Brides of Elucidation & Transference

AAR Khidr Ruzbihan June 15 2008

“…so how can I be a prophet when I eat and drink and answer the call of nature, and have private parts.” (Ruzbihan, Unveiling 1997:10)
“The human face is really an awesome primary miracle.” (Ernest Becker)


Recapituations
Ruzbihan preached in the main mosque of Shiraz for fifty years. The fact that he built a ribat which he opened in 1165 means that he was able to get government approval.
These notes about describe Chishti masters who taught Ruzbihan’s tafsir and the opening of Ruzbihan’s refurbushed tomb in 1972.
Khwaja Ghulam Farid the Great Chishti master of the Punjab lectured to his students on the commentary on the Qur'an. The contemporary popular scholar and shakh Dr.. Javad Nurbaksh frequently quotes Ruzbihan.
European scholars petitioned the Iranian government for the rebuilding of Ruzbihan’s tomb in 1958 and it was reopened in 1972.


Die Before You Die
Reading Ruzbihan on the story of Khidr, we reading a text that simulates the actions of die before you die. Hearing the story of Khidr opens up questions about life and death. The Prophet Muhammad said “Die before you die.” (Mutu qabla an tamutu. ) Hearing the story of Khidr makes us reflect on death. Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker writes,
“Neurosis is another word for describing a complicated technique for avoiding misery. That is why from the earliest times sages have insisted that to see reality one must die and be reborn. The idea of death and rebirth was present in shamanistic times, in Zen thought, in Stoic thought, Shakespeare’s King Lear, as well as in Judeo-Christian and modern existential thought.” (Becker 1973: 57)


Transference
What does it mean that Ruzbihan is ecstatic? It means he’s charismatic. He is vividly charged with personal presence and is more likely than most people to receive transference and projection of special kinds or depths.
Ernest Becker, in The Denial of Death says that transference, projecting unrealized positive and protective qualities on another human being, is fundamentally a problem of courage, a solution to the terror of death, a strategy for terror-management, even an urge to heroism. (Becker 1973: 142-158). Becker summarizes:
“This is how we can understand the essence of transference: as a taming of terror. Realistically, the universe contains overwhelming power. Beyond ourselves we sense chaos. We can’t really do much about this unbelievable power, except we can do one thing: we can endow certain persons with it. The child takes natural awe and terror and focuses them on individual beings, which allows him to find the power and horror all in one place instead of defused throughout a chaotic universe. Mirabile! The transference object, being endowed with the transcendent powers of the universe, now has in himself the power to order, control and combat them.” (Becker 1973: 145)
The Qur’anic narrative of Khidr raises points about mortality. It then reinforces those points by setting them in a context where the character of the guide is constructed around his immortality. Then Sufi Shaykhs such as Ruzbihan use the story as an analogy of the master-disciple relationship. This analogy invokes the implicit understanding that the spiritual master is a way to immortality, or at least that one might effect transference onto the transference object of a spiritual master to tame terror over death. Khidr provides a perfect transference symbol of spiritual guidance especially because he represents immortality and reiterates the nature of the training M0ses is receiving. Moses’ training includes, especially, making peace with dangers, death and demise, trusting God’s decisions and justice especially regarding the dying and finally Moses also has to contemplate the real meaning of continuation and efforts to overcome mortality and take small stabs at immortality. Khidr damages a boat and lives are3 put at risk. Khizr kills a child and Moses challenges this. Khidr rebuilds the wall that circumscribes a village. Moses protests that Khidr deserves wages.
The primary explanations (ta’wil) are framed in a unique immortality context. In each case, Moses loses his patience and makes the dual errors of protesting (adab) and misunderstanding. Moses can only hope to rightly understand the situations he witnessed when he adopts a perspective broader and beyond that of a single mortal life. This understanding is not possible for an ordinary mortal. Moses had claimed to be the wisest man on earth. He might have been the wisest mortal on earth, but he wasn’t the wisest man. An immortal would at least potentially be wiser than Moses, even if only because he would have gathered so much experience. That experience could be the medium of God’s transmission of Khidr’s charismatic compassion and intimate inner wisdom.
In the experience of the disciple (murid ) especially under the gaze (nazar) of the shaykh, he has the “experience of the other as one’s whole world” (Becker 1973: 146). “And so he sees, too, the human transference object in all its awe and splendor…The human face is really an awesome primary miracle; it naturally paralyzes you by its splendor if you give into it as the fantastic thing it is….being overwhelmed by the truth of the universe as it exists, as that truth is focused in one human face.” (Becker 1973: 147-148)
Hearing the story of Khidr on the first round brings us face to face with the hero’s quest, how fragile it is to keep food, how precious it is to substitute spiritual training for daily fish, danger and destruction, killing the innocent, random acts of kindness and the village.
Hearing the story of Khidr on the second round we confront theft and war, childhood and procreative immortality, and the wall that defines a village and hides beneath it a treasure which as a result of God’s mercy is part of an inheritance for orphaned boys. Hearing the Khidr story we face death at many takes. In the first take, the fish was a sign that signified by its absence; in the second round, the treasure is a sign that signifies by being unseen.
As a cultural artifact, as an act of story telling and as a dimension of and connection with piety and practice the story addresses the pivotal human concern: existence and non-existence, life and death.
It’s our crisis of our confrontation with finitude. “All culture, all man’s creative life-ways, are in some basic part of them a fabricated protest against natural reality, a denial of the truth of the human condition.” (Becker 1973: 33) It was Ruzbihan who when hearing a voice informing him that he is a Prophet, thinks that one reason this can’t be so is that Prophets do not defecate and he defecates.

“…so how can I be a prophet when I eat and drink and answer the call of nature, and have private parts.” (Ruzbihan, Unveiling 1997:10)

Brides of Elucidation

Ruzbihan takes the storuy on with joyous relish throughout, beut especially when he cites Moses as an example of adab toward the shaykh. Ruzbihan also addresses the question of essential union. He uses the episodes of the story to clearly enunciate his ontology of visions of the presence ir., unveilings. Instatantaeous openings of realities from the unseen world. The unseen worl d iw the most salient example of an immortality symbol. It is the set ofd all immortality symbols. Ruzbikhan is working lexically with this framework. He is an advocate of Hallaj’s vision of human possibility. So Ruzbihan will wear this ojne as an emblem of the immortality domain called the workd for the unseen from whihch come the visitatioins, apparatitions and other forms of presencing of the signs. These signs appear before Ruzbihan as he establishes the ultimate immortality project of creating a set and system of practide centered on an immortality ideology called islam, The ideology and practice of islam stand as an immortslity project. Ruzbihan receives these gifts because he has taken all his attentionj on death and transformed it into figures and faces.

Ruzbihan adroitly presses into service the story of Khidr and Moses to underscore that persons can be given the gift of the presence and embodiment of the immortality ideology. This is actually a major ontological assertion of the realm of the invisible which is in turn the realm of the inrinite eternal and immortal. The existence and manifestation of persons such as Khidr raises the question of how to partake of a dimension of immortality. Khidr is a living example of the answer to the question, if god were to embody himself here now what form would he take. Ruzbihan says, “I saw my Lord in the most beautiful form.” Ruzbihan repeats the hadith that The Prophet, Peace upon Him, intimately received tangible food and drink from his hand. These are very physical descriptions of an immortal being. This is decidedly bi la kayf theology.

Ruzbihan is arguing for the ontological authority of the domain in which Khidr appears because it supports his own teaching that he himself sees God in a beautiful human form. He was even accused of seeing God in specific individuals who lived amongst him. He was accused of eye gazing with boys. He was accused of practicing sub rosa sohbet.

So Ruzbihan is attractive and attracting. He’s charismatic. Now he also wants to validate his world. And when R$uzbihan says we3lcome to my world, we find out there are many beings from the angelic and archetypal realms. Are these realms real? If the4se realms are real, on what basis are they real. Ruzbihan takes the resource of Khidr’s example as a proof text for the ontological existence and veraci8ty and validity and authenticity of angelic and archetypal realms. The symbolic realm of immortality project construction exists. One can make oneself a hero if one is graced by God to be so made. Ruzbihan seems to have lived in that kind of crisis of being authoritative and enigmatic.

Beginning at 18.66, Ruzbihan picks up the theme that God desires (irada) that Moses receive this “secret knowledge, the hidden light.” This motif identifies a concept or category about the nature of rthe realm in which al-Khidr exists and also the nature of the process. These esoterically-intoned phrases, secret knowledge, the hidden light suggests a major initiation or world view or change of world view. To even form the phrase in this boastful way begs the question. N
Ruzbihan suggests that one might even lend into the one with an essential union of merging into God. So this oceanic impulse involves human beings as symbolically, honorifically or ritually considered immortal. Some people think of Elvis as if he lives. These practices occur on the symbolic level of human communication and interaction.
Certiain symbols projected on God’s light will appear tangibly real and vividly iconic. Ruzbihan publicallyu and repeatedly assertsd thast he saw his Lord in the most beautiful form. “ In Ruzbihan’s Sufi lodge tghey would throw a flopwer down and Ruzbihan would eye-gaze with the young boys and grow rapturously ecstatic while looking at their faces. He was a lover of God and especially by starting inductively with an experience of beauty in the here and now, best is a beautiful face and dwell in that reality so that the symbols of immortality appear in clear, vivid and vital ideas, images, visions, and unveilings. Unveilings is Ruzbihan’s way of describing it. Kashf. Unveiling. When a face catches a person’s attention it becomes their world.
Faris says Where Moses was systematic (“constant with God”), Khidr was annihilated in God. This helps describe the very authentic nature of Khidr’s knowledge. It does not conform to the world of a book. This is a tangible teaching transmission.
A tangible teaching transmission can convey extra learning outcomes. The confrontation with death and the validation of the realm of the unseen, the realm of symbols, is more strongly evoked. Khidr is as close to an icon as we can find. He’s a narrative figure, a symbol, a hero. And he represents the tradition that has intensely symbolized God into books. So now God does something totally different. He gives two of his attributes or functions rahma and ’ilm al-ladduni compassion and inner knowledge and makes them available to those who can faced the challenges of the teaching method and the journey.
Ruzbihan proceeds on to underscore that although Moses limited himself to the written version of religion, he also partook of a continuous beautiful inner discourse with God. And one place where Khidr and Moses ranked differently was located around patience. A part of Khidr’s knowledge includes patience.

So next Ruzbihan echoes the supporters of a domain of unveiling and witnessing. This is a symbolic realm, luminously vivid and tangible. Again we find Ruzbihan advocating and defending the realm of the unseen and that region of spiritual symbols having archetypal existence and authority. Obviously God is in tangible form as the most beautiful form. Ruzbihan finds the beauty first in the human being and then ascends dfrom that actual beautiful person to the realm of the archetypes or symbols, but that realm is very real for him. Ruzbihan is using the story to underscore this reality. Ruzbihan repeats these two hadith about seeing God in human form. He places them at the top center of his writings.

Unveilings and Witnessings

The Sufi saints are martyrs honorarily. This makes the Prophets and saints people who live in paradise. In a few cases, the ascension and skipping of death occurs: Khidr, Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus. These four are the Islamic immortals. Ruzbihan sees his Lord in the mjost beautiful form. He starts with a beautiful face of a beautiful person. He begins by throwing down a rose: sub rosa. Under the aegis of the rose, Ruzbihan would eye-gaze and gaze at the faces of beautiful young boys. Annemarie Schimmel describes this in Mystical Dimensions of Islam pp. 296-299). There Ruzbihan begins with a beautiful young boy and contemplate the beauty of his face. The description matches Plato’s account in the Symposium of how to ascend to the pure form of the Beautiful. Love and Beauty are two major motifs in Ruzbihan’s writing.


The Royal We, The Essential Union: ‘Ayn al-Jam
Ruzbihan deals with the theme of the essential union by reflecting on the pronoun shifts.. Sensitive to the story’s syntax and use of pronouns, he comments on the agency of each event. To describe boat-gouging Khidr said “I desired.” To describe the murder, he said, “Your Lord and I” desired. To describe the rebuilding of the wall, Khidr said, “We desired.” This use of “We,” Ruzbihan writes signals essential union. Of course for Ruzbihan this is the Royal “We” of Hallaj. This is the Royal “We” of union.

Ruzbihan’s book of Ecstatic Utterances begins in a framework of investigating experiences of selfhood (“I-ness.” / ana’iyat) (Ernst, Words p. 26)

More evidence now comes that Moses is seeking training (ta’dib) and not instruction from Khidr. This differentiation in types or categories of pedagogy is stressed. And that training is done in an “exceptional state.” Ruzbihan underscores the exceptionality of this transmission. It is unique. What training is so unique. It would likely raise existential issues of death and immortality. It would be so powerful that it would resolve the question that 15-year old Ruzbihan posed about how he could be a prophet. “…I eat, drink, answer the call of nature, and have private parts.
Ruzbihan tells his interlocutor for his Unveilings that s/he must “believe in univeilings” (Unveilings p. 7) In beginning his self-presentation about sainthood, Ruzbihan admits the difficulty of presenting this material. Further he says the phenomena called “unveilings” and “witnessings,” through grace and striving (mujahada) are real in the same way the miracles of the prophets are real. .