5 - The way of the Sufi

Summary

A MUSLIM “ROBINSON CRUSOE”

In the famous sixth-/twelfth-century philosophical tale Hayy b.Yazqan, the hero first encounters another human when he is fifty. Abandoned as an infant on a remote, uninhabited island off the coast of India, Hayy was raised by a doe foster-mother until her death when he was seven years of age. His initial experience of life was the animals' experience of nature. Hayy was different from the animals, however, by virtue of his gift of reason. The next stages of his life, until he was twenty-one, were spent discovering how to use and control nature for his own purposes.

From there Hayy's thought developed from reflection upon the order of the physical world to unraveling the mysteries of the metaphysical world; from the discovery of his own vital spirit or soul to that of the One Necessary Existent Being, with whom all creation began. Given his innate capacities and his experiences of life, discovery alone was not enough for Hayy. Wisdom seeks more than knowledge.

Seeing that what made him different from all other animals made him like the heavenly bodies, Hayy judged that this implied an obligation on his part to take them as his pattern, imitate their action and do all he could to be like them. By the same token, Hayy saw that his nobler part, by which he knew the Necessarily Existent, bore some resemblance to Him as well. […]