Hayy ibn Yaqzan

The Shaykh, the jurist, the imam, the learned, the excellent, the accomplished, the knower of God Abu Jaʿfar ibn Tufayl (may God have mercy on him) said: Praise be to God, the Mighty and the Mightiest, the Eternal and the Most Ancient, the Knowing and the Most Knowing, the Wise and the Wisest, the Merciful and the Most Merciful, the Generous and the Most Generous, the Forbearing and the Most Forbearing, who “taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know,” and “God’s bounty to you has been great.” I praise Him for the abundance of His graces and thank Him for the succession of His favors. I bear witness that there is no god but God alone, who has no partner, and that Muhammad is His servant and His Messenger: the man of pure character, of dazzling miracle, of overpowering proof and of the drawn sword. God’s blessings and peace be upon him, upon his family and his Companions, men of great aspirations, of virtues and renown, and upon all the Companions and those who followed them until the Day of Judgment; and may He grant them abundant peace.note

You have asked me, noble brother, my sincere and dear friend (may God grant you everlasting life and make you happy with eternal happiness), to convey to you what I can of the secrets of the Eastern wisdom of which the Shaykh, the Imam, the Chief Master Abu Ali ibn Sina spoke. Know, then, that whoever wants the truth without obscurity must seek this wisdom and strive earnestly to acquire it. Your question stirred in me a noble thought, and that thought led me (praise be to God) to witness a state I had never witnessed before. It brought me to a point so strange that no tongue can describe it and no exposition can do it justice, for it belongs to a stage other than theirs and a world other than theirs.note

Consider also what Abu Bakr ibn al-Sa’igh says in the passage that follows his discussion of the nature of conjunction: “When the meaning intended in that book of his is understood, it becomes clear that none of the sciences commonly pursued can be of its rank. One who conceives it, by understanding that meaning, reaches a rank in which he sees himself as distinct from everything that came before, holding other convictions that are not material and are too exalted to be ascribed to natural life. Rather, they are states of the blessed, free of the composition of natural life; states of the blessed, indeed, worthy to be called divine states, which God, glory be to Him, Most High, grants to whomever He wills of His servants.” This rank to which Abu Bakr points is reached by way of theoretical knowledge and rational inquiry, and there is no doubt that he reached it and did not go beyond it.note

This state we have mentioned, of which your question stirred in us a dhawq, a taste, is one of the states the Shaykh Abu Ali pointed to when he says: “Then, when will and spiritual exercise have brought him to a certain point, delightful glimpses of the rising light of the Truth come upon him, like flashes of lightning that gleam on him and then die away. Then these visitations come upon him more often as he persists in his exercise. Then he goes so deep into it that they come upon him even when he is not exercising: whenever he glimpses something, he turns from it to the court of holiness, recalls something of its affairs, and is overcome, so that he almost sees the Truth in everything.note

Abu Bakr found fault with these people for speaking of this delight, claiming that it belongs to the imaginative faculty, and he promised to describe in a clear and explicit account what the state of the blessed ought to be at that point. One should say to him: do not call sweet the taste of a thing you have not tasted, and do not step over the necks of the truthful saints. The man did none of this and never kept that promise. Perhaps he was prevented by what he himself mentioned, shortness of time and being busy with his journey down to Oran. Or perhaps he saw that if he described that state, the argument would force him to say things that would reflect badly on his own way of life, and would give the lie to what he had laid down in urging people to amass wealth, to hoard it and to use every kind of stratagem to acquire it.

Our discussion has strayed somewhat from what your question moved us to, as necessity required. It has become clear from this that what you seek cannot go beyond one of two aims. Either you are asking about what is seen by the people of vision, tasting and presence at the stage of sainthood; and this cannot be set down in a book as it truly is. Whenever anyone attempts it and forces it into speech or writing, its reality is transformed and it passes into the other, theoretical class. For once it is clothed in letters and sounds and brought near the visible world, it no longer remains as it was in any way or respect. Expressions of it differ widely; some people’s feet have slipped from the straight path because of it, and others are thought to have slipped when they have not. This is so only because it is something without limit, in a presence of wide expanse, which encompasses and is not encompassed.

Do not suppose that the falsafa that has reached us in the books of Aristotle and Abu Nasr and in al-Shifāʾ (The Healing) meets the aim you have in view, nor that anyone in al-Andalus has written anything adequate on it. Those of outstanding natural gifts who grew up in al-Andalus before logic and philosophy spread there spent their lives on the mathematical sciences. They reached a high level in them but could achieve nothing more. Then came after them a later generation who went beyond them with some logic. They studied it, but it did not bring them to true perfection, and one of them said: “It torments me that the sciences of humankind / Are two, and nothing more beyond them lies: / A truth whose full attainment is beyond us, / A falsehood whose attainment is no prize.”note

Of the books of Abu Nasr that have reached us, most are on logic, and those on philosophy are full of doubts. In al-Milla al-fāḍila (The Virtuous Religion) he affirmed that wicked souls survive after death in endless pain, a survival without end. Then in al-Siyāsa al-madaniyya (The Political Regime) he declared that they dissolve and pass into nothing, and that only perfect souls survive. Then in Kitāb al-akhlāq (The Book of Ethics) he described something of human happiness, saying that it exists only in this life, in this world, and then added words to this effect: “Everything said apart from this is raving and old wives’ tales.” This makes all creatures despair of God Most High’s mercy and puts the virtuous and the wicked on one level, since it makes nothingness the end of all. It is a slip that cannot be pardoned, a stumble beyond repair.note

As for the books of Aristotle, the Shaykh Abu Ali took it upon himself to set forth what is in them. In al-Shifāʾ he followed Aristotle’s doctrine and took the path of his philosophy. But he stated at the opening of the book that for him the truth was something else; that he had composed that book only according to the doctrine of the Peripatetics; and that whoever wants the truth without obscurity must turn to his book on the Eastern philosophy. Whoever takes the trouble to read al-Shifāʾ and the books of Aristotle will find that they agree on most matters, even though al-Shifāʾ contains things that have not reached us from Aristotle. And if one takes everything the books of Aristotle and al-Shifāʾ offer in its outward sense, without grasping its secret and inner sense, it will not bring one to perfection, as the Shaykh Abu Ali indicated in al-Shifāʾ.note

As for the books of the Shaykh Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, because he is addressing the general public he binds in one place and loosens in another, condemning certain views as unbelief and then adopting them himself. Among the things for which he declared the philosophers unbelievers in the Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Philosophers) was their denial of the resurrection of bodies and their affirming reward and punishment for souls alone. Then he said at the opening of the Mīzān (Mīzān al-ʿamal, The Criterion of Action) that this is, without question, the belief of the Sufi masters. Then he said in al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl wa-l-mufṣiḥ bi-l-aḥwāl (Deliverance from Error and Exposition of the States) that his own belief is like that of the Sufis, and that he settled on it only after long inquiry. There is much of this kind in his books, as anyone who leafs through them and studies them closely will see.

He excused himself for doing this at the end of Mīzān al-ʿamal, where he explains that opinions are of three kinds: an opinion one shares with the general public in what they hold; an opinion shaped by the way one addresses each questioner and seeker of guidance; and an opinion held between a person and himself, which no one sees except someone who shares his belief. Then he said: “Even if these words did nothing but make you doubt your inherited belief, that would be benefit enough. For whoever does not doubt does not reflect; whoever does not reflect does not see; and whoever does not see remains in blindness and bewilderment.” Then he quoted this line: “Take what you see, and leave what you have heard; / The rising sun is enough to spare you Saturn.”note

We ourselves would not have arrived at the truth we have reached, the limit of our knowledge, except by following his words and the words of the Shaykh Abu Ali, setting the two against each other, and adding to them the opinions that have sprung up in our own time and that certain people who profess philosophy talk of constantly. In this way the truth became clear to us, first by way of inquiry and reflection; and now we have found from it this small taste by direct vision. Then we saw ourselves fit to compose something that might be handed down from us, and it became our duty that you, my questioner, should be the first to whom we present what we have and show what lies with us, because of your true friendship and pure sincerity. Yet if we laid before you the final results we have reached before establishing their first principles with you, it would give you nothing more than a vague matter of taqlīd, of following authority—and that only if you think well of us out of affection and friendship, not because we deserve to have our word accepted.note

Our pious forebears (may God be pleased with them) relate that one of the islands of India lying beneath the equator is the island where human beings come into being without mother or father. There are trees there that bear women as fruit, and these are what al-Masʿudi called the maidens of the Waqwaq. This is because that island has the most temperate climate on earth, and is the most perfectly disposed to receive the rising of the supreme light upon it. This runs contrary to the view of most philosophers and the great physicians, who hold that the most temperate part of the inhabited world is the fourth clime. If they said this because they had established that there is no habitation on the equator owing to some obstacle on the earth, then their claim that the fourth clime is the most temperate region of the earth has some point. But if they meant that what lies on the equator is extremely hot, as most of them state outright, that is an error, and demonstration proves the contrary.note

It has been established in the mathematical sciences by conclusive demonstrations that the sun is spherical in shape, and so is the earth; that the sun is much larger than the earth; that the part of the earth lit by the sun at any time is more than half of it; and that in this lit half of the earth the light is always most intense at the center. That is because the center is the place furthest from the darkness at the circumference of the circle, and because it faces many parts of the sun. The nearer a place is to the circumference, the less light it has, until it reaches darkness at the circumference of the circle, whose place on the earth receives no light at all. A place is at the center of the circle of light when the sun stands directly over the heads of those who live there, and then the heat in that place is at its most intense.

As it happened, the water was then running with the force of the flood tide, and that same night it carried him to the shore of the other island mentioned above. The tide was then at its utmost reach inland, a point it reaches only once a year. With its force the water carried him into a thicket of dense trees and sweet soil, sheltered from wind and rain and screened from the sun, which inclined away from it when it rose and turned aside when it set. Then the water began to ebb and fall away from the chest that held the child, and the chest stayed where it was. The blowing winds raised the sand and piled it up until it blocked the entrance of the thicket over the chest and filled in the channel by which the water entered, so that the tide no longer reached it. The chest’s nails had been wrenched loose and its boards shaken apart when the water flung it into that thicket.note

When hunger pressed hard on the child, he cried, called for help and struggled to move. His voice reached the ear of a doe that had lost her fawn: it had wandered out of its covert and an eagle had carried it off. When she heard the voice she took it for her fawn and followed the sound until she reached the chest. She scraped at it with her hooves while he strained from within, until a board flew off the top of the chest. The doe was moved with tenderness and took him as her own. She gave him her teat and let him drink his fill of sweet milk, and she went on tending him, raising him and keeping harm away from him. This is the beginning of his story according to those who deny that he was generated from the earth. We shall describe later how he was raised and how he passed from one state to another until he reached his great attainment.

As for those who claim that he was generated from the earth, they say that in a hollow of that island’s ground a mass of clay fermented over the passing years, until hot mixed with cold and moist with dry in a mixture whose powers were balanced and in equilibrium. This fermented clay was very large, and some parts of it surpassed others in the balance of their temperament and their readiness to form the mingled drops of generation. Its middle was the most balanced part of all and the closest in likeness to the temperament of a human being. The clay began to churn as if in labor, and because of its great viscosity something like the bubbles of boiling appeared in it. In its middle there arose a viscous spot and a very small bubble, divided into two parts with a thin membrane between them and filled with a subtle, airy body of the utmost balance proper to it. At that moment the spirit that is of God’s command attached itself to it and clung to it so tightly that it can hardly be separated from it, whether by sense or by the intellect.note

For it has been shown that this spirit flows unceasingly from God, mighty and majestic is He, and that it is like the light of the sun, which flows unceasingly over the world. Some bodies are not lit by it at all: this is the very transparent air. Some are lit by it to a degree: these are the dense bodies that are not polished. They differ in how they receive light, and their colors differ accordingly. And some are lit by it to the utmost: these are polished bodies, such as mirrors and the like. If such a mirror is concave and of a particular shape, fire arises in it from the excess of light.

But let us return to the rest of their account of that formation. They say: when this spirit attached itself to that cavity, all the powers submitted to it, bowed down before it, and were made subservient to it, by command of God Most High, for its perfection. Then opposite that cavity another bubble formed, divided into three cavities with thin membranes and open passages between them. It filled with an airy body like the one that filled the first cavity, only subtler. In these three chambers, divided out of one, there settled a group of the powers that had submitted to it. They took charge of guarding and tending it, and of reporting to the first spirit, attached to the first cavity, whatever arose in them, subtle or gross. Then, also opposite this cavity, on the side facing away from the second, a third bubble formed, filled with an airy body coarser than the other two; and in this cavity a company of the submissive powers settled, charged with preserving and tending it.

When the spirit attached itself to the first of these and its heat flared up, it took on the pine-cone shape of a flame. The dense body surrounding it took the same shape and became firm flesh, and over it formed a thick sheath to protect it; and the whole organ was called the heart. Since heat brings dissolution and consumes moisture, it needed something to replenish and nourish it and to make good, continually, whatever it lost; otherwise it could not last. It also needed to sense what suited it, so as to draw it in, and what was contrary to it, so as to repel it. So one organ, through the powers in it that had their origin in the heart, took charge of one of these needs, and the other organ, through what was in it, took charge of the other. The one charged with sensation was the brain; the one charged with nourishment was the liver.

From this point on, what these people describe and what the first group described about his upbringing are the same. Both say that the doe that took charge of him happened on rich land and luxuriant pasture, so that she grew plump and her milk flowed abundantly, and it nourished the child as well as could be. She stayed with him and left him only when she had to graze. The child grew so attached to her that if she was slow in coming back his crying grew loud, and she would fly back to him. There were no beasts of prey on that island.

The child stayed with the deer in this way, imitating their calls with his voice until one could hardly tell them apart. He also imitated all the birdsong and the cries of every other kind of animal he heard, and with great accuracy, so strongly was he moved by whatever he set his mind on. Most of all he imitated the calls the deer use to cry for help, to seek company, to summon and to ward off, for animals have different calls for these different situations. So the wild creatures grew used to him and he to them; they did not shun him, nor he them. Once the images of things had settled in his soul after they had passed out of his sight, he came to feel desire for some and aversion to others. All the while he looked at the animals and saw them clothed in fur, hair and feathers of every kind. He saw their speed in running and their strength in fighting, and the weapons they had ready to fend off whoever contended with them: horns, tusks, hooves, spurs and claws.

When his worry over all this had lasted long—he was then nearly seven years old—and he despaired of ever making up the lack that so troubled him, he took broad leaves from the trees and put some behind him and some in front. From palm fronds and esparto grass he made something like a belt around his waist, and hung the leaves from it. Before long the leaves withered, dried up and fell off, so he kept taking new ones and stitching them together in double layers. Sometimes this made them last longer, but in any case they did not last long. From the branches of trees he made sticks, trimming their ends and straightening their shafts, and he would brandish them at the animals that contended with him, charging the weak ones and holding off the strong.

Meanwhile he grew up and passed seven years of age, and the labor of renewing the leaves that covered him wore on him. He longed to take a tail from one of the dead animals and fasten it on himself, but he saw that living animals shunned their dead and fled from them, so he could not bring himself to do it. Then one day he came upon a dead vulture and saw how to get what he wanted from it. He seized the chance, since he saw that the animals did not shy away from it. He went up to it and cut off its wings and tail whole, just as they were, spread their feathers and smoothed them, and stripped off the rest of its skin and divided it into two pieces. One he tied on his back, the other over his navel and what lay below it. He hung the tail behind him and fastened the wings to his upper arms.

Emaciation and weakness gained on her, one after another, until death overtook her. All her movements ceased and all her functions stopped. When the boy saw her in this state he was overcome with grief, and his soul nearly poured out in sorrow for her. He called to her with the call she always answered when she heard it, and shouted as loudly as he could, but he saw no movement or change in her. He looked at her ears and her eyes and saw no visible harm in them; he looked at all her limbs and likewise saw harm in none of them. He hoped to find the place where the harm lay and remove it, so that she would return to what she had been; but he could not manage it, nor was it in his power.

What led him to this idea was what he had observed in himself earlier. He had noticed that when he closed his eyes or covered them with something, he saw nothing until the obstruction was removed; that when he put his fingers in his ears and blocked them, he heard nothing until he took them out; and that when he held his nose with his hand, he smelled nothing until he opened it again. From this he concluded that all her perceptions and actions might have obstacles hindering them, and that once those obstacles were removed, the actions would return.

He had observed earlier, in the carcasses of animals and other creatures, that all their limbs were solid, with no cavity except the skull, the chest and the belly. So it came to him that an organ of the kind he was looking for could only be in one of these three places. He strongly suspected that it was in the middle one of the three, since he was convinced that all the limbs needed it, and so its dwelling had to be in the middle.

When he had firmly concluded that the organ in which the harm lay was in her chest, he resolved to search and probe for it, hoping he might find it, see its harm and remove it. Then he feared that this very act might be worse than the harm that had first befallen her, so that his efforts would work against her. Then he thought: had he ever seen an animal or anything else fall into such a state and then return to its former condition? He could think of none. So he despaired of her returning to her former state if he left her alone, while some hope remained of her return if he found that organ and removed its harm.

He searched the other side of the chest and found there the membrane lining the ribs, and the lung just as he had found it on this side. So he judged that this organ was what he sought. He tried to tear through its covering and slit open its sac, and only with toil and strain, after exhausting all his efforts, did he manage it. He laid the heart bare and saw that it was solid on every side. He looked to see whether there was any visible harm in it, and saw none. Then he pressed it with his hand and found that there was a cavity in it. He said: “Perhaps my ultimate object is inside this organ, and I have not yet reached it.” He cut into it and found two cavities, one on the right side and the other on the left. The right one was full of clotted blood; the left was empty, with nothing in it. He said: “What I seek must dwell in one of these two chambers.”

When he saw that the one dwelling in that chamber had departed before the house collapsed, leaving it intact, he became certain that it was all the less likely to come back now that the house had been so ruined and torn. The whole body then became, in his eyes, a base thing of no worth compared with that thing which, he believed, dwelt in it for a time and afterwards departed.

Meanwhile the body began to rot and gave off foul smells, which increased his aversion to it, and he wished he did not have to see it. Then two ravens came into his view, fighting until one struck the other down dead. The living one began scratching at the ground until it had dug a hole, and in it buried the dead one with earth. He said to himself: “How well this raven has done in burying its companion’s corpse, even though it did wrong in killing it! I had more reason to be guided to do this for my mother.”note

He remained like this for some time, examining the kinds of animals and plants and roaming the shore of the island, searching to see whether he could find anyone like himself, just as he saw that every individual animal and plant had many others like it. But he found nothing of the kind. He saw that the sea surrounded the island on every side, and so he believed that there was no land in existence besides that island of his.

It happened once that a fire broke out in a thicket of reeds through friction. When he caught sight of it, he saw a spectacle that terrified him, a creature he had never known before, and he stood marveling at it for a long while. Little by little he kept drawing closer, and he saw the fire’s piercing light and overpowering action: whatever it caught hold of, it consumed and turned into itself. His wonder at it, together with the boldness and strength that God Most High had set in his nature, led him to stretch out his hand toward it, meaning to take some of it. But when he touched it, it burned his hand and he could not grasp it. Then it came to him to take a brand that the fire had not entirely seized. He took hold of its unburnt end, with the fire at the other end, and this worked. He carried it to the place where he used to shelter, for he had taken to living alone in a hollow he had earlier found good to dwell in.

As his passion for the fire grew stronger, because of the fine effects he saw it produce and the strength of its power, it occurred to him that the thing which had departed from the heart of his mother, the doe who had raised him, was of the substance of this being, or of something akin to it. He was confirmed in this by what he saw of the warmth of animals throughout their lives and their coldness after death—this held always, without fail—and by the intense heat he felt in his own chest, at the spot corresponding to where he had cut open the doe. So it occurred to him that if he took a living animal, cut open its heart, and looked into that cavity which he had found empty when he cut into his mother the doe, he would see it, in this living animal, full of the thing that dwelt there. Then he would know for certain whether it was of the substance of fire, and whether it had any light and heat in it or not.

Then a desire stirred in him to investigate the rest of the animal’s organs: their arrangement, their positions, their sizes, how they are connected with one another, how they draw on this hot vapor so that their life continues through it, how this vapor lasts as long as it does, where it draws its supply from, and why its heat is not used up. He pursued all of this by dissecting animals, living and dead, and he kept examining them closely and thinking hard, until in all of it he reached the level of the great natural scientists.

His inquiry had reached this point at the end of three weeks of years from his birth—that is, twenty-one years. During this period he devised all sorts of contrivances. He clothed himself in the skins of the animals he dissected and made shoes from them. He made threads from hair and from the bark of the stalks of marshmallow, mallow, hemp, and every fibrous plant; what first led him to this was that he took fibers from esparto grass. He made awls from strong thorns and from reeds sharpened on stones. He was led to building by what he saw the swallows do, and so he made a storeroom and a pantry for his surplus food, and secured it with a door of reeds tied together, so that no animal could get at it while he was away from that spot on some business of his.note

After that he took up another line of inquiry. He examined all the bodies in the world of generation and corruption: animals of every kind, plants, minerals, the various kinds of stone, earth, water, vapor, snow, hail, smoke, ice, flame, and embers. He saw that they had many attributes, different actions, and movements that agreed and conflicted. He looked into this closely and carefully, and saw that they agree in some attributes and differ in others; that insofar as they agree they are one, and insofar as they differ they are distinct and many. At times he would look at the properties of things and at what sets each apart from the others, and then things multiplied for him beyond counting, and existence spread out before him beyond any grasp.note

Then he would pass on to all the species of animals and see each individual among them as one by this kind of view. Then he would look at a single species—deer, horses, asses, and the birds kind by kind—and see that the individuals of each species resembled one another in their outward and inward organs, their perceptions, movements, and inclinations, and he saw no difference among them except in small things compared with what they had in common. He judged that the spirit belonging to that whole species was one thing, differing only in having been divided among many hearts. If all of it that was dispersed in those hearts could be gathered and put into a single vessel, it would all be one thing—like a single water, or a single drink, poured out into many vessels and then gathered together again: in both states, divided and gathered, it is one thing, and multiplicity has merely befallen it in a certain respect.

Then he would call to mind all the species of animals together and consider them, and see that they agree in that they sense, take nourishment, and move by will in whatever direction they please. He already knew that these acts are the ones most proper to the animal spirit, and that the other things in which they differ, beyond this agreement, are not closely proper to it. So it became clear to him through this reflection that the animal spirit belonging to the whole genus of animals is truly one, even though it has slight differences that belong to one species and not another. It is like a single water divided among many vessels, some cooler than others, while in origin it is one; whatever is at a single degree of coolness corresponds to the animal spirit as it is particular to a single species. And just as that water is all one, so the animal spirit is one, even if multiplicity has befallen it in a certain respect.

Then he would turn to the species of plants in all their variety, and see that in each species the individuals resembled one another in branches, leaves, flowers, fruit, and actions. He compared them with animals and knew that they had one thing in common, which was for them what the spirit is for animals, and that by that thing they were one. In the same way he looked at the whole genus of plants and judged it to be one, by what he saw of the agreement of its action: it takes nourishment and grows. Then he would bring together in his mind the genus of animals and the genus of plants, and see that both agree in nourishment and growth, except that animals surpass plants in having sensation, perception, and movement besides—though something like it sometimes appears in plants, such as flowers turning their faces toward the sun, roots moving toward nourishment, and the like.

Then he would look at the bodies that do not sense, take nourishment, or grow—stones, earth, water, air, and flame—and see that they are bodies with a measure of length, breadth, and depth, and that they differ only in that some have color and some have none, some are hot and some cold, and other such differences. He saw that the hot among them becomes cold and the cold becomes hot; he saw water become vapor and vapor become water, and burning things become embers, ash, flame, and smoke; and smoke, if in rising it meets a vault of stone, condenses on it and becomes like the other earthy things. So it became clear to him through this reflection that they are all really one thing, even if multiplicity attaches to them in a certain respect, just as multiplicity attached to animals and plants.

Then he would look at the thing by which plants and animals had become one for him, and see that it is a body like these bodies, with length, breadth, and depth, either hot or cold, like any of these bodies that neither sense nor take nourishment. It differs from them only in its acts, which appear from it through the organs of animals and plants, and in nothing else. Perhaps those acts are not its own by essence, but flow into it from something else; and if they flowed into these other bodies, those bodies would be like it. So he would look at it in itself, stripped of these acts that at first sight seem to issue from it, and he would see that it was nothing but one of these bodies. So it became clear to him through this reflection that all bodies are one thing—the living and the inanimate, the moving and the still—except that some of them appear to have acts performed through organs, and he did not know whether those acts were their own by essence or flowed into them from something else.

Then he considered all bodies, living and inanimate—which to him were at times one thing and at times infinitely many—and saw that each of them is bound to do one of two things. Either it moves upward, like smoke, flame, and air when it is under water; or it moves in the opposite direction, downward, like water, parts of earth, and parts of animals and plants. None of these bodies is ever free of these two movements, and it comes to rest only when something blocks its path, like a falling stone that meets the hard surface of the earth and cannot break through it; if it could, it would evidently not turn aside from its movement. That is why, when you lift it, you find it pressing down on you with its inclination downward, seeking to descend.

When this defeated him, he looked at the bodies that carry the fewest attributes, and saw that they too were in no way free of one of these two attributes, which are called heaviness and lightness. So he considered heaviness and lightness: do they belong to body as body, or to some notion added to corporeality? It became clear to him that they belong to a notion added to corporeality. For if they belonged to body as body, no body would exist without having them both. Yet we find that lightness is not found in the heavy, nor heaviness in the light, and both are undoubtedly bodies. Each of them has a notion of its own, not shared with the other and added to its corporeality, and that notion is what makes each differ from the other; were it not for that, they would be one thing in every respect.

Among the things that dawned on him from this was that the animal spirit, whose dwelling is the heart—the one described earlier—must also have a notion added to its corporeality, which makes it fit to perform the remarkable acts peculiar to it: the various kinds of sensation, the different modes of perception, and the sorts of movement. That notion is its form and its differentia, by which it is set apart from all other bodies, and it is what the theorists call the animal soul. Likewise the thing that in plants takes the place of the innate heat in animals has something peculiar to it, which is its differentia, and this is what the theorists call the vegetative soul.note

By this inquiry he grasped that the reality of the animal spirit, for which he had always longed, was composed of the notion of corporeality and of another notion added to corporeality; and that the notion of corporeality was shared by it and all other bodies, while the other notion joined to it belonged to it alone. Then the notion of corporeality became of little account to him, and he set it aside. His thought fastened on the second notion, the one called the soul, and he longed to know it with certainty. So he kept his thought fixed on it, and he made the starting point of his inquiry an examination of all bodies, not insofar as they are bodies, but insofar as they have forms from which follow properties that distinguish them from one another.

So it became clear to him that, of these sensible bodies in the world of generation and corruption, the reality of some is made up of many notions added to the notion of corporeality, and that of others of fewer. He knew that knowing what has fewer is easier than knowing what has more, so he sought first to grasp the reality of the thing whose reality is made up of the fewest things. He saw that the realities of animals and plants are made up only of many notions, because of the variety of their acts, so he put off reflecting on their forms. Likewise he saw that some parts of the earth are simpler than others, so he turned to the simplest of them he could find. And likewise he saw that water is something of little composition, because few acts issue from its form; and he saw the same of fire and air.

Next he considered this extension in the three dimensions. Is it the very meaning of body, with nothing else besides? Or is it not? He saw that behind this extension there is something else, the thing in which the extension exists. Extension alone cannot subsist by itself, just as the extended thing cannot subsist by itself without extension.

When his reflection reached this point, he had in some measure left the sensible behind and stood on the borders of the intelligible world. There he felt lonely and longed for the world of the senses he was used to. So he drew back a little and set aside body in the absolute, since it is something the senses cannot perceive or grasp. He took up instead the simplest sensible bodies he had observed, the four on which his reflection had already dwelt.

So he knew of necessity that everything that comes into being must have something that brings it into being. By this reflection there was imprinted in his soul a maker of the form, imprinted in general terms and without detail. Then he went through the forms he had come to know before, one by one, and saw that they had all come into being and must all have a maker. Next he looked at what forms are in themselves, and saw that they are nothing more than the body’s disposition for a given action to issue from it. Water, for instance, when heated to excess, becomes disposed and fit to move upward, and that disposition is its form. For here there is only a body; things perceived to come from it after they were not, such as qualities and motions; and a maker who brings them about after they were not. A body’s fitness for some motions and not others is its disposition by its form.

So much had dawned on him about this Maker, in general and without detail, and he now felt an urgent longing to know Him in detail. Since he had not yet left the world of the senses, he began to look for this freely choosing Agent by way of sensible things, not yet knowing whether He was one or many. He examined all the bodies around him, the ones that had always occupied his thought, and saw that they all come into being at one time and perish at another. Where he had not seen a whole perish, he had seen its parts perish. Water and earth, for instance: he saw their parts perish by fire. Air too he saw perish by intense cold, until snow formed from it and then melted into water. So it was with all the other bodies around him: he saw none that was free of coming into being and of needing the freely choosing Agent. So he set them all aside, and his thought moved on to the heavenly bodies.

He knew that the heaven and the stars in it are bodies. They are extended in the three dimensions of length, breadth and depth, and none of them is without this property. Whatever is never without this property is a body, so they are all bodies. Then he wondered whether they extend without end, stretching forever in length, breadth and depth. Or are they finite, bounded by limits where they stop, beyond which there can be no extension at all? He was somewhat perplexed by this. Then, by the strength of his reflection and the sharpness of his mind, he saw that an infinite body is absurd, an impossibility, a notion that cannot be conceived. This judgment was strengthened for him by many arguments that occurred to him in his private thoughts.

His superior natural disposition had awakened to an argument of this kind, and it was now established for him that the body of the heaven is finite. So he wanted to know what shape it has and how it is bounded by the surfaces that limit it. He looked first at the sun, the moon and the other stars, and saw that they all rise in the east and set in the west. Those that passed directly overhead he saw tracing a great circle. Those that inclined from the zenith to the north or the south traced a smaller circle. The farther a star lay from the zenith toward either side, the smaller its circle compared with that of a nearer one. In the end the smallest circles on which the stars move were two: one around the south pole, the circuit of Canopus, and the other around the north pole, the circuit of the two Calves.note

So he arrived at this knowledge. He grasped that the sphere as a whole, with everything it contains, is like a single thing whose parts are joined to one another. All the bodies he had studied earlier, such as earth, water, air, plants and animals, lie within it and not outside it. The whole most resembles an individual animal. The shining stars in it are like the animal’s senses. The various spheres joined to one another are like its limbs. The world of generation and corruption inside it is like the various wastes and fluids in an animal’s belly, in which animals are often generated too, just as they are in the greater world.

It was now clear to him that the whole was in truth like a single individual, standing in need of a freely choosing Agent. Its many parts had become one for him by the same kind of reflection through which the bodies in the world of generation and corruption had become one. So he reflected on the world as a whole. Had it come into being after it was not, emerging into existence after nonexistence? Or had it always existed in the past, never preceded by nonexistence in any way? He was in doubt about this, and neither judgment outweighed the other for him. Whenever he resolved to believe in its eternity, many objections confronted him. There was the impossibility of an existence without end, shown by the same kind of reasoning through which an infinite body had proved impossible for him. He also saw that this existence is never free of things that come into being, so it cannot precede them; and what cannot precede the things that come into being has itself come into being.

When this had worn him out, he began to consider what follows from each of the two beliefs; perhaps what follows from both would be one and the same. He saw that if he believed the world had come into being and emerged into existence after nonexistence, certain things necessarily followed. It could not emerge into existence by itself, so it must have an Agent who brought it into existence. That Agent could not be perceived by any of the senses. If He were perceived by any of the senses, He would be a body. If He were a body, He would be part of the world, He would have come into being, and He would need a maker. If that second maker were also a body, it would need a third, and the third a fourth, and so on in an endless chain—which is absurd.

He also saw what follows if he believed the world to be eternal, not preceded by nonexistence and always as it is. Then its motion is eternal, without end on the side of its beginning, since no rest preceded it from which it could have begun. Every motion must necessarily have a mover. The mover is either a power pervading some body, whether the moving body itself or another body outside it, or a power that neither pervades a body nor is spread through it.

So by this path his reflection arrived where it had arrived by the first, and his doubt about whether the world was eternal or had come into being did him no harm. On either supposition it was established for him that there exists an Agent who is not a body. He is neither joined to a body nor separate from it, neither inside it nor outside it. Joining and separation, inside and outside, are all attributes of bodies, and He is far above them.

The matter of every body needs form, for it subsists only through form and has no reality without it. Form can exist only through this freely choosing Agent. So it became clear to him that all existing things depend on this Agent for their existence, and that none of them subsists except through Him. He is therefore their cause and they are His effects. This holds whether they came into existence after being preceded by nonexistence, or have no beginning in time and were never preceded by nonexistence. In either case they are effects, dependent on the Agent, their existence bound to Him. Were it not for His permanence, they would not endure. Were it not for His existence, they would not exist. Were it not for His eternity, they would not be eternal. And He, in His essence, has no need of them and is free of them.

Once he saw that all existing things are His act, he went through them again from that standpoint, reflecting on the power of their Maker. He marveled at the wonder of His workmanship, the subtlety of His wisdom and the precision of His knowledge. In the least of existing things, let alone the greatest, he found such traces of wisdom and marvels of workmanship that he was filled with wonder. It was confirmed for him that this could issue only from a freely choosing Agent of utmost perfection: “not an atom’s weight escapes Him in the heavens or on earth, nor anything smaller than that or greater.” Then he considered all the kinds of animals, and how He gave each thing its form, then guided it to use it. Had He not guided the animal to use the limbs created for it for the benefits they were meant to serve, it would have got no good from them, and they would have been a burden to it. From this he knew that He is the most generous of the generous and the most merciful of the merciful.note

His knowledge reached this point at the end of five weeks of years from his birth—that is, thirty-five years. What had taken root in his heart concerning this Agent now kept him from thinking of anything but Him, and he lost interest in examining and investigating existing things. His eye could no longer fall on anything without his seeing in it the trace of the workmanship. At once his thought would pass to the Maker, leaving the thing made. So his longing for Him grew intense. His heart was wholly torn away from the lower, sensible world and attached itself to the higher, intelligible world.

He had now gained knowledge of this exalted Being, whose existence is firm and has no cause, while He is the cause of the existence of all things. Next he wanted to know by what he had gained this knowledge, and by what faculty he had perceived this Being. He went through all his senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. He saw that none of them perceives anything but a body or what is in a body. Hearing perceives only sounds, which arise from the waves set up in the air when bodies strike one another. Sight perceives only colors; smell perceives odors; taste perceives flavors; touch perceives hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness. Likewise the faculty of imagination perceives nothing that lacks length, breadth and depth. All these objects of perception are attributes of bodies, and these senses can perceive nothing else. That is because they are faculties spread through bodies and divided when the bodies are divided, so they perceive only a divisible body. When such a faculty is spread through something divisible, whatever it perceives is necessarily divided as it is divided. So every faculty in a body perceives only a body or what is in a body.

Once he knew that his self was not this corporeal thing that he perceived with his senses and that his skin enclosed, his body as a whole became of little account to him. He began to reflect on that noble self by which he had perceived that noble, Necessarily Existent Being. With his self he examined that noble self: could it perish, or be corrupted and pass away, or does it last forever? He saw that corruption and passing away belong only to bodies. A body casts off one form and puts on another, as when water becomes air and air becomes water, or a plant becomes earth or ash and earth becomes a plant. That is what corruption means. But a thing that is not a body, that needs no body in order to subsist, and that is wholly free of everything bodily—its corruption is utterly inconceivable.

Once it was established for him that his true self could not be corrupted, he wanted to know what its state would be when it cast the body aside and left it, for it had already become clear to him that it casts the body aside only when the body is no longer fit to be its instrument. So he examined all the perceptive faculties. He saw that each of them perceives at one time potentially and at another actually. When the eye is shut or turned away from what can be seen, it perceives potentially—and “perceives potentially” means that it does not perceive now but will perceive in the future. When it is open and facing what can be seen, it perceives actually—and “perceives actually” means that it is perceiving now.

It had already become clear to him that the Necessarily Existent Being is qualified by every attribute of perfection, exempt and free from every attribute of deficiency; and that the thing by which one attains the perception of Him is unlike bodies and is not corrupted when they are. From this it became evident to him that when someone with such a self, fitted for such perception, casts off the body at death, his case is one of these. Either, before that, during the time he was governing the body, he never came to know this Necessarily Existent Being, never attained conjunction with Him and never heard of Him. Such a one, on leaving the body, does not attain conjunction with that Being, nor does he suffer at its loss. As for the bodily faculties, they all cease when the body ceases, so he does not long for what those faculties demanded either, nor yearn for it, nor suffer at its loss. This is the state of all the beasts that lack reason, whether they have human form or not.

So it became clear to him that the perfection and pleasure of his self lie only in the vision of that Necessarily Existent Being, constantly, in actual vision forever, without turning away from Him for the blink of an eye—so that death would find him in a state of actual vision and his pleasure would continue with no pain coming between. It was to this that al-Junayd, the master and leader of the Sufis, alluded at his death, when he said to his companions: “This is a moment to be seized. God is greatest!” and entered into prayer. Then Hayy began to consider how he might keep up this actual vision, so that no turning away would occur. He held fast to reflection on that Being every hour. But no sooner did some sensible thing cross his sight, or the cry of some animal pierce his hearing, or some image present itself to him, or a pain strike one of his limbs, or hunger, thirst, cold or heat afflict him, or he need to get up to relieve himself, than his reflection was disrupted and he fell from the state he had been in; and he could return to his state of vision only with effort.note

So he began to survey every species of animal, observing what they did and what they strove for, in the hope of noticing that some of them had become aware of this Being and were striving toward Him, so that he might learn from them what would save him. But he saw that they all strove only to obtain their food and satisfy their appetites—for food, drink, mating, shade and warmth—and toiled at this night and day until their death and the end of their span. He saw none of them turn from this course or strive for anything else at any time. From this it was plain to him that they had not become aware of that Being, nor longed for Him, nor come to know Him in any way, and that all of them were headed for nonexistence, or for a state like nonexistence.

After that he looked at the stars and the spheres. He saw that their motions were all ordered, running in regular sequence, and that they were transparent and luminous, far from admitting change or corruption. So he strongly conjectured that they have essences besides their bodies, which know that Necessarily Existent Being, and that these knowing essences are not bodies, nor imprinted in bodies—like his own knowing self.

Then he wondered: why, among all the species of animal, had he been singled out for this self, by which he resembled the heavenly bodies? From the elements and their transformation into one another, it had earlier become clear to him that nothing on the face of the earth keeps its form; generation and corruption succeed each other in it forever. Most of these bodies are mixed, compounded of contrary things, and that is why they end in corruption. None of them is pure; and whatever comes close to being pure and unmixed, without admixture, is very far from corruption, like the substance of gold and of ruby. The heavenly bodies, by contrast, are simple and pure; that is why they are far from corruption, and forms do not succeed one another in them.

For when one of these compounds is dominated by the nature of a single element, that element, by its strength in it, overpowers the natures of the other elements and cancels their powers, and the compound then counts as the dominant element. So it merits only a little life, just as that element merits only a little, feeble life. But when a compound is not dominated by the nature of any one element, the elements in it are balanced and equal in strength. None cancels the power of another more than that other cancels its own; rather, they act on one another equally, so that the action of no element is more manifest and none gains mastery over the compound. It is then far from resembling any one of the elements; it is as though its form had no contrary, and so it becomes fit for life.

Now the animal spirit, whose dwelling is the heart, is highly balanced: it is finer than earth and water and coarser than fire and air. So it stands as a mean and is not clearly contrary to any of the elements, and that is what disposed it for the form of animality. He saw, then, that it must follow that the most balanced of these animal spirits would be disposed for the most perfect life possible in the world of generation and corruption; that such a spirit would come close to being said to have no contrary to its form, and in this would resemble those heavenly bodies whose forms have no contrary. The spirit of that animal, being truly a mean between the elements, would move neither absolutely upward nor downward. Indeed, if it could be placed midway between the center and the highest point that fire reaches upward, without suffering corruption, it would stay there, seeking neither to rise nor to fall. If it moved from place to place, it would move around the center, as the heavenly bodies move; if it moved where it stood, it would turn upon itself; and it would be spherical in shape, for nothing else is possible. So it closely resembles the heavenly bodies.

He had considered the conditions of the animals and seen nothing in them to suggest that any had become aware of the Necessarily Existent Being, while he knew of his own self that it had become aware of Him. So he concluded with certainty that he was the animal with the balanced spirit, resembling all the heavenly bodies. It became clear to him that he was a species distinct from all other species of animal, created for another end and prepared for a great matter for which no other species of animal had been prepared. It was honor enough that the lower of his two parts, the bodily, should be the thing most like the heavenly substances, which lie outside the world of generation and corruption and are free from the accidents of deficiency, transformation and change.

When it had become clear to him in what respect he alone among all kinds of animal resembled the heavenly bodies, he saw that it was his duty to take them as his model, to emulate their actions and to imitate them as far as he could. He saw likewise that by his nobler part, by which he had known the Necessarily Existent Being, he bore some likeness to Him, inasmuch as that part is free of the attributes of bodies, just as the Necessarily Existent is free of them. So he saw that he must also strive to acquire His attributes for himself in whatever way he could: to take on His character, to follow His actions, to labor at carrying out His will, to surrender all to Him, and to accept all His decrees wholeheartedly, outwardly and inwardly—so that he would rejoice in them even when they brought pain or harm to his body, or destroyed it altogether.

So the actions he had to perform came, in his view, to aim at three ends: an action by which he imitates the animals that lack reason; an action by which he imitates the heavenly bodies; and an action by which he imitates the Necessarily Existent Being. The first imitation is required of him insofar as he has a dark body, with divided limbs, different faculties and manifold impulses. The second is required of him insofar as he has the animal spirit, whose dwelling is the heart and which is the source of the rest of the body and of the faculties in it. The third is required of him insofar as he is himself—that is, insofar as he is the self by which he knew that Necessarily Existent Being. He had already understood that his happiness, and his escape from misery, lay only in constant vision of this Necessarily Existent Being, so that he would never turn away from Him for the blink of an eye.

Then he considered how he might achieve this constancy, and his reflection showed him that he must labor at these three kinds of imitation. The first imitation brings him none of this vision. On the contrary, it diverts him from it and stands in its way, since it is a dealing with sensible things, and all sensible things are veils that come between him and that vision. This imitation is needed only to preserve the animal spirit, through which the second imitation, of the heavenly bodies, is achieved. Necessity calls for it on that account, even though it is not free of that harm. The second imitation brings him a great share of constant vision, but a vision mixed with some admixture: for whoever beholds constantly in that manner is, along with that vision, aware of his own self and turns his attention to it, as will become clear later.

So it became clear to him that his ultimate goal was this third imitation; that he could attain it only after long training and labor in the second; and that he could sustain that long labor only by means of the first. He knew that the first imitation, though a hindrance in itself, is a help incidentally, not essentially—and in any case necessary. So he bound himself to allow himself no share of this first imitation beyond what necessity required: the bare sufficiency without which the animal spirit cannot survive. He found that necessity, for the survival of this spirit, called for two things. One supplies it from within and replaces what it has lost: this is food. The other protects it from without and wards off every kind of harm—cold and heat, rain, the scorching sun, harmful animals and the like.

First he considered the kinds of thing he could eat, and found them to be of three sorts. There are plants not yet fully ripe, that have not reached their full completion: the various fresh greens that can serve as food. There are the fruits of plants that have reached their completion and put forth their seed, so that another of their kind may grow from it and their kind be preserved: the various fruits, fresh and dried. And there are animals of the kinds that are eaten, whether of land or sea. He was already certain that all these kinds were the work of that Necessarily Existent Being, nearness to whom, and the effort to resemble Him, had proved to be his happiness. Eating them inevitably cuts them off from their perfection and comes between them and the end intended for them. That would be an interference with the work of the Agent, and such interference runs counter to the nearness to Him and resemblance to Him that he was seeking.

As for quantity, he decided it should be just enough to stop the gap of hunger and no more. As for the interval between one return and the next, he decided that once he had taken the food he needed, he would rest content with it and seek nothing more until he felt a weakness that kept him from some of the actions required of him in the second imitation, which will be described below. As for what necessity required, for the survival of the animal spirit, to protect it from without, that was an easy matter for him. He was clothed in skins and had a dwelling that sheltered him from whatever came at him from outside. He was content with that and saw no need to busy himself with it; and in his eating he kept to the rules he had laid down for himself, which have been set out above.

Then he took up the second action: imitating the heavenly bodies, following their example, taking on their qualities and tracing their attributes. He found that these fell into three kinds. The first kind: their attributes in relation to the world of generation and corruption beneath them—what they give it: heating, essentially, and cooling, incidentally; illumination; rarefying and condensing; and all the other effects they produce in it, by which it is made ready for spiritual forms to flow upon it from the Necessarily Existent Agent. The second kind: their attributes in themselves, such as being transparent, luminous and pure, free of all turbidity and every kind of defilement, and moving in circles, some about their own center and some about the center of another. The third kind: their attributes in relation to the Necessarily Existent Being, such as beholding Him in constant vision and never turning away from Him, longing for Him, acting by His decree, being made to serve the fulfillment of His will, and moving only by His wish and within His grasp.

As for the first kind, his imitation of them in it was this. He bound himself never to see any animal or plant in need, afflicted, harmed or hindered, when he was able to relieve it, without relieving it. So whenever his eye fell on a plant that something had screened from the sun, or that another plant had wound itself around and was harming, or that was so parched it was close to ruin, he removed the screen if it was the kind of thing that could be removed. He separated it from what was harming it with a barrier that would not hurt the harmer, and he saw to its watering as far as he could. Whenever his eye fell on an animal that a beast of prey had run down, or that something had caught hold of, or that had thorns stuck in it, or that had something hurtful fallen into its eyes or ears, or that was suffering thirst or hunger, he took it upon himself to remove all of that from it as best he could, and he fed it and gave it water.

As for the second kind, his imitation of them in it was this. He bound himself to constant purity. He removed dirt and filth from his body, washed with water most of the time, and cleaned his nails, his teeth and the hidden folds of his body. He perfumed them with whatever fragrant plants and aromatic resins he could find, and he kept his clothing clean and scented, until his whole person shone with beauty and loveliness, cleanness and fragrance. Along with this he took up the various kinds of circular motion. At times he would walk around the island, circling its shore and roaming its outer reaches. At times he would circle his house, or some hillock, a set number of rounds, either walking or at a trot. And at times he would spin around on himself until he lost consciousness.

As for the third kind, his imitation of them in it was this. He would keep his thought fixed on that Necessarily Existent Being. Then he would cut his ties to sensible things, close his eyes, stop his ears, and turn away with all his strength from following the imagination, striving with all his power to think of nothing but Him and to associate no one with Him. To help himself in this he would spin around on himself and drive himself on in it. When he spun hard, all sensible things vanished from him. The imagination weakened, along with all the other faculties that need bodily organs, and the activity of his essence, which is free of body, grew strong. At certain times his thought would be cleared of all admixture, and through it he would see the Necessarily Existent Being. Then the bodily faculties would come back at him, spoil his state and throw him back down to the lowest of the low, and he would start all over again. If weakness overtook him and cut him off from his aim, he would take some food under the conditions already described, and then go back to his business of imitating the heavenly bodies in the three ways described.note

Then he began to seek the third imitation and to strive to attain it, and so he reflected on the attributes of the Necessarily Existent Being. During his theoretical study, before he began on practice, it had become clear to him that these are of two kinds. Some are positive attributes, such as knowledge, power and wisdom. Others are negative attributes, such as His transcendence above bodily things, what attaches to them, and whatever is connected with them, however remotely. He had also seen that the positive attributes must be held to this same transcendence, so that there is nothing in them of the attributes of bodies, among which is multiplicity. His essence, then, is not made multiple by these positive attributes. Rather, they all come back to a single meaning, which is the reality of His essence.

So he began to seek how to imitate Him in each of these two kinds. As for the positive attributes, he knew that they all come back to the reality of His essence and that there is no multiplicity in them in any way, since multiplicity is an attribute of bodies. He also knew that His knowledge of His essence is not a meaning added to His essence: His essence is His knowledge of His essence, and His knowledge of His essence is His essence. So it became clear to him that if he himself could know His essence, the knowledge by which he knew His essence would not be a meaning added to His essence; it would be He. He concluded that to imitate Him in the positive attributes is simply to know Him, without associating with Him anything of the attributes of bodies, and he set himself to this. As for the negative attributes, they all come back to transcendence above corporeality, so he began to strip the attributes of corporeality from his own essence.

So do not set your heart on a description of something that has not occurred to the heart of man. Many things that do occur to human hearts are hard to describe. How much more so something that cannot possibly occur to the heart, that is neither of its world nor of its level? By “heart” I do not mean the bodily heart, nor the spirit in its cavity, but the form of that spirit, which spreads with its faculties through the human body. Each of these three is called “heart,” but there is no way for that thing to occur to any of the three, and only what has occurred to them can be expressed. Whoever tries to express that state attempts the impossible. He is like someone who wants to taste colors as colors and asks that black be sweet or sour.

When he had passed into annihilation, lost to his own essence and to all essences, and saw nothing in existence but the One, the Living, the Self-Subsisting, and had seen what he saw, he returned to regarding other things on coming out of that state, which resembles intoxication. Then it occurred to him that he had no essence by which he differed from the essence of the Truth Most High, and that the reality of his essence was the essence of the Truth. The thing he had at first supposed to be his essence, distinct from the essence of the Truth, was in reality nothing. There was nothing there but the essence of the Truth. It was like the light of the sun falling on dense bodies: you see it appear in them, and though it is attributed to the body in which it appears, in reality it is nothing but the light of the sun. If that body passes away, its light passes away, while the light of the sun remains as it was. It was not diminished when the body was present, nor increased when the body was gone. Whenever a body comes into being that is fit to receive that light, it receives it, and when the body ceases to exist, that reception ceases to exist and has no meaning.

This specious notion was close to taking root in his soul, had God not reached him with His mercy and rescued him with His guidance. He came to know that the notion had arisen in him only from the remnants of the darkness of bodies and the murk of sensible things. For many and few, one and oneness, plurality, gathering and separation are all attributes of bodies. As for those separate essences that know the essence of the Truth, mighty and majestic is He, they are free of matter, and so one must not say that they are many, or that they are one. Multiplicity comes only from the otherness of essences from one another, and unity too comes only through connection, and none of this can be understood except in composite meanings bound up with matter. Yet expression grows very narrow at this point. If you speak of those separate essences in the plural, as we have just done, it suggests multiplicity in them, though they are free of multiplicity. If you speak of them in the singular, it suggests union, which is impossible for them.

If you are one of those content with this kind of hinting and pointing at what is in the divine world, and you do not load our words with the meanings that custom usually loads them with, we will tell you something more of what Hayy ibn Yaqzan saw in the station of the truthful, mentioned above. So we say:

Then he saw that he himself had a separate essence. If the essence of the seventy thousand faces could be divided into parts, we would say that his was a part of it. Were it not that this essence came into being after it had not been, we would say that it was that essence itself. And were it not that it was bound to his body when the body came into being, we would say that it had not come into being at all. At this rank he saw essences like his own. Some belonged to bodies that had once existed and then faded away, and others to bodies that still existed alongside him. They were so many as to be without limit, if they may be called many; or they were all united, if they may be called one. In his own essence and in the essences of his rank he saw beauty and splendor, and delight without end, such as no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has occurred to the heart of man. Those who describe cannot describe it, and none understand it but those who have arrived and know.

You may say: “From your account of this vision it appears that if the separate essences belong to a body whose existence is everlasting and incorruptible, like the spheres, then they are everlasting. If they belong to a body that comes to corruption, like the rational animal, then they too are corrupted, fade away and dissolve. That is how you illustrated it with the reflecting mirrors, since the image endures only as long as the mirror endures, and when the mirror is corrupted, the image is certainly corrupted and fades away.” To this I say: How quickly you have forgotten the pact and slipped your bond!

The rest of his story I will relate to you, God Most High willing. When he returned to the sensible world, after roaming where he had roamed, he grew weary of the burdens of life, and his longing for the ultimate life grew strong. So he began to seek a return to that station in the same way he had sought it at first. He reached it with less effort than he had needed the first time, and the second time he stayed in it longer than the first. Then he returned to the world of sense. After that he strove to reach his station again, and it was easier for him than the first and second times, and his stay in it was longer.

They relate that to an island near the one on which Hayy ibn Yaqzan was born (according to one of the two differing accounts of his origin) there came one of the true religions, received from one of the earlier prophets (God’s blessings be upon them). It was a religion that represented all true realities by means of symbols, which give images of those things and fix their outlines in people’s souls, as is customary in addressing the general public. That religion went on spreading on that island, growing strong and prevailing, until the island’s king took it up and made the people keep to it. Two young men of virtue and goodwill had grown up on that island, one called Asal and the other Salaman. They received that religion and accepted it in the best way. They bound themselves to keep all its laws and to persevere in its practices, and they became companions in this.

Asal had heard of the island where, as was related, Hayy ibn Yaqzan came into being. He knew of its fertility, its amenities and its temperate air, and that whoever sought solitude could find it there. So he resolved to travel there and withdraw from people for the rest of his life. He gathered what wealth he had, used part of it to hire a ship to carry him to that island, and gave away the rest to the poor. Then he bade farewell to his friend Salaman and took to the sea. The sailors carried him to the island, set him down on its shore and left him. So Asal remained on that island worshipping God, mighty and majestic is He, magnifying Him and hallowing Him, and meditating on His most beautiful names and His exalted attributes. His thought was never broken and his reflection never clouded. When he needed food, he took enough of the island’s fruits and game to still his hunger.

During that time Hayy ibn Yaqzan was deeply absorbed in his noble stations. He left his cave only once a week, to take whatever food came to hand. That is why Asal did not come upon him at first. Asal would wander the reaches of the island and roam its regions, seeing no human being and finding no human trace. This only increased his contentment and set his soul at ease, since he had resolved to go to the utmost in seeking withdrawal and solitude. Then on one of those occasions Hayy ibn Yaqzan happened to come out in search of food just as Asal had come to that spot, and each caught sight of the other.

Then Asal began to pray, recite, supplicate, weep, plead humbly and fall into ecstatic transport, until this absorbed him from everything else. Hayy ibn Yaqzan began to draw near him little by little, without Asal noticing, until he was close enough to hear his recitation and his glorification of God and to see his humility and his weeping. He heard a beautiful voice and ordered sounds unlike anything he had known from any kind of animal. He looked at his shape and his features and saw that he had a form like his own. And it became clear to him that the cloak Asal wore was not a natural skin but a garment made by hand, like his own clothing.

Long before, out of his love for the science of taʾwīl, Asal had learned most languages and become skilled in them. So he began to speak to Hayy ibn Yaqzan and question him about himself in every language he knew, trying to make himself understood, but he could not. All the while Hayy ibn Yaqzan marveled at what he heard without knowing what it was; yet he showed him cheerfulness and welcome. Each of them found the other strange. Asal had some provisions left that he had brought with him from the inhabited island. He offered them to Hayy ibn Yaqzan, who did not know what they were, never having seen such a thing before. Asal ate some and motioned to him to eat. Hayy ibn Yaqzan thought of the conditions he had bound himself to in taking food. He did not know the origin of the thing set before him, nor whether he was permitted to eat it or not, so he refused to eat.

Then Asal began to ask him about himself and how he had come to that island. Hayy ibn Yaqzan told him that he knew nothing of his own beginning, nor of any father or mother beyond the doe that had raised him. He described his whole story, and how he had risen in knowledge until he reached the degree of arrival.

Hayy ibn Yaqzan in turn asked him to explain his own affairs and circumstances. So Asal described his island and the people in it: how they had lived before the religion reached them and how they lived now that it had. He described everything the Law contained in describing the divine world: the Garden and the Fire, the resurrection and the raising up, the gathering and the reckoning, the Balance and the Bridge. Hayy ibn Yaqzan understood all of it and found nothing in it at odds with what he had witnessed in his noble station. So he knew that the one who had described these things and brought them was right in his description and truthful in his words, a messenger from his Lord; and he believed in him, affirmed his truth and bore witness to his mission. Then he began to ask him about the duties this messenger had brought and the acts of worship he had laid down. Asal described prayer, alms, fasting, pilgrimage and similar outward practices. Hayy accepted them, took them on and bound himself to perform them, in obedience to a command whose speaker he knew for certain to be truthful.note

Yet two things remained in his mind that puzzled him, for he could not see the wisdom in them. The first: why had this messenger used symbols for people in most of what he described of the divine world, and refrained from open unveiling? For people had fallen into the grave error of anthropomorphism and believed things of the essence of the Truth from which He is transcendent and free—and likewise in the matter of reward and punishment. The second: why had he confined himself to these duties and set acts of worship, and permitted the acquisition of wealth and indulgence in food, so that people were left free to busy themselves with vanities and turn away from the Truth? His own view was that no one should take anything but what would keep him alive. Wealth meant nothing to him. He looked at the rulings of the Law concerning property—alms and its many branches, sales, usury, the fixed penalties and punishments—and found it all strange, a needless elaboration. He would say: if people understood the matter as it truly is, they would turn from these vanities and toward the Truth, and would have no need of any of this. No one would own property of his own, to be asked for its alms, or for whose theft hands would be cut off, or for whose open seizure lives would be forfeit.

His compassion for people grew strong, and he hoped that their salvation might come about through him. So he formed the intention of going to them, making the truth plain before them and explaining it to them. He discussed this with his friend Asal and asked him whether there was any way for him to reach them. Asal told him how deficient their natures were and how they turned away from God’s command. But Hayy could not grasp this, and his heart remained attached to what he had hoped for. Asal, for his part, hoped that God might guide through Hayy a group of his acquaintances, aspirants who were closer to deliverance than the rest; so he supported his plan. They decided to keep to the seashore and not leave it by night or by day, in case God might open a way for them across the sea. They did so, and implored God Most High in prayer to grant them right guidance in their affair.

So Hayy ibn Yaqzan began to teach them and to spread among them the secrets of wisdom. But no sooner had he risen a little above the outward sense and begun to describe things whose contrary had already taken hold of their understanding than they began to shrink from him. Their souls recoiled from what he brought, and they resented it in their hearts, though to his face they showed approval, out of courtesy to a stranger among them and regard for the rights of their friend Asal. Hayy ibn Yaqzan kept trying to win them over night and day, explaining the truth to them in private and in public; but this only increased their aversion and recoil. They loved the good and desired the truth; yet because of the deficiency of their natures they did not seek the truth by its proper path, did not take it in the way that leads to its realization, and did not look for it at its door. Indeed, they did not want to know it by the way of those who possess it. So he despaired of reforming them, and lost all hope of their betterment, so little were they receptive.

After that he surveyed the classes of people and saw that “each party rejoices in what it has.” They had “taken their own desire for their god,” and their appetites were what they worshipped. They wore themselves out gathering the debris of this world: “rivalry in increase distracted them until they visited the graves.” Admonition did not avail them, a good word had no effect on them, and argument only made them more obstinate. As for wisdom, they had no way to it and no share in it. Ignorance had overwhelmed them, and “what they used to earn had rusted over their hearts”: “God has sealed their hearts and their hearing, and over their eyes is a covering, and theirs is a mighty punishment.”note

This, then—may God strengthen us and you with a spirit from Him—is the story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, Asal and Salaman. It contains a measure of discourse not found in any book nor heard in ordinary speech. It belongs to the hidden knowledge that only those who know God accept, and of which only those deluded about God are ignorant.

I ask my brothers who come upon these words to accept my excuse where I have been lax in explaining and lenient in establishing. I did so only because I had climbed heights from which the eye slips when it looks, and I wanted to bring the discourse on them within reach, so as to encourage and arouse longing to enter upon the path. I ask God for pardon and forgiveness, and that He lead us to the clear waters of knowledge of Him; truly He is bountiful and generous. Peace be upon you, my brother, whose request it is my duty to fulfill, and the mercy of God and His blessings.