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The Eighth Lesson: Sufiism.1273
explained to the remaining disciples that his Personality had vanished during
his ecstasy, and he saw that his Form was but “a mirror faintly reflecting the
form of God,” and that when the disciples wished to strike him with their
knives, they saw only the Mirror reflecting their own faces (not seeing God,
and Bayazid having vanished) and so their knives struck themselves.
Many of the early Sufis fell into the same error that has carried away so
many of the modern Western students of advanced metaphysics—that
supreme foolishness which would call the “reflection” by the name of that
which causes it—and which voices itself in the strident, raucous cry of: “I
Am God!” We find instances of this throughout many of the early records
of the sect, particularly as the doctrine of the Indwelling Spirit was argued
out to its extreme possibilities, and the difference between the Reality and
the Reflection faded away, and in the Sufi terminology: “The Beloved and
the Lover are known to be One.” One Mansur al-Hallaj became renowned
by his claims that “I Am God!” which nearly caused a schism in the sect. In
this teaching he was rivaled by one Akbar, who modestly refrained from
sounding his own God-ship, but who inspired his followers to do so, one
of his poet-disciples singing enthusiastically: “See Akbar, and you see God!”
Al-Hallaj at one time was crucified by the orthodox Mahommedans,
remaining suffering on the cross for four days, on both sides of the Tigris
river. He bore his sufferings with noble courage, saying: “From His own cup
He bade me sup, for such is hospitality;” and, “I am receiving only what is
mine, for by God, I never distinguished for a moment between pain and
pleasure!” also uttering one of his characteristic sayings: “The Way to God
is but two steps: one step out of this world, and one step out of the next
world—and lo, you are there with God.” The legends have it that he did not
die on the cross, but was released after the four-days’ crucifixion and lived
for ten years more, being finally stoned to death, the legend being that,
expiring, he wrote with his finger, with his own blood, on the stones, the
words: “I am God!” But these are instances of the extreme of the thought,
and the body of the Sufis did not hold to these claims, but instead, regarded