Wahdat Al-Wajood - Ashraf Jahangir Semnani's and Shah Waliullah's View of Wahdat

Ashraf Jahangir Semnani's and Shah Waliullah's View of Wahdat

Ashraf Jahangir Semnani was the first sufi saint who demonstrated that the two seemingly opposite doctrines of wahdat al- wujud of Ibn Arbi and wahdat al shuhud of Sheikh Alauddala Semnani and its proponents in India such as Gesu Daraz Banda Nawaz are not but verbal controversies. Shah Waliullah later also tried to reconcile the two (apparently) contradictory doctrines of wahdat al-wujud (unity of being) of Ibn Arabi and wahdat al-shuhud (unity in conscience) of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi.

Shah Waliullah neatly resolved the conflict, calling these differences 'verbal controversies' which have come about because of ambiguous language. If we leave, he says, all the metaphors and similes used for the expression of ideas aside, the apparently opposite views of the two metaphysicians will agree. The positive result of Shah Wali Allah's reconciliatory efforts was twofold: it brought about harmony between the two opposing groups of metaphysicians, and it also legitimized the doctrine of wahdat al-wujud among the mutakallimun (theologians), who previously had not been ready to accept it.

In his books Lamahat and Sata'at, he discusses stages of being, the perceptive faculty, the relation of the abstract with the universe, the universal soul and the souls of man, after death, essence, miracles, the scope of man, the soul of the perfect, universal order, source of manifestation, and the transformation of mystics from quality to quality. He also demonstrated that the long-standing assumption that Sufi doctrine was divided between Apparentism and Unity of Being was a difference of expression alone, the latter doctrine being seen as merely a less-advanced stage of projection.

In his opinion this whole universe has also self (nafs) as an individual person has a self, which is called the Universal Soul (an-Nafs-ul-Kulliyah). The multiplicity of the whole universe has originated from it. When Ibn Arabi says that everything is God, he thereby means the Universal Soul. This Universal Soul, or the Self-unfolding Being (al-Wujud-ul-Munbasait), subsists by itself. This existence pervades the whole universe, both the substance and the accident, and accepts the form of everything. It is both immanent and transcendental. Beyond this existence (al-Wujud-al-Munbasit : Universal Soul) towards the original existence (God) none has access to. In other words, man's progress ends with the Universal Soul or the Self-unfolding Being. He cannot move a step further. The Universal Soul and God are so intermingled that the former is often taken for the latter."

As for the question of the relation that this existencen (al-Wujud-ul-Munbasit) has with the essence of God itself. This relation is, however, known only in its reality (anniyyah : I-ness); its quality is unknown and can never be known. Thus when Ibn Arabi says that the realities of the existing things are the names and the attributes of the Universal Soul (Self-unfolding Being) in the stage of knowledge (Fi Martabat-il-'Ilm, in the Divine Consciousness) or when Imam Rabbani asserts that the realities of existing objects are sheer nothingness on which the lights of the names and attributes of the Universal Soul (al-Wujud-ul-Munbasit) are reflected is exactly the same thing. The difference in their language is so little that it needs no consideration.