so are you a pantheist then?
Wow, sabr, please
Still, I am greatly complemented that you are interested in my opinion! I took the liberty of creating a new thread, even though my answer is pretty short.
I checked out the previous post where this question arose -- and, yes, it is fair to say that many strains of Sufism could be called pantheist, in the sense that they believe "God is everything". You look at a rose, that's God. You type on your computer: a movement "within" God. It's very close to most forms of Buddhism in that regard. The universe is God.
There are a number of implications. You could take it in a sort of Hindu direction, and then see the "many" Gods of that great religion as aspects of the One. But in some forms of Sufism, this is taken to be the true meaning of Tawhid. Not only is there no Allah but Allah -- there is nothing else either, ultimately! In Bahai faith -- and in the Sufi doctrine of Mansur Hallaj -- the various prophets and messengers of all the religions were people who actually "dissolved" into this God and, in a particular sense, "became" God. In all cases, it is through meditation, dhkr, entheogens or whatever, our selfhood, "ego" can be disolved and we can be elevated into
only God.
There are different moral implications. Awais would understand this theme to be an undercurrent in the 5 percenter branch of the Nation of Islam (hence, in hip-hop, "G" does not stand for Gansta, but for "God" -- the brothers see God in each other). The Hashashin (it is alleged they were similar) and the 5 percenters are interesting, as, once they realise they are divine, they also understand that everything they do is divine, and so they are permitted to be a universe unto themselves, smoking and womanizing etc (as well as laying down some dope rhymes).
Alternatively, a more traditional Sufi Muslim might behave in the opposite direction: if the selfhood is obliterated, and there is only God, no more
you, then there is nothing arrogant in claiming to be God: in fact, it is the height of adab! This becoming God, becoming one with the universe-as-God, stems from denying one's individual being, which means abandoning lots of worldly stuff (including the women and smoking, though the poetry often remains pretty good).
Anyway, I take a different position that actually sounds more traditional (probably quite close to that of ibn Arabi in Sufism and Issac Luria in Kabbalah). I am
not a pantheist.
For me, God is
separate from the universe.
It is faster to talk now in metaphor, and then you can ask me more if interested.
The pantheist would say: we are living in the
mind of God. Through prayer, dhkir, LSD or whatever, we can obliterate our false ego-centric selfhood and become one with God -- become one with the universe, become God.
In contrast, I believe: we are living the
breath of God. God breathes "Be" and we are (actually, more precisely, God breathed "Be" and Adam was, and we are built from the fallen form of that original Adam -- but perhaps that is unimportant to elaborate on now).
Breath is different from mind. In my view, we are as close to God as imaginable -- there is not much closer to you, than your own breath -- but ultimately God transcends (rather than being immanent to) all the universes we might inhabit. However, the nature of this breathing is such that it constructs a world for us built of signs that communicate God's love to us (because the breath is nothing other than Love). Our own individual selfhoods are sort of condensations of the "vapour" of that breath.
The state of oblivion that the other Sufis (and Buddhists, etc) speak about
does exist. We can dissolve into the breath through prayer, dhikr, entheogens, etc. I believe this was very much Ali's (and Hallaj's) state -- one of oblivion, annihilated selfhood. He spoke from the nature of a martyr to that breath. In contrast, Prophecy is not in such a state of oblivion, but rather of a victorious reading of the signs: an important (non-pantheistic) separation from God, an individual separated from the Divine permanently, but one that gets as close as humanly possible to comprehending the signs given by the breath, to "reading" the true nature of the words "spoken" in the breathing (a reading of the words that form existence itsel).
Yup, that's basically it. I also believe that this whole breathing thing happens once, but has a sort of permanent implication, called the next world -- again separate from God, but almost close enough to be confused with pantheism.
Any questions, happy to answer
I should point out that I am speaking for Tailorite Sufism only here. I sometimes irritate certain Sufi types with this position -- and am regularly accused of being a kind of "lower-level" Salafi-type. But the general characterisation is correct, actually.
Love and Light,
The Tailor
Topic: Pantheism and Tailorite Sufism