Intimations

Extract from Intimations

From Chapter 10: ‘Hu’

We start with an impossibility. I want to speak about what can’t be said, and this I want you to take seriously; when I say that it can’t be said, I do mean just that. It can be talked about, but when one talks about it one is talking about an image, an idea or perhaps even nothing more than a lot of words. How far is it beyond words? If it were just one step beyond words, it may be that some sort of analogy, description or picture would help. I’m going to speak about Hu in the sense that the Sufis use this word; in the ordinary way in Arabic it means nothing, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, anything you like, it just tacks on to the ends of verbs and means ‘he’. It can be used in the most ordinary way in everyday Arabic conversation.

But, it also means the ultimate, that which is entirely beyond all attribute, beyond anything that can ever be said. It also does mean the nearest of all. You’ve got Nejmeddin Kubra. His explanation of it I can start with. He said, ‘Every time we breathe, we say this. This “ah” of Allah is the essential reality of everything because everything that breathes, every breath, says this’. This is a way of expressing this immanence, the indwelling of this in everything. One cannot breathe without saying this. That’s how he explained it. That’s one way of feeling it and experiencing it. It is the very essence of our breathing, that means the very essence of our lives, the very essence of our being. But, for the Sufi, I think it is not so easy to take it that way alone.

We, for some reason or other, have been put into this world, we’ve been put into this human body. For me there is no doubt that this has been done for a purpose and we are expected to fulfil that purpose. We’ve not been sent here for nothing. We haven’t even been sent here for our own benefit, because there is something that is required of us. And, we’ve been sent about as far away as it is possible to be sent without losing contact with the Source, that is without losing the possibility of returning by one’s own volition to the Source. If we had been sent further away than this, if we’d been sent into an animal form, or a vegetable form, we wouldn’t be able to return of our own accord. We would have had to depend upon the whole evolutionary process to bring us back. Where we are situated, it is just possible to return, that is, to return of our own volition, not by the stream.

Everything will return by the stream, but we men are given the possibility of direct return. This state in which we are is in Sufi terms, the nasut. This condition here of existence, which is sometimes called the human condition, really is the human condition together with everything that surrounds us, all this life of the animal, vegetable, mineral world. This is the world to which we’ve been sent. If we’re not able to make our way back by our own volition, it doesn’t mean that everything is lost, because we shall return in any case with the stream that flows back to the Source. But that’s not really what’s intended for man. Man’s destiny is not just to be carried along in the stream of evolution, through mineral to vegetable, through vegetable to animal, through animal to this kind of life and from this to others. The Source is what we are speaking about: The word Hu.