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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Date: Tue Aug 12, 2003 10:17 am
Subject: To Be Holy for God, Be Wholly for God om_namah_shi...
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http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?for...ilosophy&show=0&cid=69055

http://www.iranica.com/articles/v8f5/v8f512.html

ENSAÚN-E KAÚMEL (The Perfect Human Being), a key idea in the
philosophy and ethics of Islamic mysticism.

The phrase, al-ensan al-kamel, was coined by Ebn al-¿Arab^ (d.
638/1240, q.v.) in the first chapter of the Fosáus al-háekam (p. 50),
although the idea underlying it is as old as Sufism itself. Bayaz^d
BestÂam^'s (d. 261/874-75, q.v.) description of the human being
as "the perfect and complete" (al-kamel al-tamm; Qoæayr^,

======================

Sitaram comments: NOTA BENE that al-tamm is most likely from the same
root word as the Hebrew "tamim" (perfect, unblemished), which rabbi
Harold Kushner discusses at length in his book "How Good Do We Have
To Be".

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sitaram/message/285

Rabbi Kushner adds that his own choice for the most important word in
the Torah is TAMIM, in Genesis 17:1, where God tells Abraham "Walk
before Me and be TAMIM ". KJV version tranlates TAMIM as PERFECT.

The same word TAMIM is used elsewhere to describe the type of
flawless animal which is suitable for sacrifice at the altar. Revised
Standard Version translates TAMIM as "blameless". But more
contemporary scholarship has begun to translate TAMIM
as "wholehearted". The implication of such a tranlsation, Rabbi
Kushner explains, is that what God desires from us is NOT perfection
in the sense of INFALLIBILITY, but INTEGRITY in the midst of our
flaws and imperfections. As some people say in prayer, "Im not much,
Lord, but I'm ALL I've got." Mother Theresa once said, "We are not
here to be SUCCESSFUL, but to be FAITHFUL", which Rabbi Kushner takes
to mean "faithful to our essential selves as well as to the essence
of our understanding of Who and What God is in God's essential Self"
(paraphrased in Sitaram's own words).

Rabbi Kushner writes, "God wants Abraham to strive to be the true
core of who he is, even if he stumbles or strays from that path
occassionally".

========

TO BE HOLY FOR GOD YOU HAVE TO BE WHOLLY FOR GOD

http://www.uahc.org/torah/issue/020810.shtml

In Genesis 6:9 and 17:1, the Hebrew word tamim is used to refer to
Noah and Abraham, respectively, and is translated as blameless. In
Deuteronomy 18:13, the same word, tamim, is translated as
wholehearted. Why is this word translated differently in our portion?

What does being wholehearted mean? Does it mean the same to you as
being blameless?

Rabbinic commentators have written that only five biblical verses
convey the essence of Judaism and this is one of them. Why do you
think that they felt this verse is so important?

Harold Kushner writes:

That, I believe, was what God asked of Abraham. Not "Be perfect,"
not "Don't ever make a mistake," but "Be whole." To be whole before
God means to stand before Him with all our faults as well as our
virtues and to hear the message of our acceptability.… Know what is
good and what is evil, and when you do wrong, realize that that was
not the essential you. It was because the challenge of being human is
so great that no one gets it right every time.

God asks no more of us than that.

(Harold S. Kushner, How Good Do We Have to Be? p. 180)

Classical Jewish ethicists have attempted to illuminate the
difficulty and significance of being wholehearted. "For you must know
that words are a matter of the tongue, but meaning is a matter of the
heart…. When a man prays only with the tongue, the heart is
preoccupied with something other than the meaning of the prayer…. The
prayer becomes like a body without a soul, a shell without contents.…
Only the body is present; the heart is absent." (Bahya Ibn Pakuda
quoted in The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart by Menahem
Mansoor, p. 365)
In the nineteenth-century Lithuanian yeshivah founded by Rabbi Israel
Salanter, the students were required to not only study Torah and
Talmud but also to undergo an examination of their ethics and
character. They were supervised by an ethical mashgiach who examined
the students closely for blemishes in their character and behavior.
Is it possible that our hearts will never be whole for God unless we
are willing to carefully examine the blemishes and defects that make
us "un-kosher"?

Maybe we cannot be holy because we are not wholly for God: We only
give and show part of ourselves to God. We are plagued by a
disharmony that prevents us from connecting our hearts, words, and
deeds to create a beautiful tapestry that is prosaic as well as
Mosaic.

http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/edlead/9812/scherer.html

Question: Adolescents, in particular, often experience deep spiritual
emptiness and oppression. How do you help teenagers get out from
under that, and find—what was the Hebrew word that you used in your
book?—the notion of whole-heartedness?

Harold Kushner: Tamim—wholeness or integrity. Listen, adolescence is
tough. It's tough on adolescents and it's tough on their parents, and
all you can do is survive it. It's an awful time and it's gotten
harder because of all the temptations and pitfalls today.
http://www.uureading.org/sermons/sermon%202000-09-24.htm

It just isn't so. In his book, How Good Do We Have to Be, Rabbi
Harold Kushner argues that the most valuable phrase in the Torah
comes from Genesis 17, when God says to Abraham, "Walk before me and
be tamim." Although the King James translates "tamim" as "perfect"
and the RSV opts for "blameless," Kushner prefers the
translation, "whole-hearted." God asks Abraham to be whole-hearted
and to have integrity, not to be perfect. What about us? I believe
that if we can learn to embrace our own inherent fallibility, and
strive for wholeness rather than perfection, then we will also become
more capable of tackling the challenge of forgiving trespasses
against us and against the community.

There was a man who had been a devout Jew. As a boy and young man, he
had joyfully worshipped his God in the village shul, and he kept all
of God's commandments and laws.

When he entered his twenties, the man turned away from God, he
rebelled against his law-laden religion, and went off to live in a
faraway city. Once there, he chose a secular life, and in an act of
clear defiance against his tradition, he had bold colorful tattoos
inscribed over the surfaces of his arms and chest. Each time he
admired the tattoos in the mirror he felt liberated from his
restrictive past. But, one day he awoke and yearned to turn back to
his God, to reenter his community. In keeping with tradition, the man
knew that he would first have to undergo a mikva (or ritual bath) in
order to purify himself before God prior to entering the temple. He
returned to his village and hurried excitedly to the mikva.

Once he had disrobed and was poised to step into the bath, a
community leader blocked his way and angrily admonished him that,
according to strict Jewish law, no one who had demeaned and mutilated
himself through the act of being tattooed was permitted to enter the
mikva for fear that it would defile the water. The tattooed man sat
dejected on the edge of the bath and began to softly weep. Would he
never be reconciled again to his God or to his community? would his
tattoos forever be like the proverbial Mark of Cain, preventing his
redemption.

A second man came upon him crying, and bent down to inquire of his
suffering, and the tattooed man explained his plight. The second man
held out his arm, upon which one could clearly see a crude row of
blue identification numbers that been tattooed there, against his
will, by the Nazis at Auschwitz. The Holocaust survivor took the
tattooed man's hand and gently said, "Come. Let us step into the bath
together."

===========

Sufi article continues:

p. 140) does, however, not include the technical connotations with
which the term is generally invested (for a list of Sufi terms
considered equivalent to Ensan-e kamel, see ˆervan^, pp. 348-49; for
the principal terminology employed by Ebn al-¿Arab^, see H®ak^m, pp.
158-68). The idea of the Perfect Human Being may best be understood
in the Sufi paradigm that depicts the human race as taking its origin
from God in cosmic descent and returning to God in mystic ascent. The
crucial figure at the origin, apex and goal of this descent-ascent
paradigm is the Perfect Human Being, who (1) has realized his virtual
and essential oneness with God in whose likeness he is made, (2) has
experienced God in the very act of his own self- consciousness, which
provides him with the certitude of faith in his own immortality, and
(3) has achieved the highest standard of moral perfection through
ethical conduct and ascetic discipline, establishing him as a friend
of God (wal^y), equal in rank to the prophets. Seen in this
perspective, the Ensan-e kamel constitutes the core of Sufism, the
theoretical synthesis of its philosophy and mysticism and the
practical ideal of its ethics and asceticism.

The roots of the idea may be traced back to the Mazdean myth of the
primordial man (Gayomart, q.v.) and the Hellenistic notion of the
first man (protos anthropos). These concepts came to be synthesized
in the Manichean doctrine of the primal man (al-ensan al-qad^m) who,
together with the Mother of Life and the five elements, her sons and
auxiliaries, constitutes the first creation called into existence by
the Father of Greatness (Schaeder, pp. 192-268). The monotheistic
exclusivism of Islamic thought did not tolerate the dualist
implications of the Manichean primal man as king of the realm of good
and light who is involved in a primordial struggle with the prince
and forces of the coeternal realm of evil and darkness. Islamic
thought incorporated the idea of Ensan-e kamel, however, in its
medieval mystical philosophy by finding a solution similar to that of
medieval Jewish kabbalistic mysticism, where the Absolute (En Sof),
by emanation of its light, forms the archetypal man (AÚdam qadmon)
from whom the light emanates through the world of the archetypes
(sephirot; Scholem, pp. 98-117). It is also probable that gnostic
ideas of anthropos and sophía, as well as the Christian tradition's
assimilation of the homo imago Dei idea with a logos christology,
provided certain elements that were absorbed in the development of
Islamic conceptions (Andrae, pp. 333 ff.). Yet despite these possible
points of contact and apparent similarities with non-Islamic
traditions, the notion of Ensan-e kamel can be explained largely from
within intellectual developments of Islam itself.

The term and idea do not occur in the Koran; rather, they found their
way into Islamic thought in the literatures of koranic exegesis
(tafs^r) and Islamic Tradition (Hadith) by way of an as yet uncharted
course lacking many historical landmarks. By selecting privileged
koranic keynotes and capturing popular ideas of the religious
traditions encountered in the nascent Islamic empire, exegesis (q.v.)
and Tradition, preserved and interlinked a variety of themes that
came to be clothed in Arabic-Islamic terminology. These various
themes were eventually unified in the idea of Ensan-e kamel, as
expressed in the synthesis formulated by Ebn al-¿Arab^. They may be
categorized within two major strands, one revolving around the idea
of the Perfect Human Being as image of God and the other centered
upon the idea of the Perfect Human Being as pre-existent logos of
light. Neither idea is explicitly mentioned in the Koran, yet both
are rooted in koranic anthropology.

In the Koran, the human being holds pride of place among creation.
The universe, and all it includes, is placed in the service of the
human being (taskò^r, 14:32, 16:14 and passim), who is divinely
preferred to the angels as God's vicegerent on earth (kòal^fa, 2:30).
Although ranked in an intermediate position above the animals and
below the angels, and described in the Koran as weak, crying out to
God in trouble, forgetful of divine favors, unjust, impatient,
rebellious, and quarrelsome, the human being is created by God in the
fairest stature (95:4) and uniquely privileged as the only creature
that accepted God's invitation to be entrusted with the gift of faith
(amana, 33:72) after the heavens and the earth had fearfully refused
such responsibility. In the Koran, God is the light of the heavens
and the earth (24:35), who gives His light to human beings and, by
giving it, leads His light through them to complete perfection (9:32;
61:8). Declaring Himself the patron (wal^y) of those human beings
drawn close to Him because they are believers, God calls them to come
forth from the darkness into the light (2:257) and guides them
through His light, which is divine revelation sent down to the major
prophets and Moháammad in particular.

Mystically inclined Muslim exegetes focused on the famous light verse
of the Koran (24:35) and, by way of synthetic interpretation,
amalgamated it with the passages describing Moháammad's vision (53:1-
18). The God of light entrusts "the likeness of His light" to either
the believers or the prophets, in a "niche" holding a "lamp,"
understood as the hearts of the believers holding the light of faith
or the heart of Moháammad radiating the light of prophecy, kindled
from "a sacred tree." This tree, combined in interpretation with
Moháammad's vision "at the Lote Tree of the Boundary" (sedrat al-
montaha, 53:14), came to signify the column of light (¿amud al-nur),
in which Moháammad stood in pre-existential adoration of God and
received direct divine illumination in the face-to-face encounter of
his heart with the divine light. Early Sufi exegetes, such as Sahl
Tostar^ (d. 283/896, see Böwering, pp. 145-65), are cited in Sufi
manuals with fragments of this mystical trend of Koran interpretation
that crystallized in the notion of nur Moháammad, the pre-existent
entity of Moháammad, created first and a millennium before all other
creatures, and resembling a conglomeration of light from which all
the predestined souls disseminate by way of emanation (fayzµ) or
manifestation (tajall^).

The pre-existence of Moháammad prior to the creation of the universe
and the human race was also included in two currents of Hadith
statements. As Ignaz Goldziher has shown (pp. 317-44), one current,
influenced by the neoplatonic doctrine of emanation, stated that "the
first that God created was the intellect (¿aql)" by whom divine
sovereignty would rule over all things, or that "the first thing God
created was the Pen (qalam)" which, prior to creation, recorded all
that would come into being. The other current, showing gnostic
affinities, had Moháammad make the claim to his own pre-existence, "I
was a prophet when Adam was still between clay and water," or "I am
the first of mankind in creation and the last in resurrection." In
the extreme form of such beliefs, Moháammad was understood as being
equal in essence with all manifestations of the divine spirit that
had preceded him in time as messengers of God (from Adam through
Noah, Abraham, Moses, and others, to Jesus). The selfsame divine
envoy had been sent into the world in different physical appearances
to proclaim God's will. These trends of Hadith, criticized by
normative Islam for their inherent and threatening ideas of
transmigration (tanasokò) and incarnation (háolul), opened the way
for the belief that divine manifestation continues beyond the last of
the prophets (the seal of the prophets, kòatm al-anb^a÷) in the line
of the imams (walaya) of Shi¿ism (Rubin, 1975, pp. 62-118; idem,
1979, pp. 41-65) or in the invisible hierarchy of the Sufi saints,
which culminates in the seal of the saints (kòatm al-awl^a÷), an idea
developed by H®ak^m Termedò^ (d. 295-310/907-22; Radtke, pp. 59-136).

In Sufi cosmological conceptions, the idea of the Perfect Human Being
is connected with four principal ideas that frequently appear in
mixed forms in Sufi writings and include traces of Ebn S^na's
philosophy and Isma¿ili speculations. 1. The Ensan-e kamel is the
microcosm (¿alam-e sáag^r) reflecting and mirroring the macrocosm,
which is understood as a mega-human being (ensan-e kab^r). As
microcosm, the Ensan-e kamel combines both the spiritual and the
physical world as well as the realms of the universal and the
particular. 2. The Ensan-e kamel is the isthmus (barzakò) between
necessity and possibility, the point where the world of divinity
(háaqq) touches the world of creation (kòalq), and the line where the
uncreated world of the Unseen (¿alam al-gayb) borders on the world of
sense perception (¿alam al-æahada). 3. The Ensan-e kamel is the holy
book (ketab) revealed in the visible world, and reflects the
archetypal book (omm al-ketab) hidden in the invisible world, or the
pen (qalam) held by the divine writer who, in the act of writing,
creates the visible world. 4. Identified with the First Intellect (al-
¿aql al-awwal), the Ensan-e kamel stands in relation to the universe
like the human spirit to the body and its faculties. At other times,
likened to the Universal Soul (al-nafs al-koll), the Ensan-e kamel
serves as the principle animating the universe. When understood as
the active intellect (al-¿aql al-fa¿¿al), the Ensan-e kamel adopts
demiurgical features and gives forms to the hierarchy of beings in
the world of time and space.

Many of these complex ideas converge in the idea of the Perfect Human
Being found in the works of Ebn al-¿Arab^, which are based on
exegetical insights into the Koran, Hadith statements, cosmological
notions, and philosophical speculations. In Ebn al-¿Arab^'s view, the
universe was created by God like a mirror which, when polished at the
instant of the divine creative command (amr), reflected the Perfect
Human Being. Created in God's very own image, the prototype of all
human beings, he first became manifest as Adam. The totality of the
divine being, with its essence, attributes, and actions, is reflected
in the Perfect Human Being, in whom God enshrined and manifested the
names and realities of all things, thereby making him the reality of
realities (háaq^qat al-háaqa÷eq) and the sum total of the archetypes.
Understood as reality, the Perfect Human Being is called "the
Moháammadan Reality" (al-háaq^qat al-moháammad^ya), because its
nature is the irradiation of divine light that formed the primordial
Moháammad preceding Adam in the order of existence (Affifi, passim;
Takeshita, pp. 100-31; Chodkiewicz, pp. 89-92).

Prior to Ebn al-¿Arab^, the Iranian Sufis began to develop ideas
holding the seeds of Ensan-e kamel, without, however, using the term.
Iranian Sufism gives testimony to experiential notions of the
eternity of the human being beginning with ecstatic utterances
(æatáhá, pl. æatáaháat) such as Bayaz^d Bestáam^'s sobháan^ (Glory be
to me!) and H®allaj's ana'l-H®aqq (I am the Real), collected in
Ruzbehan Baql^'s (d. 606/1209) ˆarhá-e æatáhá^yat. A similar cord is
struck by pithy sayings such as Moháammad Neffar^'s (d. 354/965)
account of God's address to the human being, "you are the meaning of
the universe in its totality" (anta ma¿na al-kawni kollehi; text, p.
5; commentary pp. 193-95), and ¿Ad^ b. Mosafer's (d. 557/1162)
statement, "know that for me there are times when nothing holds me
and nothing sustains me, but it is I who hold and sustain all things"
(Frank, p. 81). ¿Ayn-al-Qozµat's (d. 526/1131) opaque notion of the
black light (nur-e s^ah, EIr. III, p. 142) offers a variation of the
theme in mystico-philosophical language, while ¿Atátáar's (fl.
6th/12th cent.) Elah^-nama provides a string of inspired discourses
on the theme (Meier, 1960, pp. 267-304). Najm-al-D^n Kobra's (d.
617/1220) invisible guide and twin in the sky (moqaddam al-gayb;
Corbin, pp. 95-148) and Najm-al-D^n Daya's (d. 654/1256, q.v.)
definition of the human being viewed from pre-existence (p. 103)
document elements of the idea in early Kobraw^ thought. Though
showing some familiarity with ideas also found in Ebn al-¿Arab^'s
thought, the writings of ¿Az^z-al-D^n Nasaf^ (7th/13th century),
including his Ketab al-ensan al-kamel, can be best understood as
independent clusters of reflections on the theme of Ensan-e kamel
developed as a system of philosophical monism (Meier, 1954, pp. 149-
203), which also envisages the Perfect Human Being as the "Perfecter"
(ensan-e mokammel) of the purpose of creation (Palmer, p. 11).

S®adr-al-D^n Qunav^ (d. 673/1274), Ebn al-¿Arab^'s disciple and
primary interpreter, focused in his philosophically-shaped writings
on the origin and goal of the human being. Qunav^ found the
cornerstone of his thought in the symbol of the Perfect Human Being
who brings existence (wojud) to full fruition. Manifesting the divine
attributes in perfect balance and equilibrium, the Perfect Human
Being stands in the center of the circle of wojud and, like a prism,
reflects the manifestation of all divine names within himself, while
the other human beings reflect only specific names of God (Chittick
and Wilson, pp. 3-32). The schematized abstracts of Qunav^'s version
of Ebn al-¿Arab^'s teachings on the Perfect Human Being, presented in
the works of Sa¿^d Fargan^ (d. 699/1299), had a strong impact on Sufi
poetry through their linkage with the commentary on the poetry of Ebn
al-Farezµ (d. 632/1235). Like many Sufi writers before him, Fargan^
wrote extensively on the stations of the soul's return to its
original perfection and foreshadowed the emphasis of Jam^ (d.
898/1492), the most eloquent Persian spokesman for Ebn al-¿Arab^ on
the Perfect Human Being as not only primordial prototype, but also
ultimate exemplar. As explained in Jam^'s Naqd al-nosáusá (Chittick,
pp. 135-57), the original perfection, made manifest in its first
creation and subsequent descent to the corporeal world, had a
parallel counter-movement in the ascending arc of the soul's desire
to return to its primordial perfection. The final goal of this return
is the Perfect Human Being, the fruit of the tree of creation, which
includes in itself the very essence of the whole tree. This teleology
offered an all-inclusive theory for the Sufi struggle against the
forces of this world, the self and Satan on the spiritual path to
God, and provided a backdrop for the evolving centrality of the Sufi
shaikh in the ideal of spiritual direction that was being shaped in
the Sufi affiliations (tÂar^qa).

Systematically developing Ebn al-¿Arab^'s ideas in his famous Arabic
treatise, al-Ensan al-kamel, ¿Abd-al-Kar^m J^l^ (d. 811-20/1408-17;
Iqbal, pp. 150-74; Nicholson, pp. 77-142) defined the Perfect Human
Being as the copy (noskòa) and counter-image (moqabel) of the Real
(al-H®aqq) and as the pivot (qotÂb) around which the spheres of
existence turn. Comparing the process of creation to that of writing
of letters which give names to all things, J^l^ envisioned these
letters as passing from the invisible to the visible world and
forming into living things animated by the breath (nafas) of the
Merciful. God breathes His own spirit into His copy-image, the
Perfect Human Being, by virtue of whom all human beings can discover
the divine attributes mirrored within themselves. Although unique as
the pivot in his primordial pre-eminence, the Perfect Human Being
appears in the world of time and space under different guises and
various names, all of which reflect the sublime image of Moháammad
(al-sáura al-moháammad^ya), the correspondent counter-image of all
attributes and opposites found in the Real. By way of manifestation
rather than transmigration, this sublime image appears anew in each
of the representatives (kòolafa÷) of the Prophet. Each of these
perfect human beings anchors his respective era as its pivot or saint.

The ideal of the saint in the organized forms of the Sufi
affiliations developed in close connection with the notion of the
pivot (qotáb) who heads the saintly hierarchy and is defined by ¿Abd-
al-Razzaq Kaæan^ (d. 730/1329) as "the place of God's appearance in
the world at all times" (p. 141). As his living image and ultimate
goal, the pivot portrays the ethical ideal of the Perfect Human Being
as projected onto the Sufi shaikh (Meier, 1964, pp. 37-68). Barring
rare exceptions, it is a firm tenet of táar^qa Sufism that following
the path of self-control and self-perfection requires a Sufi master
and guide (æaykò, p^r) who, after God, occupies the centerpoint in
the Sufi's life. Mirror of God and model for the Sufi, the shaikh
personifies the desired ideal (morad) of the mystic quest while the
disciple is its seeker (mor^d). By entering a shaikh's service, the
disciple bonds himself to God so that the shaikh's hand and voice
become for him instruments of divine command. The shaikh has the
authority of both a teacher (ostadò) who gives religious instruction
(ta¿l^m) and of a guide (moræed) who imparts spiritual education
(tarb^a). The shaikh is a holy man and God's representative; the
disciple perceives in him nothing but perfection. The shaikh's
personality bears the marks of ascetic effort and ecstatic vision,
and displays the signs of being drawn to God while turned to
humanity. Able to perform miracles, read thoughts, interpret dreams,
and predict the future, the shaikh possesses a glance of penetrating
insight and a will empowered by magic energy.

The Sufi links himself with his shaikh through his total inner and
outer self-abandonment to any and all of the shaikh's dispositions
(tasáarrof), surrendering himself like a corpse in the hands of the
washer and accepting the shaikh's word as God's command. He may
neither question the reason for an order nor seek justification for
an injunction requiring him to show his mettle or prove his worth.
This radical surrender of one's soul generates an inner bond between
master and disciple, makes the pupil totally transparent to the eyes
of his teacher and creates a union of love like that between father
and son. Concentrating his glance on the master's face (tawajjoh),
the disciple holds the master before his inner eye at all times,
especially during prayer and recollection. As he attempts to shut out
all distractions, the Sufi absorbs the shaikh's image in whose
radiance he perceives the beauty of God. The visible image of the
shaikh oscillates with the ideal of the Perfect Human Being which
unveils the full beauty of God before the Sufi's inner eye.

In the Sufi experience of the role of the shaikh, the human being
becomes transformed into a manifestation of the divine (Meier, 1964,
pp. 37-68). This idea of transformation into a divine being extended
well beyond the the tÂar^qa proper. For example, it was used by Abu'l-
Fazµl ¿Allam^'s (d. 1011/1602, q.v.) Akbar-nama to eulogize Akbar (d.
1014/1605), the great Mughal ruler of India, as ensan-e kamel and
temporal axis mundi on whom the stability of the empire depended and
around whom the world revolved (see EIr. I, p. 714). This and other
amplifications of the idea of ensan-e kamel have yet to be adequately
explored. Notwithstanding the importance of Ebn al-¿Arab^'s thought
and its subsequent elaboration, modern scholarship has tended to
emphasize it disproportionately, focusing upon the philosophical
dimensions of this key concept to the detriment of its ethical
implications. Consequently the rich and independent speculations of
Iranian mystics rest in the shadows awaiting their rightful
attention.

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