Having explained thesunna as the consistentlife example of the Prophet (s) as a model and a teacher we will have another look at hadîth literatur. Here, Hadîth means Bericht, in this case of idividual actions and statements of the Prophet (s) as well as of the behaviour of his male and female companions that he commented. We already quoted the example where ihsân was defined as behaviour in God's presence; it is part of a longer report according to which the Prophet (s) was asked about islam, iman (faith) and ihsân (good and beautiful behaviour). Reports of this kind were transmitted partly orally and partly in writing and later on collected and arranged according to reference persons or subjects. A special group among them are called hadîth qudsi ("holy report" they are words that were given to the Prophet (s) by inspiration without being included in the text of the Qu'an. Two of them are of special importance for mysticism, so we are going to introduce them here.

One

God says about Himself, "I was a hidden treasure and wanted to be known, therefore I created (the world)."

Religion deals with three main human questions:

1. Where do I come from? In this context, we find quite a number of stories of creation or origin in the religions. At first sight, they sometimes seem to be difficult to understand because of the images used, and they seem to be completely different. One thing, however, becomes clear from all of them: the human experience of having grown out of the comprehensive network of nature as part of it but still different with special and not yet quite understood abilities and relationships, not - that is the basic differende between religion and materialist attempts of explanation - by coincidence or from an inherent power but through the influence of a higher power. It is important to note that the creation stories of the religions do not intend to describe "history" but speak about the relationship of the human being to other people, fellow creatures, "mother earth" and the Creator, describing essential human experiences and conflicts (e.g. temptation, failure, repentance).
2. Where am I going? Apparently there are two answers. One is eschatological: the description of what is going to happen after death or after the end of time and space as we know it. The other is an answer that points to aims and ideals and provides the foundation to differentiate between good (that which brings us closer to those ideals) and evil (that what keeps us from moving forward or even pulls us back). However, the difference between both approaches is only superficial. Both refer to a distant future that cannot be imagined yet (Arab. âkhirah, that which comes later) when the fruits of aour actions have ripened or when we gain an insight int the value of individual events in our lives.
3. What is the meaning? In fact in Islamic thought the most important question is, "Why?" The answer given in the Qur'an is rather a challenge to ask further questions:

   And I created the hidden beings and the human beings only that they may serve Me (Surah 51:56).

   The translations sometimes say, "... so that they worship Me." This is based on the wiedespread idea of divine service in the sense of worship and prayer. In fact, prayer and worship are essential elements of religious life in all religions, as the case may be in connection with fasting and sacrifice. But it does not translate the Arabic word 'abada (serve) completely. It also means "to act in God's service"; as we have seen, not only within a narrowly defined "sacred" space but in our everyday life; not only on a spiritual, intellectual or emotional level but with all our ability. That is why there are all those physical and communal gestures in ritual prayer: the whole human being serves God.

The Prophet (s) said, "Faith is recognition in the heart, testimony with the tongue and realization with all our ability." In fact all our organs serve God by working according to His laws and the purpose they have been created for. The same is true of phenomena in nature:

Now the human consciousness can certainly follow the illusion of being independent of its Creator and Sustainer. But this is nothing but self-deception that will cause an enormous disappointment once truth must be seen.

In this context there is the concept of an "original covenant" with God:

This scene is understood to be set outside our system of time and space. It is important to note that deep in the human soul there is, like a memory, a spark or a seed, the longing to search for God and to serve Him. The word Rabb that has been translated as Lord actually means someone who creates, sustains and educates, who unfolds us and accompanies us step by step. Thus, the "original covenant" comprises a human expression of loyalty to his/her Rabb as well as the readiness to develop his/her abilities and to use them in the pursuit of the good. On the other hand, it comprises an expression of loyalty on the side of the Rabb and the readiness to guide them, provide for them and to refine them. God's loving care for His creatures is emphasized by the use of first oerson, God speaking of Himself as "I". The same is the case in the verse mentioned before: "And I created the hidden beings and the human beings only that they may serve Me": a relationship of mutual love.

This takes us back to our hadîth qudsi. It is another answer to the question "Why?". While the Qur'an focusses on the situation of the human being, "... that they may serve Me", the hadîth puts the Creator into the forground: "I was a hidden treasure...", i.e. before the beginning of creation if it must be said in terms of time and space. The Creator is alone, by himself:

But already in this unity and uniqueness there is the wish for a relationship. The Qur'an points to this fact by saying, "He is the Beneficent, the Merciful." God is eternal, self-subsistent, independent, but there is His mercy that longs for a "you" in order to find expression: "I wanted to be known."

The wish for a relationship is differentiated into a spectrum of possibilities that press forward to be revealed: holiness, faith, glory, power, majesty, protection - "Therefore I created (the world)."

Mystical texts often talk about God as having created a mirror to watch Himself in it. Now the mirror - creation - is in turn a subject; it can watch itself and discover all beauty, glory and perfection in itself without looking at the transcendent origing and to cultivate the relationship that is the meaning of its existence, losing itself in pantheistic selfsufficiency only to be suddenly confronted with the unexpected transcendent reality at the end of this order of time and space. Especially the human being as a microcosm can fall into this trap and might well consider him/herself as the actual reality, treating the transcendent Creator of whom a vague impression is left in the memory as an abstract idea, attributing to Him a choice of attributes that then, in turn, determine his/her theology or philosophy but are not necessarily linked with recognitions: God as an idea, perhaps even projection of the created being, in any case as an object. However, a real dialogue can only take place between two subjects who take each other serious and listen to each other. God says in the Qur'an:

Creation and revelation as expressions of the Creator are also shown in the "Verse of Light":

This parable is interpreted in different ways, but in any case it is God's own light that is reflected. For example, the commentaries compare the niche that is there to reflect the light whith the whole creation or with the human being. In the latter case, the glass that contains the lamp is sometimes understood to mean the human heart, the niche being the body or the rest of the person. Keeping this image in mind, we shall have a look at a second hadîth qudsi.

Two

He who knows himself knows his Lord.

The Arabic word 'arafa means to recognize, to know but also to experience. Islamic mysticism is called 'irfân because it is a matter of lovingly recognizing or experiencing God. Obviously God cannot be known by the study of theological treatises or by building up a dogmatic structure on a purely rational level. In the beginning we have been mentioning the signs through which God reveals Himself to us in the sacred scriptures, in nature, in history or in ourselves. In the course of the history of religions, statments from the sacred scripture have often been misunderstoon and misused because they were taken out of contexte and read through the spectacles of selfish interests - I think e.g. of the wars that have been fought misusing religious terms and slogans, or of the persecution of minorities with different views or strange looks with a religious pretext. In a similar way, signs in history have been misinterpreted, temporary "success" not being understood as a test but as a privilege, a "confirmation by God" as it were, and people failed to lean from the experience of the past. Both the context is important and the sincerity of the person who interprets these signs. However, sincerity is not possible for a person who deceives himself. The more one's spectacles are cleansed from spots of selfishness, the more the world becomes 'âlam, a means to gain knowledge - including finally knowledge of God.

In this context, the sufis developed various methods and models for explanation according to their time and cultural environment. We have come across one scheme already, the stages of development in the human self. Another one is that of different layers that a person comes to know in the cours of his/her self-discovery.

The most obvious is the body (zâhir) with its functions. Even before children discover that they are not a part of their mother, they discover the various parts of their body and learn to control, to coordinate and to use them in order to suck, hold, see, walk etc.. A person who is alienated from his/her body will have difficulties handling him/herself especially when there are changes like e.g. in puberty, during a pregnancy, in connection with the menopause etc.. Especially in those times of change a person becomes aware of the temporariness, of growth and decay.

To some extent, the external form is continuously reconstructed. So are the impressions of experiences and wishes. The totality of this information is called the inner structure, all those subconscious or half-conscious factors that influence the body and its functions. Partly they are genetical informations like the colour of one's eyes or hair or the structure of one's body, but partly there are also deepgoing impressions and images from earlier experiences or the experiences of the community a person has grown up in that are not transmitted on the level of rational learning but on the subconscious level.

A human being commonly takes his/her I (nafs) for the core of his/her person (we already discussed the education of the self in detail. Stories of prophetic persons that apply to essential human experiences are used as a help with these steps of discovery and development. On the level of the external body and the inner structure there are Adam or Eve depending on whether the person in question is a man or a woman. The basic experience connected with it is mistake, insight and repentance through which the person opens up for new knowledge and revelation. On the level of Nafs there is Noah: a well-educated Nafs is like an ark full of animals - the human instincts and impulses that all move within their legitimate spheres and follow the order of the captain who directs the ship through the tempests of life to its destination as determined by its owner. This means that the I sees that it is not the centre of existence. An egocentric person would declare himself to be absolute and make his own desires the standard for everything else in the world. A person, however, who carefully explores him/herself will necessarily find out that he/she is nothing but a dot on this earth, not to mention the universe, and that there are standards and relationships he/she has to find a place in and that can affect changes in the self.

On this level of relationship, it is the heart (qalb) that is important. It is the axis of the human being, as it were, because it turns to the one it loves. If someone just only loves him/herself, the heart is taken up by the ego and there is no space for humanness. This level is demonstrated by Abraham (a): after an intensive search for his real Beloved he is put to a test to find out whom he loves more, God or his son who represents his self: he feels called to sacrifice his son. However, self-sacrifice is not the meaning of this test but the readiness and the sincere love: a sheep is finally substituted for the son. In later years, Abraham (a) und Ismail (a) build the Ka'ba, another symbol for the heat: it can be crowded with idols like at the time of the first revelation to the Prophet Muhammad (s), or it can be pure and ampty, ready to receive God's presence - a House of God in the true sense.

Beyond the heart there is the intellect ('aql): not just the rational faculty but the ability to recognizes things in their context and to com to meaningful conclusions from that. This ability can be seriously disturbed if the ego uses knowledge for its own selfish conclusions, upsetting the harmony in which it is embedded, or causing direct harm e.g. by misusing scientific and technological knowledge for inconsiderate increase of material profit, ignoring the rest of creation: this is utmost foolishness. The real intellect is always linked with responsibility, and this is what makes the human being fit to be Khalîfa, God's representative. The key person on this level is Moses (a) who gains insight into the "law" having confronted the megalomaniac ego in the shape of Pharao with God's help.

The next level is the level of the spirit (rûh). The spirit it the link between the human and the divine, the transmitter of reveleation ad creative impulses. It educates, nourishes and heals. This is demonstrated by the figure of Jesus (a) whose miracles as they are mentioned in the Qur'an are understood in the sense of a revival of dead hearts, the healing of sick souls, the integration of social "untouchables" etc.. Rûh is the real soul of the human being, but its soft voice is often pushed aside by the shouts and screams of the ego.

The seventh level is the light (nûr), the divine spark in us that can only shine through when the whole person is purified. Light is the contents of revelation, God's message to us. It enlightens us and shows us our task and the way to handle it. We see the world "in its true light". Light drives out the darkness of ignorance and injustice (zulm); it is God's own light and we recognize that in all our efforts it was God Himself who was our guide: hat:

It is the spark of His light within us that gives us insight into the reality of the world and the meaning of our own life. This is illustrated in the figure of Muhammad (s) who encountered his Lord at a "distance of two bows" (cf. Surah 53:1-11)(among the Arabs, a gesture of brotherhood was to hold the bows with the strings touching in their whole length, the semicircles of the bows together symbolizing a complete circle - this image is here used for the encounter of the Creator and the created being). It is an immediate touch on a wide surface, but no "mixture". The onthological difference, the "infinite qualitative difference", God's tanscendence is preserved even when the I loses all consciousness of itself, even if the person in question feels "filled with God" and is unable to live other than with the impulses he is inspired with by God, when he/she is nothing but a bearer of revelation.

The path is long, troublesome and not without dangers. It is compared with a journey through a desert where there are wild beasts, dust storms, quicksands and one or the other mirage. The latter seems to be the greatest danger: the illusion of having arrived while in reality the traveller has lost the way, having given in to a trick of his/her imagination or emotions. That is why most experts consider it necessary to have an experienced guide or travelling companion. Apart from knowledge and a good ethical foundation, there are mainly two things that are essential:

1. The remembrance of God or the awareness of God's presence (dhikr Allâh). Various forms of meditation have been developed in the mystical traditions; what is essential is the awareness and experience of God's presence and the strengthening of the link with Him. In a very comprehensive way this is done through ritual prayer. Besides, there is du'â (supplication), praise, repentance, the testimony of faith etc. as well as meditations on God's Most Bautiful Names or texts from the Qur'an. The mystical tradition differentiate between loud dhikr (dhikr jalli) that is practiced in congregation by reciting a sequence of prayers and/or repeating a number of invocation, occasionally in connection with singing and certain bodily postures and gestures, even dance; silent dhikr (dhikr khafi) that is mostly practiced individually, deepening the former; and the so-called dhikr of the heart (dhikr qalbi) when a person lives in a permanent consious connection with God. I would avoid calling dhikr a "technique" because this term is too much associated with what is "made" by human beings. A permanent connection with God is not "made"; we can open up for it and let it grow, caring for it like we would care for a rare flower.
2. There are certainly times when a person feels like withdrawing in order to search in his/her soul, keeping a physical distance from other people. Many mystics have spent part of their lives in the desert or jungle or on lonely journeys. In the long run, however, this is not advisable. In the modern age of individualism it is even dangerous because a situation where there is a permanent lack of challenges by fellow human beings and different problems of everyday life can easily cause a wrong self-image, changing meditation into autosuggestion. In principle, human beings need each other, not only in order to secure their livelihood and to preserve human warmth but also for mutual challenges and criticism. My relationship with other people indicates how far I have come in the relationship with myself; this, in turn, is a condition for my relationship with my creator.

We can observe various tendencies in the history of the sufis. The early sufis did emphasize withdrawal both from the materialistic intoxication of theit rich contemporaries and from the ruling classe and its influence that they were critical against. For them it was important to remain materially poor and some of them were ascetics, but at the same time they kept company with each other and with poor but ethically strong people. Their political activities ranged from "passive resistance" through the preservation and teaching of Islamic values and their commitment for the poor to open criticism of contemporary rulers and some attempts at an alternative reconstruction of the community.

After the formation of the great sufi orders, the weight shifted to the company the sufis kept with each other. The orders cultivated and expressed Islamic values in a way that other people could profit from it, e.g. in the field of humanities, in social life and in other spheres of Muslim culture. The critical attitude against the rulers remained in most cases, but on the other hand there were immense temptations by the possibility to become a ruler's advisor - this often meant being an advisor in ethical matters, but not all advisors were immune against temptations ...

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