Mostafa Malekian on Selfhood and Selflessness in the Sayings of the Mystics

Tonight the point of selfhood and selflessness in the sayings of the mystics came to my mind. So I will speak for a few minutes about selfhood and selflessness, about being with oneself and being without oneself. Have you ever noticed that every part of the natural world, in whatever form and manner it is, whatever structure and function it has, whether structurally or functionally, is the sum total of the entire natural world? For example, consider a lit lamp. If you look closely, you will see that if the natural world had deviated from its present state by a hair's breadth, this lamp either would not exist or at least would not be lit now, meaning it would be deprived either of its structure or of its function.

You can convince yourself of this point with numerous examples, but perhaps the example of a lightbulb is one of the best. Consider how many objects, desires, events, processes, and relations and connections among the parts of the natural world had to come together so that a lightbulb with this form and character could emerge, with this structure and this very function that a lightbulb has (illumination). It is enough in this example to think of the metal filaments, the glass over the heat, the work done by engineers and designers, the engineers and designers themselves, the discovery of the force of electricity by someone, the invention of the lightbulb by Edison in the late nineteenth century; then you will acknowledge that if one of these links were missing, if one of these events had not occurred, if one of these processes had not unfolded, if one of these objects did not exist, if one of the properties of one of these objects were lost, and if one of these relations and connections were not established, this lightbulb would not exist with this structure and this function. Then, when you turn to the engineers and designers themselves, you see that for each of these engineers to be born, and then for the work of each of these engineers to result in becoming an engineer and performing engineering work, there is a share, an intervention, a participation, a contribution to the emergence of the lightbulb. And if you follow this chain, you see what things have come together so that engineer came into being, with that specific IQ, with that power of memory, depth of thought, strong understanding, daydreaming and fantasizing (which play a serious role in creativity and innovation), and their own particular associations of meanings. Then, if you also trace the chain of mineral materials constituting that lightbulb, you reach a similar conclusion: those filaments, the stones from which this glass was made, and the other components. By following these chains, you find that, in a sense, the entire universe (the natural world) has come together. If the sun were ten kilometers closer to the earth or twenty kilometers farther from the earth, this lightbulb would not have come into being. Now, as to why the sun is exactly where it is, moves in this particular way, has the orbit it now has, is at this distance from the earth, and other questions, you see that without the slightest exaggeration or hyperbole, the entire natural world has come together so that this lightbulb has this shape, appearance, and function. If one of those links and substances, the properties of those substances, the events related to those properties or substances, one of the processes, and so on, did not exist, this lightbulb could never have come into being. Now suppose this lightbulb had knowledge and will, and consequently power, as well as the other characteristics necessary for my example to proceed. Imagine this lightbulb, with all the aforementioned dependencies, possessed knowledge, will, and the other necessary characteristics, and the lightbulb here boasted to us, saying, 'See, I am now luminous, I am bright, I have given your room light and perhaps warmth, I have provided you with the means to study; if I were not here, you would not even recognize one another, and if I were not here, how disrupted your lives would be.' In your opinion, under these conditions, what should we say to the lightbulb? We would say: Yes, you speak truly, all these things you attribute to yourself are correct, but these should not be a source of pride, vainglory, boasting, and bragging for you. You should be grateful to the whole of existence, which is performing this light-radiation through you. It could have performed this light-radiation through another lightbulb. Therefore, this characteristic that you have—which is, of course, undeniable—your light is beautiful, your warmth is beneficial, and the existence of your structure is a necessary condition for many of our tasks, true. But your conduct has one flaw, and that is that you boast and vaunt with these things, as if you belittle us, saying, 'You do not have the light, heat, and this property that emanates from me.' And this, of course, is your only problem; your properties are not denied. You should be the opposite; that is, instead of boasting over everything other than yourself, you should accept the favor of everything other than yourself, which has entrusted this to you; it could have not entrusted it to you.

This example can be applied to anything. The whole of existence is involved in the structure and function of every tiny part it has. This story holds true for you, me, and every single individual. If you have abilities in the realm of the body, abilities and knowledge in the realm of the mind and psyche, capabilities in the realm of social relations, if you were raised in a good social environment, under the care of good, learned, and educated parents, in a family of noble lineage, deep-rooted, well-born, and pedigreed, if you are beautiful and eloquent, possess a high capacity for thought and understanding, and so on... none of these are to be denied. We make use of all of them; we even take pleasure in beholding the beauty of your body, and from all the characteristics you have in the realm of the body, the characteristics you have in the realm of the mind, psyche, and social relations, and the characteristics you have in the realm of the context of your emergence—from family to the historical and geographical context and

the entire context in which you came into being—we undoubtedly benefit. But you must not boast to me that I lack the intelligence and memory, the power of thought and understanding, the speed of comprehension and learning, the power of influence, the fame and popularity you have, parents of such good repute, the beauty of your teeth, the strength of your body's bones, the beauty of your eyes, the innate generosity you inherited from your parents, and that I am stingy, miserly, and niggardly. Everything you possess, instead of becoming a means for you to boast over those other than yourself, should become a cause for you to feel indebted to those other than yourself. That is, you should say: this power of thought, intellect, beauty, wealth, high intelligence, and so on... the world could have given to another being. Just as the light emanating from this lamp could have emanated from another lamp, and now this lamp should be happy that this light is emanating from it, you too, who possess these positive attributes, should be happy that existence is distributing its possessions and has a giving and bestowal to the rest of beings, and in the midst of this, it has also given something to you. And you should not attribute anything to yourself, because you know that not an iota of these things belongs to you. You recall that in the Quran, it is attributed to Moses and Korah that these two were contemporaries and had conversations with one another—I have nothing to do with these matters—apart from these, you recall that according to the text of the Quran, Moses says to Korah, you who are the wealthiest man of the age, give and bestow from your wealth to the poor. Korah makes two arguments against Moses and says, by the ruling of these two arguments, I will not do this: 1- Anut‘imu man law yashā’u Allāhu aṭ‘amahu: Should we feed someone whom, if God willed, He would have fed? If God has compassion for these people and if He desires that they have food, clothing, and shelter, let Him give to them Himself! Why does He need my mediation?! If God has compassion, let Him Himself provide sustenance for them, but if God does not have compassion and does not give, do you expect me to have compassion for them?!

2- “I have only been given it because of knowledge I possess”: I have acquired this wealth through my own knowledge, not by using your knowledge! Through my own knowledge, and in my own terms, through the mastery I had over my own mental faculties, the management I exercised over the use of my time, my youth, the perseverance and diligence I had, and the efforts I made, I have acquired this wealth. I have acquired it through my own knowledge, not through your knowledge, so you have no share in my wealth and I will give you nothing from it. Now, if someone were to say to Korah, “Where did you obtain this knowledge that the rest of us poor people did not have, and through which you attained this wealth, while we, lacking that knowledge, did not attain it?” Korah would presumably answer, “Of course, my knowledge is due to my high IQ, my capacity for learning, my speed of comprehension, and my strong memory.” Then we go through each of these characteristics that are prerequisites for acquiring knowledge and ask, “Where did you get your high IQ, your memory power, your power of understanding, your depth of thought, and other traits?” He would presumably answer, “I inherited them genetically from my parents. They came to me from my own parents, not from your parents!” Then we ask, “Who gave your parents those traits so that they could be passed on to you through inheritance?” and so on. If we follow this thread, we see that Korah is indebted to the entire natural world. Now that Korah is indebted to the entire natural world, he should even be grateful that it is good that the natural world channels this money through my hands to the poor; it could have been that this money was accumulated in the hands of another person who would distribute it among the people, providing food, charity, and generosity. So I should be very happy that the natural world has placed this money in my hands and I am giving it to others. Therefore, Korah must not only practice this generosity and return it to nature—as a billionaire, giving back from what nature freely gave him—but he should also be happy that nature chose him to bestow a billion things and then take back one thing from that billion. I think if friends reflect deeply on this argument, they will find its truth.

Thus, Korah must refrain from two things: 1- He must not boast over those who lacked his characteristics. Those who lacked his wealth lacked his knowledge, and they lacked his knowledge because they lacked his IQ, power of thought, depth of understanding, and speed of comprehension; and they lacked these because they did not have those parents and were not born into the family Korah was born into; and they lacked these because of a thousand and one other reasons, in which you ultimately see the entire universe is involved in this story. Not only should he not boast, but he should be grateful that existence, nature, God (however you wish to interpret it) gave this to Korah and said, “You rise and become the instrument of my generosity.”

2- Korah must know that among the billions upon billions of gratuitous things he has received from existence, what he gives to the poor and needy is not even one of those billions upon billions, and the winner is still Korah himself.

Apply the same to your own intelligence. If all of existence conspired to make you a successful university professor, a successful engineer, a successful neurosurgeon, a successful actor, or any other profession you might name, you have received none of it from anyone other than God, existence, or nature. Everything we have, we have taken from God, or existence, or nature. “We were not, and our request was not.” Yet if there had been a time when we were, we would say that Mr. A made a request of God, and because he was not lazy and made a request of God, God bestowed an art upon him. In that case, Mustafa, deprived of that art, would say to himself: you should not have been lazy and should have at least made a request of God so that you too could have enjoyed what you wanted. But we have not had such a period or time. Without prior being and without making a request, this art was given to Mr. A and not given to me; and of course, something may have been given to me that was not given to Mr. A, and something was given to Mr. B that was not given to me or Mr. A, and so on. The third conclusion we draw is that what has been given to me was not due to my entitlement, merit, worthiness, desert, or right; and what has been given to me and not given to you was not due to your lack of entitlement, unworthiness, or lack of right. Neither was what I have given to me by right and out of entitlement, nor was what you were not given due to a lack of entitlement. What was given to you was not out of your entitlement, and what I lack was not due to my lack of entitlement. Possessions are gratuitous, and lacks are not due to committing a crime. After this, we arrive at the fourth conclusion, which is that toward anyone who lacks what I possess, I should feel compassion, not boast to them. As much as you value your eyes, ears, memory, and intelligence, to the same extent, the person who lacks that blessing and gift is deprived of having it. So the more valuable your possessions are to you, the more deprived you see others who lack your possessions, and the more compassion you feel. Therefore, with this four-part analysis, the root of ego, egotism, and self-centeredness—that “I am the peacock of the highest paradise”—can wither within us. My egotism and self-centeredness can vanish by attending to this point: I am solely and exclusively the recipient of gifts that were not given to you, and if I am very fair, ethical, and deeply compassionate toward humanity, I return to existence one billionth of all these gifts that existence has given me. I have received a billion things for free, and I return one of those billion to others.

The mystics, religions and sects, many theologians, a group of philosophers, and most importantly, the sages of history, with this analysis, withered within themselves the root of selfishness, egotism, self-centeredness, arrogance, pharaonic pride, this “I am, and where are you compared to me.” Now see what a state we have fallen into, that we even boast to our own children. Until now, we used to say, “This is me, and you are not this,” but now we sit in our gatherings and say, “Oh, my children’s IQ is very high, their teachers praise them in such and such a way,” and so on. In short, we constantly expand the domain of this ego wider and wider and wider, and ultimately we arrive at what you have seen in the history of mysticism and Sufism, religions and sects, science and philosophy: individuals who think they have earned, ounce by ounce, everything they possess, and that we who lack those things have been lazy, indolent, and slack ourselves, not knowing that everything they have they received gratis, without any entitlement, and that whatever I lack, I have been deprived of it without any lack of entitlement.

Here you might say that these two brothers have equal IQs, but one of them, through perseverance and strong will, used his IQ and became a university professor, while the other did not use his IQ, lacked perseverance, and it is his own fault. I ask: the one who had strong will and perseverance—where did he get that strong will and perseverance from?! From this perspective, if you look, you see that whatever goodness is in us, if it is there—whether goodness in the realm of the body or goodness in the realm of the mind, psyche, social relations, and our existential climate—all of it, all of it, we have from another. With these descriptions, boasting becomes an act akin to “I am the one who seized the world, Rostam.” Yes, Rostam seized the world, but it has nothing to do with you. This intelligence, talent, and beauty you have are also from others. Now, if I practice this thing I have mentally accepted with myself and it becomes my permanent state, then they say, “So-and-so is selfless.” But if I attribute all of these to myself, I become “self-possessed,” and selflessness and self-possession here still carry a value-laden meaning. Selflessness has a positive value, and self-possession has a negative value. In psychology, selflessness is referred to as egolessness. That is, the individual is without egotism, self-centeredness, and “me, me” proclamations, and is simply happy that a task is accomplished by their hand in the world, and happy that billions have been given to them, and if they are asked to give something, it is one of those billions, and 999,999,999 (nine hundred ninety-nine million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine) things still remain theirs. The more a person becomes capable in this sense—in terms of wealth, power, status and position, social standing, fame, popularity, academic knowledge, university degrees, physical beauty, bodily ability, and so on—the lower their head bows. It is from this context that in one of the supplications of Imam Sajjad’s Sahifa Sajjadiya, he asks God: “الترفعنی فی الناس درجة إِلّا حَططْتَنِی عِنْدَ نَفْسِی مِثْلَهَا” (O God, as much as You raise me in the eyes of people, lower me in my own eyes.) Because I must understand that these elevations are a privilege given to me without merit, and I should not boast; my heart should burn for someone who had a poor father, a sick mother, was born in a poor and unhealthy environment, was not granted a high IQ, and so on. My heart should burn, and I should ask God that however much people hold me in high esteem, I become smaller and smaller in my own sight.

One of the ghazals from the Kulliyat-e Shams is very fitting for these matters, and its gist is that as long as you are self-possessed, consider yourself a “self,” and think you have all these things from yourself, know that you will constantly be struck and suffer blows from here and there in the world. But if one day you confess that, O God, existence, nature, or whatever else, You have given to me, and I never deserved it—and I do not know the reason why You chose me; You could have chosen another person and given these gifts to them—Rumi says that if you have this selflessness, you will see that everything in the world turns out in your favor. But if you become self-possessed and say “I am,” you will see that you are constantly slapped until you realize that nothing was ever your own. That ghazal, in Forouzanfar’s edition, is Ghazal 323:

That breath in which you are with yourself, the beloved comes to you like a thorn
And that breath in which you are without self, what work does the beloved come to you for!
That breath in which you are with yourself, you yourself are prey to a gnat
And that breath in which you are without self, an elephant comes to you as prey
That breath in which you are with yourself, you are bound by a cloud of sorrow
And that breath in which you are without self, the moon comes into your embrace
That breath in which you are with yourself, the beloved keeps aside from you
And that breath in which you are without self, the wine of the beloved comes to you
That breath in which you are with yourself, you are frozen like autumn
And that breath in which you are without self, December comes to you like spring
All your restlessness is from your seeking of rest
Become a restless seeker, so that rest may come to you
All your unpleasantness is from your seeking of pleasantness
If you abandon seeking pleasantness, everything becomes pleasant to you
All your unfulfilled desires are from your seeking of desire
Otherwise, all desires come to you like scattered offerings
Fall in love with the beloved’s cruelty, not with the beloved’s kindness
So that the coy, coquettish beauty may fall in love with you, wretched
When the Khosrow of the East, Shams-e Din, arrives from Tabriz
From the moon and the stars, by God, shame comes to you

From the heart of this thinking, mystical ethics is founded upon three principles, all three of which emerge from the very four propositions that were mentioned, and the entirety of ethics is subsumed under these three principles:

1- Truthfulness

2- Humility

3- Benevolence

All virtues are either instances of these three principles or arise from the marriage of two of these three principles, and all vices are either the offspring of the negation of these three or arise from the marriage of the negation of these three principles. That is, if you are a person of truthfulness, humility, and benevolence, you will come to possess every positive moral behavior and trait. Conversely, if instead of truthfulness you are a person of dissimulation, hypocrisy, and duplicity; instead of humility you are a person of arrogance, haughtiness, self-admiration, and conceit; and instead of benevolence you are a person of mistreatment and doing ill to others and the whole of existence, then all evils, both in moral behavior and in moral traits, will emerge from the heart of those three. Albeit, with attention to the precise meanings that the mystics have given to these three throughout history—that is, they have refined and made more exact their conventional meanings. In short, what they mean by truthfulness is that the five domains of your existence (beliefs, feelings, emotions, and passions, desires, speech, action) are completely congruent with one another. In the conventional sense, it means the congruence of the fourth (speech) with the first (belief).

If what I say is congruent with my belief, I am truthful. But in the discourse of the mystics, for truthfulness to be realized, each of our existential domains must be congruent with the other four; therefore, truthfulness finds twenty instances. Humility in this sense means that in the good things existence has given you, you consider yourself another. That is, my joy when, for example, I win the Nobel Prize should be equal to my joy when one of my friends wins the Nobel Prize. If I can achieve that, then I have been able to consider myself another in good things. The discovery made by my own child should create the same change of state in me as the discovery made by my friend's child. In other words, in good things, the positive points of life, and the blessings given to you, you can consider yourself another, meaning you have the same feeling from possessing a blessing as another would have from possessing it.

In that case, you are humble. That is, if twenty books and fifty articles in scientific and research journals are published by you, your happiness should be equal to when these works are published by your friend; then you are humble because in good things you have considered yourself another. The meaning of benevolence is the opposite of this in bad things. Benevolence means that in bad things, the weak points of life, and in life's calamities, I consider another to be myself. That I rush to take you to the clinic for a wound on your hand just as I would for a wound on my own hand. In that case, you have been able to consider another to be yourself in calamities. If, when your child's leg is broken, I become as meticulous and careful in finding the best surgeon exactly as when my own child's leg is broken, then in calamities I have considered you to be myself. So humility means considering oneself another in good things, and benevolence means considering another oneself in bad things. That I am as pained and upset by your child being beaten and your honor being violated as I am by my own child being beaten and my own honor being violated—this is benevolence. The mystics said that by possessing these three principles with these three definitions, which are very different from their conventional definitions, all virtues flow down toward the human being. All three of these are the result of this belief that none of the good things are from me or due to my deserving, and none of the bad things of another are the result of their lack of deserving.

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Transcriber and Editor: Mrs. Maryam Yousefi

Selfhood and Selflessness in the Sayings of the Mystics

Mostafa Malekian – 13 Bahman 1393

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