Unless You Know Yourself You Cannot Know God

7/30/2019 'Unless You Know Yourself You Cannot Know God'

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'Unless you know yourself you cannot know God'

by Dom Sylvester Houdard

He who knows himself (or his-self, his soul, his mind) knows his Lord (FM II 308.22; C.312)

When we know our souls we know our Lord (FM III 314.22; C.359)

He who knows himself has known his Lord (FM III 404.28; C.344)

He who has no knowledge of himself has no knowledge of his Lord (FM III 552.12; C.154)

The Shaykh includes the hadith with those not established (thabit) by transmission (naql) butconsidered sound (sahih) on the basis of unveiling (FM II 399.28; C.250).

The following notes look (i) at some pre-Islamic instances of the saying and (ii) at 16 contexts where Ibn'Arabi introduces the hadith in ways that indicate the importance of its theology for understanding thedouble paradox of continuous creation and of epectasy (of the perpetual advance or taraqqi of mind to

God through God's perpetual advance to us).

Knowledge of God established on this basis of unveiling conforms neither to the (non-abrahamic) gnosisof Plato nor to the (anti-abrahamic) gnosis of those sects called 'pseudo-gnostics' by Irenaeus (C.120-

190).

I. The authentically Semitic act of gnosis (daath, yada 'to know') is always the fruitful experience of theone living God as Lord and so as obliging us; e.g. knowledge of God's goodness to us imposing on usgoodness to others. It is the certitude of faith fruitful in deeds; the knowledge that produces likenessand makes us like what we know, that deifies and makes us deiform. The Greek concept reversing thismakes likeness a necessary condition for knowledge. True gnosis allows the perpetual dhikr of Philo atstate banquets and of Ibn 'Arabi in the market place, maintained abroad and in via (on the road) as indeuteronomy and the Rule of S.Benedict. An energetic gnosis always in fieri, a progressive knowledge byepectasy as in the Qur'an 'Increase me in my knowledge'. A pilgrimage or hajj on the endless road or via

eterna. A knowledge of God as continuously creating 'by breaths' through his self-gift by which theeternal, immutable possibles (al-mumkinat) are actualised. Never a platonic divorce from the conditionsof time and place and createdness. The heart of mind (qalb) or apex mentis, aware that future becomespresent in the very instant the present is annihilated into past, is aware that zero-time intervenes


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between future and past and that God or luminous being, giving himself continuously, alone is and alonecan say I am. We who receive being, and retain it for zero-time, can say only I become. 'We areadvancing perpetually towards God only because he advances towards us.' (S.Basil.) Ibn 'Arabi, prior to1209 (Book of Theophanies, cf A153), had to teach this to the dead sufis when he found it eliminatedasharite confusion and demolished the fantasy constructions of some emanationist muslims who tried

to correct the Qur'an by pagan philosophy.

II. The knowledge of self, by circumcision of heart, that leads to this knowledge of God has only a

passing affinity with the Delphic maxim 'know yourself; gnothi sauton; scito (nosce) teipsum, recordedby Xenophon (430-350) Memorabilia 4.2.21 in the dialogue of Socrates (469-399) with Euthydemus, themeaning of which was taken as: 'know you are not a god'; or 'know your ignorance, that is wisdom'; or'know you are not immortal'. (See concluding note.) This maxim was later attributed variously to threeof the 'Seven Sages': Solon (fl. 600), Thales (fl. 585) and Chilon (fl. 556), who had lived two centuriesearlier, contemporary with Jeremiah (circumcise your heart 4.4... all shall know me, for all shall betaught by me when I write the new testament on the heart of their mind 31.33... an everlasting

testament 32.39) and with Ezechiel (I will put a new spirit within them, a new heart not of stone but of flesh 11.19) and with Second Isaiah (all shall be taught by the Lord 59.13). All three, before and duringthe exile (587) were proclaiming the inner meaning of the gnosis of God revealed through the Shema (Dt6.4): "YHWH our God YHWH is one, love him with all your heart, soul, strength, write this on yourheart... speak it on the road." Jesus cited this prophesy at Capernaum (Jn 6.45), instituted the newcovenant at the Last Supper and in his death, and promised the Spirit who would 'teach you everything'

(Jn 14.26).

This is the knowledge no longer written by ourselves on the heart of our mind but unveiled and found,through circumcision of that heart, to be written there in spirit by God so that all might, by the comingof the Spirit, as Moses, Joel and Peter proclaim, be prophets and prophetesses (ac 2.17). Gnosis isknowledge of God as revealing himself to us in scripture written with letters through prophets onlybecause already written in spirit on the prophets' circumcised hearts where its meaning, unveiled andrediscovered, is not just that we are not a god, but that we are made according to God's image and

likeness, created 'upon his form'.

The best known variants in english:

Full wise is he that can himselven know (Chaucer, The Monkes Tale)

All our knowledge is ourselves to know (Pope, An Essay on Man),

may seem to strike only a delphic note yet could have been intended to hint at the contemplativetheology of deification, of recovering our likeness to God when unlikeness is cut away. The root (pit) forprayer in hebrew, cognate with the arabic for sharp point or edge, and generally taken as 'to judge


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oneself' might well refer, not to the pagan rite of 'cutting the flesh', but to the circumcision of heart, thesacrifice of a pure heart, the word of God being a (sacrificial) two-edged knife penetrating between souland spirit (Heb 4.12).

PRE-ISLAMIC

The earliest succinct form of the hadith (to which my attention is drawn by Bishop Kallistos Ware) is in

Clement of Alexandria (15d-217) The Pedagogue 3.1 'Of True Beauty':

The most beautiful learning and the greatest is

to know yourself, for whoever knows himself knows God

and whoever knows God becomes like Him.

Even the akbarian emphasis on 'his' Lord is implied here but its substance goes back over a century toPhilo of Alexandria (c20BC-50AD: the contemporary of Christ) On God sent Dreams 1.10, dealing withour need to start from Harran where we must go to study the pits, holes and caves of that house of wisdom which is our body, and understand what we mean by seeing, hearing, tasting, etc. since it is follyto study our cosmic dwelling and environment before gaining knowledge of our private dwelling thougheven this we can never comprehend let alone ever being able to make acquaintance with our soul andmind. Such a disposition 'to become acquainted with yourself hebrews call Terah and greeks Socratesthough the latter is only one individual man while the former is taken as 'the whole principle accordingto which each man should know himself. In Harran we only reconnoitre the place that wisdom inhabits,

quite other are those athletes who, like Abraham, quit Harran and everything to do with body-holes andwho practise in their migration the exercise of wisdom and on their journey 'attain to progress incomplete knowledge... for the more he knew himself the more he renounced himself to attain accurate

knowledge of the true living God'.

This 'turning-inward' to ask: what is hearing? who is hearing? who is asking this? is exactly the meaningof hua t'ou, a 'turning-inward to contemplate self-mind, self-nature, head-of-thought or fundamental-face' i.e. apex mentis, heart of mind, or qalb (Dr Hsu-yun cited in Charles Luk, Secrets of ChineseMeditation, 1964). Only self-knowledge that reaches the instant of zero-time, the interface of future

with past, can attain to this knowledge of God in epectasy.

Gregory of Nyssa (333-395?)

in The Life of Moses, based his whole theology of epectasy, as does Ibn 'Arabi, on abrahamic self-

knowledge: Leaving (1) what senses perceive and (2) what intelligence sees he enters into (3) theinvisible and unknowable (i.e. apex mentis) and there sees God...by seeing that he is invisible...the moremind advances inward the more it sees that the divine nature is invisible...the darkness in which Moses


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sees God is gnosis that gnosis of God transcends all gnosis...what mind attains is never the living and life-

giving God who is ever beyond, ever inaccessible to epignosis.

Ambrose (340-397) using the pre-vulgate Latin read (cant 1.8) 'Nisi cognoscas te...' (for Si ignoras te...)and (dt 15.9) 'Attende tibi...' (for Cave ne fiat...) comments e.g.: To know oneself is to recognise the

divine image and likeness in oneself (e.g. Sermo 2.13-14 on ps 118 PL 15.1214; Lib de Isaac 4.11-16 PL14.509) Know yourself, o beautiful mind, for you are the image of God (Hexaemeron 8.50). William of S.Thierry (1095-1148), who died just before Ibn 'Arabi was born (1165), having compiled an anthology of texts from Ambrose on the saying, wrote e.g. 'By advancing in self knowledge ascend to knowledge of God.' (Golden Ep 2.(23)289.) Through him and S. Bernard (1090-1153: 'No-one is saved without self knowledge') what Gilson miscalls 'Christian socratism' became a commonplace in Cistercian writings.

Evagrius (345-399) Do you wish to know God? Learn first to know yourself (cited in 1954 Early

Fathers from the Philokalia p. 109 from a Russian collection of his miscellaneous sayings).

Augustine (354-430)

For mind (apex mentis) to find itself mind must cut off all that mind has added to itself for it is not onlymore interior than objects outside itself but more interior than its images of objects...the instant thatmind understands what it means when it tells itself to know itself it knows itself because it is present toitself (De Trin 10.8-9). O God ever the same let me know myself, let me know you: 'noverim me noverim

te' (Soliloques).

In Chapter 10 of The Confessions he returns to this again and again:

What I know of myself I know through your light shining in me (Quod de me scio, te mihi lucente scio

(5)7);

Into my mind shines that which space cannot contain and what is tasted there cannot be diminished byeating (6)8;

Your God is to you the life of your life (6)10;

By my mind itself I ascend to God (6)11;

I mount toward you ever above me (17)26;

My body lives by my soul, my soul lives by you (21)29;

You are not mind itself because you are the Lord God of the mind (25)36;

Where did I find you that I might learn you but in you above me (26)37.

S. Nilus (360-430)

When you know yourself you are able to know God (Ep 3.314).


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Isaac the Syrian of Nineveh (5007-595)

Two knowledges are received from without: the natural (what the senses perceive) and the spiritual(concerned with what the spirit receives) but the third knowledge is manifest in mind's inmost depths,for the kingdom is within; its coming cannot be observed for the kingdom comes without observation: it

reveals itself by itself without thoughts, further in than any image imprinted on the hidden mind (citedin Early Fathers from the Philokalia pl96).

Pope Gregory I (540-604)

The mind... rising to knowledge of itself... prepares a path to contemplate the substance of eternity andextends itself to itself by climbing which it enters into itself and from itself tends (in epectasy) to its

maker (Morals 5.61-62).

IBN 'ARABI

The Futht Al-Makkiyyah

II 308.22 (C.)

When man becomes aware of the true knowledge of himself...he finds nothing but his possibility,poverty, lowliness, subjection, need and misery...his need for someone to guide him...to the path whichwill take him to felicity with God...he needs knowledge of...the law...so as to perform secondary worship(that of servanthood) as well as primary (that of all actualised possibilities). He now combines both

forms of worship for he has knowledge of himself and everyone who knows himself knows his Lord and

who knows his Lord worships him by his command.

II 472.35 (C.)

...this knowledge of God which follows knowledge of self may be either a knowledge of one's incapacityto attain knowledge of God or a knowledge of the fact that he is God. (Cf. Philo: We can know that he is,

not what he is.)

II 500.16 (C.)

He is related to us by bringing us into existence so we are related to him through our existence. Hence

we know ourself (as being brought into existence) and God (as bringing us into existence).

II 552.12 (C., C.)

...There is tasting (dhawq) and drinking (sharb) but there is no ri (satiety and quenching) becauseQ20.144 'increase me in my knowledge' is absolute...the preparedness of the seeker is to gainknowledge and the knowledge gained is only preparedness for further knowledge. Since it is by

knowledge of the new preparedness for further knowledge that we actually become thirsty, there isnever any quenching. The ignorant being ignorant of this think they know God but he who has no


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knowledge of himself has no knowledge of his Lord and so the gnostic knows he is one of those who do

not know. (Cf. Eckhart on the verse They shall eat me and hunger.)

III 72.32 (C.)

He who etc., does not mean we know the essence... how could the delimited know the non-delimited?

III 101.18 (C.) To know oneself is:

a) the fact that one remains forever in one's possibility

b) that becoming is the property of the preparedness of possibles.

To know one's Lord is:

a) the fact that God alone is

b) that he alone makes the changes of becoming manifest.

III 121.25 (C.)

As knowledge of self has no end so there is no end to knowledge of God...hence the knower says inevery state, 'Increase me in my knowledge' and God increases him in knowledge of self that he mayincrease in knowledge of his Lord.

III 198.33 (C.)

The heart (qalb) has the character of flux or flowing-forward (taqlib)... now transmutation (tahawwul)and flux (qalb) are attributes of time (al-dahr)... and each day God is upon some task (Q55.29)... if man

examines his heart he knows that ceaseless creation is the root of its ceaseless flux... thus 'He whoknows etc' and flowing from mercy to mercy is flowing 'between the two fingers of the all-merciful'.(This shows that the double paradox of ceaseless creation and epectasy or ceaseless self-modification is

indivisible.)

III 314.22 (C.)

Ibn 'Arabi is speaking about a hylemorphic composition (form and matter, act and potency, etc.) andconcludes: When we know our souls we know our Lord like two exactly similar things hence 'He whoknows etc' and hence (Q41.53) We show them Our signs upon the horizons and in themselves till it is

clear that He is the Real.

III 404.28 (C.344)

He who knows himself has known his Lord for the creature most knowing in respect of creation is themost knowing in respect of God. (cf II 472.35 where knowledge of God follows knowledge of self: the

two knowledges advance pari passu and increase each other.)

The Fuss al-Hikam


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Noah (A.74)

'Who knows himself etc' links knowledge of God and of self in our experience of the inseparability of transcendence and immanence as in Q40.53 'Showing our signs on the horizon' (in the world outsideourself) 'and in yourself (i.e. at apex mentis) 'till it becomes clear, etc', (i.e. you are to him as body to

mind; he is to you as spirit governing your physical form), (cf Augustine: My body lives by my soul, mysoul by you.)

Abraham (A.92)

'Whoever knows etc' means we cannot know God as God without reference to the cosmos... onlyknowledge of the dependent as dependent can confirm the independence of the independent.

Ishmael (A. 107)

The servants who know their Lord are those who enter my 'paradise' (My 'janna': janna, 'to be hidden'is the 'castle' of Eckhart and S. Teresa of Avila) which is none other than yourself and entering yourself you know: (a) yourself with a gnosis other than that by which you know (b) your Lord by knowingyourself. There is thus a double gnosis: (a) knowing yourself as mere possibility and (b) knowing yourLord as he who is actualising the possibility.

Shu'ayb (A.153)

He who knows himself in this way knows his Lord and this is the way of which the amazing thing is that

such a one is always advancing, even if, since the veil is so fine, he is unaware of it. (Like the dead Sufiswhom Ibn 'Arabi says he instructed in 'advancement' or epectasy.) Similars in the sight of the gnosticsare different from each other. (Mind being always in self-modification and never simply the same as

itself.) Since this can't be known by speculation, it can't be attained by scholastic theologians and wasnever understood by (ancient greek) philosophers.

Jesus (A. 181)

Whoever wishes to know the divine breath must first know the cosmos for he who knows himself knows his Lord who is manifest in him. (The 'distress of the Divine Names at the non-manifestation of their effects' prior to the creating word of command, is not only why the obligating command is for us toshow the effects, but indicates that the divine and uncreated energies are themselves an eternalmanifestation of the essence prior to the creating word: the former is developed by Eckhart, the latter

by S. Gregory Palamas.)

Mohammad (A.272)

Since man's knowledge of himself comes before his knowledge of his Lord which results from it, we may

understand: either that one is not able to know and attain or that gnosis is possible.

Concluding Note


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Doubts as to Plato's authorship of the First Dialogue of Alcibiades are strengthened by its philonic viewof Delphi: 'I will tell you what I suspect to be its meaning and lesson. To know yourself, let soul look atthat part of soul which is like herself where virtue resides, which is most divine, which has to do withwisdom and knowledge, and which resembles the divine... one who, looking at this, knows that which is

divine is the most likely to be he who knows himself... and his self-knowledge is wisdom.

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Unless You Know Yourself You Cannot Know God