Thursday, November 9, 2017

Apologia Spiritualis - An Autobiographical Sketch, by A. J. Arberry




Last night, whilst engaged in my continuing research for an upcoming post on early Mormon origins, I happened upon an autobiographical sketch, from the above pictured book, by one of the most gifted Islamic scholars of the 20th century—A. J. Arberry. The following selection caught my eye, and impressed upon me the notion that I should bring it to the attention of others:

“What is Truth?” asked jesting Pilate of the Man whom he would presently give on a like Cross, the Man who said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” I have said earlier that as a young man, having abandoned formal worship, I resolved to become an academic scholar, abstract truth being the only altar before which I would kneel. In those days I supposed truth to be a thing intellectually attainable, a quest for reason, far removed from the emotions. But the mystical affinity of truth with light was evidently already apprehended by Sir William Jones, that greatest of British orientalists who died in 1794 and whose example has always been my chief inspiration. Jones
wrote:

     Before thy mystic altar, heavenly Truth,
     I kneel in manhood, as I knelt in youth.
     There let me kneel, till this dull form decay,
     And life’s last shade be brightened by thy day;
     Then shall my soul, now lost in clouds below,
     Without consuming glow.

Truth, then, is Light—a light that shines into the heart. And what is light? The answer seems to be given in that sublime verse of the Koran:

     God is the light of the heavens and the earth;
     the likeness of His Light is as a niche
     wherein is a lamp
     (the lamp in a glass,
     the glass as it were a glittering star)
     kindled by a Blessed Tree,
     an olive that is neither of the East nor of the West
     whose oil well-nigh would shine, even if no fire touched it.
     Light upon Light,
     God guides to His Light whom He will.

Once this light has shone into the heart, no darkness can ever overcome it. I believe that light to be a reality, because I have myself experienced it. I believe it also to be the Truth, and I think it not inappropriate to call it God. I am an academic scholar, but I have come to realize that pure reason is unqualified to penetrate the mystery of God’s light, and may, indeed, if too fondly indulged, interpose an impenetrable veil between the heart and God. The world in which we live is certainly full of shadows. I have had my full share of personal sorrows and anxieties, and I am as acutely aware as the next man of the appalling dangers threatening mankind. But because I have experienced the Divine Light, I need not wish for any higher grace.

I have now for some years resumed my Christian worship, in which I find great comfort, being no longer troubled by the intellectual doubts generated by too great a concern for dogma. I know that Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Parsi—all sorts and conditions of men—have been, are and will always be irradiated by that Light “kindled by a Blessed Tree, an olive that is neither of the East nor of the West”—the universal tree of the Truth and Goodness of God. For God, being the One Universal, has an infinite solicitude and love of each particular, and suffers His Light to shine into every human heart open to receive it. (Apologia Spiritualis - An Autobiographical Sketch, by A. J. Arberry, in Mystical Poems of Rumi, pp. 25, 26.)

Back to my research...


Grace and peace,

David