On the Sufism of Henry Corbin (1903-1978)
"Here let us pause, for it seems to us that with the symbol of Ibn ‘Arabi as disciple of Khidr we have reached the center which dominates the co-ordinates of our spiritual topography. Whatever name we may give to the disciple’s relationship with his personal invisible guide, the events it determines do not fall within quantitative physical time; they cannot be measured according to homogeneous, uniform units of time and chronology regulated by the movements of the stars; they find no place in the continuous chain of irreversible events. These events, to be sure, are enacted in time, but in a time that is peculiar to them, a discontinuous, qualitative, pure, psychic time, whose moments can be evaluated only according to their own measure, a measure which in every instance varies with their intensity. And this intensity measures a time in which the past remains present to the future, in which the future is already present to the past, just as the notes of a musical phrase, though played successively, nevertheless persist all together in the present and thus form a phrase. Hence the recurrences, the possible inversions, the synchronisms, incomprehensible in rational terms, beyond the reach of historical realism, but accessible to another “realism,” that of the subtile world, ‘alam al-mithal, which Suhrawardi called the “Middle Orient” of celestial Souls and whose organ is the “theophanic Imagination” that will concern us here."
—CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE SUFISM OF IBN ‘ARABI
thanks to
Nate Mackey for the citation (the follwing is comment that I typed beneath the poet's facebook post
most of the mystic traditions still applicable to our lives
normally deprecate time as being something overly bound to gross matter
slowness and the whole gnostic sludge argument
circulating through various degradations and corruption
hence to be avoided at all costs (and the costs are high)
new age versions of everything seem to dis temporality,
informing us about meditation retreats, timeless times,
and they insist on living in the eternal now (which, to a degree,
is very seductive wisdom, helpful for the healing body
since the sleeping body is in a pineal sanatorium
where all the body systems resurrect vitality
so this timeless sensation is not without merits.
but the hard question for the astrophysics of mind
demands some kind of coming to terms with time
and what it's variable tempi might mean cosmologically
and literally in our endeavors, so Corbin shows us
how Ismaili gnosticism was aware of relativity, parallel universes,
cyclical time, synchronicity, frame dragging
-- they didn't seem to name black holes and wormholes
and rabbit holes outright but the modal relations
between the prophetic figures seems to allow for
transitional signatures of a trans-human intelligence
that gathers evidence from textual paleontology
that eternity and time are not at odds with one another.
this I feel is related to the concept of truth and redemption,
the healing that comes from compassionate polylogue.
the greatest most convincing example of this came to me,
many years ago now, via the abbas kairostami film
rendered into english as "close-up"
where a truly compassionate glimpse of understanding
the motivations of a criminal fraudster
might come to the fore as being related to the unrealistic
expectations and contradictions of our social environments
read about Iranian film maker Kairostami here:
Henry Corbin was first brought to my attention by Charles Olson via some recommened
reading of the poet Jack Clarke (1933–1992) Corbin wrote extensively about various Sufi mystic philosophers and poets where divine forces were accesible through angelogy, a concept that
ran against the grain of orthodox Islam and was at times claimed to be heretical. Sufism however is the most syncretistic and through it's deep focus and uniting of ancient Greek philosophy with Arabic culture created a unique bridge and hybrid form of faith captivating both psychologists and poets.
To
speak with Earth meant always to meet the worms, exchange breaths with
sediment, learn subsidence -- and how long the study? -- Ibn Al Jabr
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On Johnny Cash and Walking the Line
for Karolina
the other day she asked me about the song line where Johnny Cash walks the line because June was his lady, his doll, his madonna and whoever speaks, walks, talks as Johnny alone through jail cell back and forth or drunken, shiftless alley he alone can call June the lady of love promised by herself to him as mine, my love, and by walking the line it means to stay, you know, kind of straight but not as if he'd been crook'd but that anyone going straight would quit gambling, boozing, whoring, any and all wrong-doings that might compromise pure and courtly love etc.
and I said to my love, my lady, that the chiseled face of Johnny Cash, weathered by time and grey
and strong in "the man in black" days which were permanent, actually, for a character of such fate, to be strumming, stuck in Folsom prison (sometimes misptyped as Fulsome, as if abundant with the suffering incarcerated souls) that he wanted to get straight for his lady so that one day they might meet in the heaven they might have mutually believed in although I am not his nor anybody's biographer and do not possess articles about their faith
and further more while walking amidst these birch and spruce perfectly delineated forest plantations
which seemed like a paradise for us those few days over Roman Easter 2023,
while meditating on how each tree has its own perfect warp, twist and lean, a straightness never quite straight, never parallel, this corridor (depicted in the photo) seemed to me a ski slope straight and narrow to the Angel of willowy light, at the end of any tunnel of terror darkness and existential harrowing of meaningless (dante!, always rendering the forest as dark!) should end in the light of this kind that would be like a vision of beatrice which dante had before being obliterated into particles of light swerving endlessly from star to star in the unmeasurable bodiless god body
so it occured me that she asked about a song and a line and bruce chatwin's songlines jumped into my head as a recounting of the aboriginal walking song paths of our australian ancestors and to walk here now perhaps was connected to another earth within this earth when all earth was one land mass
and that this path is the very one for us in eternal aboriginal now of the wholeness of geological time
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| Rogoziniec Forest, Poland |
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and as by divine faithless synchronicity I found by chance
flipping through a book we'd been reading the following passage:
"The ley lines, the straight-line roads symbolize spirit travel, journeying into the otherworld of the spirits, of the ancestors, which can be seen in shamanic terms as simply another level or dimension of the physical landscape."
-- Paul Devereux,
cited in Breaking Open The Head by Daniel Pinchbeck
Some field recordings from our trip to Rogoziniec (birds)
come to understand that the majesty of that Beloved is like the sun
that can be seen reflected in a mirror. yet,
whoever looks into that mirror
will also behold his or her own image.
if Simorgh (thirty birds) unveils its face to you, you will find
that all the birds, be they thrity or more
are but the shadows cast by that unveiling
what shadow is ever sperated from it's Maker?
Do you see? The shadow and it's maker are one and the same
so, get over the surfaces, delve into the mysteries!
