, and that’s what makes it real.
It’s not ours, and that’s why we feel it.
This is the paradox.
To become aware of the lens, we have to stop looking through it.
We have to see it.
And maybe the only thing that can do that is beauty.
Because beauty doesn’t insist.
It doesn’t argue.
It simply resonates.
And when it does, we remember:
We are not looking at the world.
We are looking through something.
And that—that gentle, trembling clarity—is the beginning of freedom.
This piece is part of an ongoing collaboration between friends, exploring perception, language, and the porous boundaries between self and the world. Their work traces the movement between experience and interpretation, drawing from philosophy, neuroscience, and poetics.
HASAN NURBAKHSH is an architect. He lives in Spain with his wife and daughter.
ABU AMIRBAYAT has a BS in psychology and a postgraduate certificate in education. He lives and works in Oxford UK.
Video/Photos: 1. © Blackdorfx Getty Images Signature/Canva Pro; 2. ©Aleksandr Korchagin /Canva Pro; 3. Jaynir/Getty Images; 4. ©Visual Content/Canva Teams
POETRYSpell of RainRaphael Block
Tonight, I listen to the rain
rushing through the trees, slooping down
the windows, breathing in delight.
This is enough, more than enough.
I don’t need the sights of another
war assaulting my eyeballs.
There is time enough to mourn
the ignorance and terror of men.
This night, let candlelight and Spirit
be my companions while music drops,
gushes, and roars fortissimo to pianissimo,
back to mezzo, followed by a silence.
Merciful storm, raging through the land,
wash away the suffering,
strike earth and sky,
healing our rifts,
clap away our fears,
quench our thirst
for peace.
RAPHAEL BLOCK is the author of several books of poetry, including Spangling Darkness and most recently, Strings of Shining Silence: Earth Love Poems. His work speaks to Earth's call for a heartfelt response to our ecological crisis. Born on a kibbutz, Raphael spent his boyhood playing on the hills of Haifa. His family later returned to London, where learning British English shaped his ear for sound. He currently lives and writes in Northern California.
Recited by Raphael Block
Video: ©Matthias Groeneveld / Pixabay
SUFI STORY
Bayazid and the Dog
A Thirst Beyond Water
The desert stretched like an endless parchment beneath the ink of the sun, scorching both the earth and the feet of the wayfarer. Bayazid al-Bistami, the mystic whose name was whispered with reverence across many lands, journeyed alone under the unforgiving sky, bound for Mecca. His throat was parched, his lips cracked, and every breath scraped his lungs like dry sandpaper. Yet his heart remained steady, carrying the weight of seventy pilgrimages on foot—each step soaked in devotion.
He remembered from past journeys that a village lay ahead, nestled like an oasis between heat and horizon. And indeed, after long hours of walking, a blur of green shimmered in the distance—trees marking the edge of habitation. Relief swept over him like a cool breeze. Soon, he would rest. Soon, he would drink.
As he approached the village well, he saw a small group of villagers gathered, pulling up pails of water and quenching their thirst. But what caught Bayazid’s eye was not the people—it was a dog. Frail and panting, it stood apart, tongue lolling, eyes dim with desperation. It seemed no one noticed the creature, nor did anyone care to.
The dog met Bayazid’s gaze. In that silent exchange, something passed between them—something deeper than words. It was the cry of need, the mute plea of a fellow soul cast aside by the world.
Bayazid’s thirst vanished like a mirage. He turned to the crowd and called out in a firm voice, “Will any of you take the merit of my pilgrimage in exchange for a bowl of water—for this dying dog?”
The villagers glanced at him, some with confusion, others with indifference. No one replied.
Bayazid raised his offer. “What about five pilgrimages? Ten? Twenty?”
Still, no response.
He looked again at the dog, whose flanks heaved with effort, whose eyes seemed to dim by the moment. A sense of urgency welled within him.
“Thirty pilgrimages… forty… fifty… Seventy! Seventy pilgrimages I have walked on foot to the Kaaba—take all of them! Just bring water for this creature of God.”
At last, a man stepped forward. “I will,” he said quietly, humbled by the stranger’s plea.
Moments later, Bayazid knelt before the dog and placed the bowl of water before her trembling muzzle. But as he watched her, a subtle pride crept into his heart. What a deed I have done, he thought. Seventy pilgrimages, exchanged for a single act of compassion. What a sacrifice in the name of God.
The dog looked into his eyes—long and still—then slowly turned her head away. She would not drink.
Bayazid’s heart sank. In that instant, he understood.
He had not emptied his heart; he had merely traded one attachment for another. The vanity of his spiritual résumé had crept in unnoticed, like dust upon a mirror, clouding the light of sincerity. He fell prostrate before the animal, tears streaming down his face.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. “Forgive the ego that dressed itself in the garments of piety.”
Then came the voice—not from the dog, but from the deep silence within:
“How long will you speak of your deeds as if they were your own? How long will you weigh the weightless acts of love on scales of pride?”
Bayazid remained in repentance for what felt like an eternity, until at last, the dog inched forward and began to drink.
Adapted from Manaqeb al-Arefin
©Sufi Journal POETRYÉglise(Église des Jacobins, Toulouse)Richard James AllenYou stumble into the church
It’s not an accident
But you didn’t plan
To be here
Something happens
It has no name
It’s not like
You are suddenly a believer
But there is
An un-numbness
Since passing through
Those un-human doors
As though you are
At the centre
Of a giant
humming bowl
At the bottom of a river gorge
Where whatever force carved
This gavotte
Of valleys and mountains
Is still here
Vibrating
As you disappear out of sight
Beneath the fern line
Of a giant
Prehistoric canopy
Your knees start to ache
On the pews
And you sit back
Onto the pillowless bench
Like so many generations
Before you
Patient for revelation
This church is beautiful
But its ravine of peace
Is not contained
Within these walls
Unremembered artisans'
Have sung their crafts
Into its vaults
Drawing wayfarers in
To their call and response
Reminding them
Of something
They had forgotten
Even to look for
And when they lost it
To find it again
Sometimes with their help
And sometimes to help others
Who may have stumbled
Not by accident
And not by planning
Into the invisible reveries
The fetches
Farfetches
And fantasms
Of now
Forlornly
Unemployed angels
RICHARD JAMES ALLEN's poetry has appeared widely in journals, anthologies and online, and he has been a popular reader at multiple performing arts venues, over many years. His latest book, Text Messages from the Universe (Flying Island Books), will be launched in 2023. Earlier volumes include: More Lies (Interactive Press, 2021), The short story of you and I (UWAP, 2019), Fixing the Broken Nightingale (Flying Island Books, 2014), The Kamikaze Mind (Brandl & Schlesinger, 2006) and Thursday’s Fictions (Five Islands Press, 1999), which was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. Richard is well-known for his multi-award-winning career as a filmmaker and choreographer with The Physical TV Company and as a performer in a range of media and contexts.
Recited by Richard James Allen
Photo-Montage: Cathedral Tolouse ©Wikimedia Commons
CULTUREWATCHConscious:
A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, Annaka Harris (Harper, 2019)
Between Structure and the Non-material: Rational Consciousness and Mystical Agnosticism
By: Jeremiah Cornelius
Of what use is reading about consciousness from the perspective of contemporary scientists and rational philosophers? Especially how does it serve an audience interested in mysticism, or followers of spiritual disciplines?
These are questions I’ve been asking myself, especially as in the past few years, there’s been an increase of relevant, popular published books and feature articles in this area. For myself, critical readings on the subject are prompted by several converging impressions, just as cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and even physicists have begun themselves to converge—not always coherently—on this mystery: What is consciousness, and what is its place in the cosmos?
Arguably, we’re now present in an age when we face both increased technological advancement and greater metaphysical uncertainty. Despite spiritual assurances or attempts at scientific certainty, that question “what is consciousness?” implicitly persists, with little for satisfaction in most answers.
There’s also another element—or at least another perspective—in this. It’s appealing to believe that each of the various approaches in human spiritual and intellectual endeavor are ultimately intended for arriving at irreducible truth. So, as conscious beings ourselves, it’s practically inevitable that in our search for truth—for reality—we turn reflexively, time and again toward an examination of consciousness.
I hesitate before claiming that all of reality must be reducible to consciousness. Still, it seems fair to say that perception of reality must be received through means of consciousness. Is there any viable quest for truth that can avoid passage through this gate of self-awareness? Entertaining this idea is in contradiction to the central tenet of mystical practice.
Rational philosopher, Thomas Nagel makes a similar point in What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Nagel states that any comprehensive understanding of the universe must reckon seriously with consciousness as an irreducible phenomenon. He wrote, “Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable... without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting.”1
Twenty years later, philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers went on to elaborate upon Nagel’s understanding of mind-body duality. Chalmers refers to this as “the hard problem of consciousness”—"how we have subjective experience as phenomena?” Much of the scientific study grappling with consciousness over the past thirty years, treats this “hard problem” as either a new pivot, or as a point for contention. A striking key feature hinted by posing the “hard problem” is open engagement with consciousness as a possible non-material thing.
Of course, Nagel and Chalmers aren’t wholly representative of the breadth of positions from philosophy and cognitive science, but they have been leaders in bringing scientific inquiry and rational philosophy squarely into a province that was formerly reserved by mysticism.
I don’t think in taking this turn, philosophy is directly encroaching or competing with mysticism. For one thing, in mysticism there’s often a method in proposing questions without any expectation for explicit answers. But for mysticism in our post-religious age? Maybe there’s still value in a rational evaluation of consciousness—when scientific and philosophical models are now being asked to fulfill the functions of world-view that once belonging to myth and religion.
Pursuing these thoughts, more questions again present themselves. Can rational philosophies using the tools of cognitive discoveries, provide any orientation for a modern individual—one who’s increasingly estranged from a traditional view of the world and its points of spiritual reference? Can they bring clarity and sense of meaning for spiritual practitioners in our times, when rosaries have been replaced by mobile phones, as objects constantly in hand?
I wouldn’t ask too much of popular writing or academic work to explore these questions adequately. Yet with limitations in mind, it still occurs that a recent reading of Annaka Harris’ Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind, validly entertains the non-material study of consciousness—making clear, accessible strides in this direction.
Annaka Harris’ Conscious was well-greeted when first published six years ago, with promotion that saw it make the bestseller list of The New York Times. Conscious was favorably billed in comparison to Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli. That’s a rather high watermark by any measure, and I wouldn’t attempt criticism against the standard it sets!
In any case, Harris’ book is quite a different production altogether. Popular science books like Rovelli’s are often praised for offering understandable explanations. In Conscious we have more of a pleasant exploration of ideas about consciousness, and a gentle reminder of what isn’t known, and perhaps can’t be known, about the essence of our own awareness. Overall, the book is only one-hundred-odd pages, for a topic that is—only slightly—more philosophical and experimentally enigmatic than particle physics.
Harris writes with an inviting and open style, encouraging a narrative conveyance towards shared discovery. The voice in the book is a natural one from an intelligent and curious amateur, with access to various expert voices—sometimes deferentially. From the introductory chapter we are introduced to both Thomas Nagel’s thoughts and David Chalmers “hard problem,” mentioned before in earlier paragraphs. The authors and their ideas are described over a few pages, with Harris’ recollections of personal experiences for purposes of illustration, and connecting her reader to their own presumable moments of fascination—of being aware of awareness.
“My goal in writing this book is to pass along the exhilaration that comes from discovering just how surprising consciousness is.”With brevity and almost too much deft, Harris goes further on in calling these summations “A working definition of consciousness”, albeit one that entails mystery. I won’t quibble too much with this. Were Harris to introduce a Chalmers critic, like Daniel Dennett, we would be holding a much longer and quite different book. As a definition it meets the need to do useful work for the further explorations of this book, even if full satisfaction of the definition remains elusive.
It is this very elusiveness that becomes the de facto subject driving a narrative—for what would otherwise be a small collection of related findings and anecdotes. Instead, Harris found a way to move her reader through various positions taken by philosophers and scientists, placing them in dialogue with these propositions.
Over successive chapters, Harris writes illustratively about illusion and verity in perception, and gets into the sticky territory of apparent “free-will”— where she comes down gently but firmly on the side refuting conventional free-will. The citations of neurological studies and experimental evidence employed are convincing enough to view supposed free-will as a perception, generated in consciousness as afterthought to action.
This position leads to some further paradoxes in later chapters. Just so, it also provides opening for a next section on connection between the physical brain and mental states, using some interesting clinical pathologies and thought experiments to make counter-intuitive points about the central question again: what does it mean to have consciousness?
Returning to this question—something that happens numerous times in Conscious—is more than a metaphysical provocation. Harris does this without taxing the reader, to seemingly identify and then discard layers of conceptual certainty.
“We seem to be left without answers to the two questions with which we began this investigation: when we look closely, we can’t find reliable external evidence of consciousness, nor can we conclusively point to any specific function it serves. These are both deeply counterintuitive outcomes, and this is where the mystery of consciousness starts bumping up against other mysteries of the universe.”Idiosyncratically, this reset works to bridge previous chapters, to those successive in narrative exploration. As a device of sorts, this helps make a great leap as Harris introduces the reader to panpsychism, differing schools that each propose consciousness to be a fundamental feature of all matter.
“If we can’t point to anything that distinguishes which collections of atoms in the universe are conscious from those that aren’t, where can we possibly hope to draw the line? Perhaps a more interesting question is why we should draw a line at all.”Earlier I called this writing “deft”. Here a couple of sentences do the kinetic effort of rendering from conundrum, the “fringe” concept of panpsychism as a sensibly rational speculation. In the interim, while so doing Harris seems to have left behind, for something impersonally universal, the working definition of consciousness established in the beginning.
I think this works because Harris is writing to demonstrate the limitations of those assumptions, not to persuade. Her intellectual, and perhaps spiritual agnosticism, reads as principled. This is made clearer by another penultimate chapter that’s devoted to criticism of panpsychist theories by figures like Anil Dash. She concedes:
“I am not closed to the possibility that we might discover, by some future scientific method, that consciousness does in fact exist only in brains. It’s hard for me to see how we could ever arrive at this understanding with any certainty, but I don’t rule it out.”Harris doesn’t pretend to resolve the question of consciousness after all. Conscious concludes with a brief chapter—really a coda—that touches on the experience and experimental observation of time, invoking additional metaphysical agnosticism through the quantum physics, “delayed choice” experiments of John Wheeler. This section has an echo of resonance with the earlier speculations about free-will. Simultaneously, Harris keeps afloat the apparently opposed positions of a consciousness that is grounded in the material reality of physics, yet perhaps non-material, indicated in the chapeter about panpsychism.
Indirectly gleaned from Conscience is an idea that can be valuable though the mystical framing, used in my earlier pondering: I said “in mysticism there’s often a method in proposing questions without any expectation for explicit answers.”
Mysticism is mostly unconcerned with the possible structure of consciousness, versus realizations from the essential experience of conscious reality. In this, Harris’ work touches the spirit of mysticism, even as it remains firmly grounded in rational thought. Her central concerns aren’t the neural or physical mechanisms that correlate with experience, but with direct experience itself: this “something it is like” of actual being.
In Conscience, Harris yet demurs from the metaphysical in any religious sense. When approaching non-material explanations, Harris is careful not to anthropomorphize or spiritualize consciousness beyond what is rhetorically useful. She entertains the apparent reality of consciousness while shying from any certainty about its source or purpose.
Rather than seeming inconclusive, her refusal to close the book on mystery gives Harris a power: Her treatment of non-materialist theories is acceptable, not because she endorses them, but because she arrives at them in philosophical legitimacy—without being analytically antiseptic or empty of passion. Reading Harris’ book can be useful and entertaining with practical application—especially for a person in spiritual practice who is unsatisfied by doctrinal dogma, out-of-context tradition, or outright magical-thinking about the experience of consciousness.
NOTE:
1- Nagel, Thomas. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? Oxford University Press, 2024JEREMIAH CORNELIUS is a technology advisor to software companies. His principal residence is in the San Francisco Bay Area, when he doesn’t find preferred places to spend his time. Photo: Book Cover by the Book Author