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Already in the second century of Islam great stress was laid upon the cultivation of love to God, an outstanding example of which is the female Sufi Rabia. With it was connected a gradually elaborated doctrine of ecstatic states and visions which were believed to lead by the way of intuition and divine illumination to the spiritual contemplation of God. We have already endeavoured to describe the religious enthusiasm which took possession of the Moslems in the first and second century after Muhammad and have partly traced the causes which led to this phenomenon.

Ecstasy is an invariable concomitant of religious enthusiasm. In the endeavour to break through the narrow bounds which confine the human spirit pious and credulous natures are only too easily led astray. The instruments which man has at his command when he wishes to investigate the supernatural do not suffice to procure him an even approximately correct image of the object which he would fain observe. While the optician with the aid of mathematics can reduce errors arising from the convexity of his magnifying lens to an infinitesimally small amount, the theologian has never found a device, and never will find one, to obviate the errors which arise from the fact that his intellectual insight has to be exercised through the medium of material senses, which obscure the clearness of his observation. And yet it is precisely this ceaseless striving, this irresistible impulse after something higher, this unquenchable thirst for the fountain-head of knowledge, which constitutes the highest and noblest side of humanity, and is the most indubitable pledge of its spiritual future. The net result of these strivings has been an endless series of self-delusions, and yet humanity takes on a grander aspect in them than in all its other manifold efforts and successes. The history of this spiritual wrestling, this hopeless and yet never relaxed struggle against the impossible, forms the noblest aspect of the history of mankind.

The phenomena produced by Islam in this respect do not fundamentally differ from those produced by Christianity and Buddhism. Sufism exhibits a more remarkable development of these phenomena, simply because it grew up in an environment which favoured their more luxuriant growth.

The Koran, which Muhammad came, as he said to preach, was regarded as the very word of God, and must therefore have produced an overpowering impression on the minds of the faithful. Of this numerous instances are reported. Abd al Wahid ibn Zaid heard one day a Koran-reader recite the following verse (Sura 45: 28):—"This is Our book, which announces to you the truth; for We have caused to be recorded all that ye have done. Those who believe and do good works shall their Lord admit to His favour; verily this is the most manifest recompense." On hearing this Abd al Wahid broke into loud weeping and fainted. Miswar ibn Machramah was not even able to hear any verse of the Koran read, being so powerfully affected thereby as to become senseless. Of Jobair ibn Motim it is reported that he said: "I heard the Prophet recite the following verses of the Koran:—

1. I swear by Tur. 2. By a book which stands written on outspread parchment. 3. By the house to which pilgrimage is made. 4. By the lofty dome of heaven. 5. And by the swelling ocean. 6. That the judgment of thy Lord is at hand.

Then it appeared to me," said Jobair, "as if my heart would burst in twain." The pious Cadi Ijad adduces as a special proof of the inspiration of the Koran the deep impression of fear and terror which its recital produced on the minds of the hearers.

Muhammad ibn Mansur relates that once passing a house at midnight he heard the voice of a man praying to God loudly and fervently, lamenting his sins with deep contrition. Muhammad ibn Mansur could not resist the temptation; he put his mouth to the keyhole and uttered the verse which threatens the unbelievers with hell-fire. He heard a heavy fall within the house, and all was still. As he went down the same street the next morning he saw a corpse being carried out of the same house, followed by an old woman. He inquired of her whose body it was, and she answered: "Last night my son heard a verse of the Koran recited, and it broke his heart." We are far from believing all these stories, but they show what a view was held in the earliest times regarding the effect produced by the Koran on the minds of those who heard it.

The ecstatic bent of mind of the ascetics of Islam and the later Sufis arose from these beginnings. Then, as now, self-originated phases of feeling were attributed to outer causes; from the remotest times men have sought without them the Divinity which they carried within.

The wider spread and greater permanence of ecstatic phenomena among the Moslems than elsewhere was due to the concurrence of various conditions, chief among which was the peculiar temperament of the Arab. Capable of the fiercest momentary excitement, he quickly subsided into a state of complete apathy which is pain-proof. I6 have a lively recollection of the cases mentioned by my late friend Dr. Bilharz, who spoke of the astonishing anæsthesia which the patients in the medical school of Kasr al 'ain in Cairo, where he was professor, exhibited under the most painful operations. They uttered hardly a sound when operated upon in the most sensitive nerve-centres. The negro, notoriously excitable as he is, and therefore still more exposed to complete prostration of the organs of feeling, exhibits this apathy in a yet more marked degree than the Arab and Egyptian. Many examples of this are found in old Arabic authors—e.g., in the narratives of the martyrdoms of Hatyt, of Hellaj and of a young Mameluke crucified in 1247 a.d. Of the last Suyuti has preserved a psychologically detailed description.

Although Christian martyrology is rich in such instances of unshakable fortitude under the most painful tortures, yet in Islam the ecstatic temper has attained a higher significance and been more constantly exhibited. A chief reason of this was the religious fanaticism, which was incomparably stronger and more widely diffused in Islam than in mediæval Christendom. The minds of the Moslems were kept in perpetual tension by severe religious exercises, the effect of which was intensified by fasts and pilgrimages. The peculiar manner of life in the desert, the birthplace of Islam, also contributed to this; the scanty diet, the loneliness of the desert, and in the towns the want of civic life, the poverty of ideas among the Arabs, all helped to produce the same result. Finally, deception, hypocrisy, and superstition, as, alas, so often is the case in religious matters, played a great part. Whoever did not feel ecstatically moved at the recitation of the Koran pretended to be so, and often thereby, perhaps unconsciously, exercised a great effect on others. Men began by pretending to feel religious enthusiasm and ended by believing that they really felt it. Ghazzali mentions in the Ihya ul-ulum that the prophet commanded that whoever did not feel moved to tears at the recitation of the Koran should pretend to weep and to be deeply moved; for, adds Ghazzali sagely, in these matters one begins by forcing oneself to do what afterwards comes spontaneously. Moreover, the fact that religious excitement was looked upon as the mark of a fervent mind and devout intensity, vastly increased the number of those who claimed mystic illumination.

When verses of the Koran through frequent repetition lost their power to awaken ecstasy, single lines of fragments of poems sufficed to produce it. Once the mystic Taury found himself in the midst of a company who were discussing some scientific question. All took part in it with the exception of Taury, who suddenly rose and recited:—

Many cooing doves mourn in the mid-day heat, Sadly under the roof of foliage overhead, Remembering old companions and days gone by; Their lament awakens my sorrow also, My mourning rouses them, and often theirs disturbs my sleep; I do not understand their cooing, and they do not understand my weeping: But through, my sorrow of heart I know them, and through their heart-sorrow they know me.

Hardly had those present heard these verses than they all fell into a state of ecstatic contemplation.

Ibrahim ben Adham, the celebrated Sufi, once heard the following verses:—

Everything is forgiven thee, except estrangement from Us: We pardon thee all the past, and only that remains which has escaped Our eyes (i.e., nothing).

They immediately caused him to fall into a trance which lasted twenty-four hours. Ghazzali, who himself borrowed much from the Sufis, and was a diligent student of their doctrine, seeks to explain these strange phenomena on psychological grounds. He divides the ecstatic conditions which the hearing of poetical recitations produces into four classes. The first, which is the lowest, is that of the simple sensuous delight in melody. The second class is that of pleasure in the melody and of understanding the words in their apparent sense. The third class consists of those who apply the meaning of the words to the relations between man and God. To this class belongs the would-be initiate into Sufism; he has necessarily a goal marked out for him to aim at, and this goal is the knowledge of God, meeting Him and union with Him by the way of secret contemplation, and the removal of the veil which conceals Him. In order to compass this aim the Sufi has a special path to follow; he must perform various ascetic practices and overcome certain spiritual obstacles in doing so. Now when, during the recitation of poetry, the Sufi hears mention made of blame or praise, of acceptance or refusal, of union with the Beloved or separation from Him, of lament over a departed joy or longing for a look, as often occurs in Arabic poetry, one or the other of these accords with his spiritual state and acts upon him, like a spark ,on tinder, to set his heart aflame. Longing and love overpower him and unfold to him manifold vistas of spiritual experience.

The fourth and highest class is that of the fully initiated who have passed through the stages above-mentioned, and whose minds are closed to everything except God. Such an one is wholly denuded of self, so that he no longer knows his own experiences and practices, and, as though with senses sealed, sinks into the ocean of the contemplation of God. This condition the Sufis characterise as self-annihilation (Fana).

But he who is bereft of self-consciousness is none the less aware of what is without him; it is as if his consciousness were withdrawn from everything but the one object of contemplation, i.e., God. While he who is completely absorbed in the contemplation of the object seen is as little capable of theorising regarding the act of contemplation as regarding the eye, the instrument of sight, or the heart, the seat of joyful emotion. Just in the same way a drunken man is not conscious of his intoxication, so he who is drowned in joy knows nothing of joy itself, but only knows what causes it. Such a condition of mind may occur with regard to created things as well as with regard to the Creator Himself, only in the latter case it is like a flash of lightning, without permanence. Could such a condition of the soul last longer, it would be beyond the power of human nature to endure and would end in overwhelming it. So it is related of Taury that once in a meeting he heard this verse recited:—

In my love to Thee I attained to a height where to tread causes the senses to reel.

He immediately fell into an ecstatic condition and ran into a field where the newly-cut stubble cut his feet like knives. Here he ran about all night till the morning, and a few days afterwards died.

In this highest condition of ecstasy the soul is to be compared to a clear mirror, which, itself colourless, reflects the colours of the object seen in it. Or to a crystal, whose colour is that of the object on which it stands or of the fluid which it contains. Itself colourless, it has the property of transmitting colours. This exposition of Sufistic ecstasy by Ghazzali shows that in his time, far from being on the wane, such phenomena were on the increase. For when a man of such comprehensive mind, such a deep thinker, so well versed in the knowledge of men and especially of his fellow-Moslems, speaks so plainly and without doubt upon the matter and seeks to explain it psychologically, this idea must have already taken deep root and spread widely. Ghazzali is consequently to be regarded as a decided adherent of Sufism and as approving of the enthusiastic tendencies accompanying it. He narrates in his autobiography7 how he left his family in Bagdad and went to Damascus, where for two whole years he studied Sufism. Afterwards he made the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. In his lonely musings things were revealed to him, which, he said, could not be described, and he arrived at last at the firm conviction that the Sufis were on the way of God and that their teaching was the best. It must be admitted that by Sufism Ghazzali meant that kind of it which held fast to the general principles of Islam and was in accord, even though only externally, with the orthodox party. These Sufis adhered to the Koran and the traditions, but interpreted them allegorically. Mysticism must always be propped up by a positive religion, as it has no support in itself.

5 From Von Kremer.

6 Von Kremer.

7 "The Confessions of Al Ghazzali" (Wisdom of the East series).