Spirituality Studies 11-1 Spring 2025 9 Patrick Laude translated here by the verb “to lie”, is one of the most frequent ones in the Qurʼā n, as it refers to the human denial of truth, which is the greatest sin. Lying implies here more than not telling the truth, since it also suggests denying the reality of the object or limiting it to one’s measures. By contrast, spiritual veracity implies an objective vision, and an adequate relation to its object. A second account, narrated a few lines later, confirms the principle of this objectivity, although with a slightly different inflection. The “sight” of the Prophet (Ar. basar) does not evade the object of vision, nor does it transgress it. In other words, it errs neither by default nor by excess. It sees perfectly, hence objectively. As for the object, here again, it is not characterized in any way but as “the greatest of the signs of his Lord”. In the Qurʼā n the term āyāt, translated by “signs”, refers to “proofs” of the existence and presence of God, whether cosmic and natural, internal and spiritual, or historical and related to the deeds of the prophets (Madigan 2001). The āyah of the mi’rāj is of a different kind, though, as it transcends all descriptions, it must therefore be referred to as the “greatest of the signs of his Lord” (Surah al-Najm 18, quoted in Nasr 2015, 1292). The Prophetic gaze at the “greatest sign” is, in a way, the model of contemplation in Islam, in so far as it preserves a clear distinction between the human subject and the Divine Object, while amounting to a complete concentration and absorption of the human gaze into its Divine object (Sells 1995, 242–250). On the one hand, there is a contemplative reverence for the distance between God and the human self, one that echoes Simone Weil’s definition of love: “To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love” (Weil 2012, 65). One could speak, therefore, of a loving or worshipping eye. On the other hand, the peak of the vision amounts to an extinction into the Divine Object, but this mystical summit is in a way more akin to unity than union. While the distance between the Lord and the servant can never be abolished, the servant must disappear before the Lord in a kind of consummation of unity. 3.2 The Divine Eye of Productive Measure and Illuminative Certainty Prajāpati, the Self of All, is worshipped as the [note: sun, the] Eye of All. This [note: the sun] is Prajāpati’s all-supporting body, for in it this all is hid [note: by the light of the sun]; and the sun [note: is] the eye [note: of Prajāpati]… For in the eye is fixed man’s great measure, because with the eye he makes all measurements. The eye is truth (satyam), for the person (purusha) dwelling in the eye proceeds to all things [note: knows all objects with certainty]. (Maitrāyana Brāhmana Upanishad, VI Prapâthaka 6, quoted in Müller 1965, 309). While the Quranic narrative of the “vision of God” is founded on a sense of incommensurability between the Divine and the human – the latter being limited to an ability to behold the former without egotic straying and then disappearing before it, the Maitri Upanishad presents us with the symbolic function of the eye as a principle of measurement of everything. There could not be, in a sense, a clearer contrast between the Islamic emphasis on Divine transcendence and the Hindu sense of Divine immanence. Prajāpati is the Hindu Lord of Creation, a polymorphic divinity who is ultimately identified with the Divine Self, the Ātman (Eliade 1969, 109–11; Kramrisch 1981, 103–104). This is in keeping with the fluid polytheism of the Hindu tradition, its ability to articulate a dizzyingly complex pantheon and a most rigorous henotheistic perspective on the Ultimate [6]. In the Maitri Upanishad the sun is identified to Prajāpati’s eye, and its symbolic identification involves the various functions of projecting, enlightening, and measuring. The whole world, which is Prajāpati’s body, is first and foremost hidden in the light of his eye, and this light itself, which is the principle of projection of the whole, is hidden in “this all”. This is the metaphysical alternation of non-manifestation and manifestation; the manifestation being hidden in the ontological principle and the ontological principle in the manifestation. As soon as the world is seen by Prajāpati’s eye through its light, the latter becomes un-manifest in the manifestation that has been projected. God’s vision of the world is blindness on the side of the world. Moreover, there is also a sense in which the eye-sun is enlightening from within the world, like the light shining in darkness. The Divine light is not only diffused into the world, but also crystallized in the sacred syllable Ōṁ. It is through this syllable, a concentration of light, as it were, that worldly blindness is transmuted into vision: “He alone (Brahman as ‘light of that syllable Om’ enlightens us…) This alone is the pure syllable, this alone is the highest syllable; he who knows that syllable only, whatever he desires, is his” (Müller 1965, 308). The third aspect of the vision is measurement. The sense of perspective and distance that is inherent to the eye’s vision is in a way coincidental with productive projection itself, while introducing into this creation the order of Divine
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