Treasures

Described variously on planet earth across time and space

Besides the self-affirming but nontransferable proof of direct experience, my strongest confirmations of Divine Reality are the descriptions of its aspects from all times and cultures, often radically different in their perception and framing but obviously referring to the same things.

Exalted Sufi mystic Ibn al-Arabi writes, “Admit me, O You who are the First and Last, to the hidden domain of the unknowable, secret and encompassing treasure of As Allah wills. There is no power [or strength] save in Allah.”¹ We’ll take this investigation in two parts: first the treasures, then the Qur’anic quote in italics, together with one more Qur’anic quote.

They’re not usually earthly treasures—there’s one exception below—but the following writings symbolize them variously as art objects, robes of state, or emblems of office. From The Road I Know, by Stewart Edward White:

“He is showing me carefully guarded treasures. I know they are treasures, but I don’t know what to value them with. I am to select from them as the natural appeal is to me. And then I am to wear them, because of the dignity and responsibility they imply, as a treasure bearer should. It is like an emblem of office laid on me, and I am trying to conduct myself as worthy.

“These emblems now being shown to me are beautiful things, so marvelous in design and workmanship, so distinguished in prerogative. They mark the rank that serves . . . I am not at all self-conscious about these things I wear, because mockers do not seem to notice them—at least they do not believe they are real . . . I could not pick out much of that treasure: I did not dare.

“I took a beautiful golden disc thing to wear over my heart to keep it from hardening, to keep it tender in spite of contacts with the world. I wanted that very, very much. And then there was a banner I wanted to hold up over the crowd where all people could see it; but I did not take that because my hands would not be free, and I must have free hands.

The thing I did take was a kind of cloak. It had only a back to it. Somehow it keeps me going forward. I couldn’t turn around and go back in it.

“There are so many things in that treasure heap. I just selected the things that would give me strength. There is a mass of beauty in them, so curiously wrought with every human perception and precious instinct.

There is a long golden chain I would like to have had. It was a chain of concentration that does not bind, does not restrain you from expanding; but I did not take it. I wanted it, too; but I did not think I was fit to wear it yet. It is a great pity, because everybody who knows anything will notice that something is lacking. I’ll go back some day and get it.”²

In That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis describes an upper room called the Wardrobe. Nearing the pinnacle of their spiritual battle, four female characters receive glorious “robes of state” which illuminate and confirm their inner natures, chosen for each not by themselves but by their companions.

“If you had glanced in you would have thought for one moment that they were not in a room at all but in some kind of forest — a tropical forest glowing with bright colours.” They’re described as “the treasures of Logres³, perhaps from beyond the moon or before the flood.” The clothing reveals the inner nature, the theme, of each person.

First chosen is “a vividly green mantle over which thin twists and spirals of gold played in a festive pattern. It was not in the least transparent, yet all sorts of lights and shades dwelled in its tippling folds, and it flowed through Camilla’s hands like a waterfall . . .

The result? “The commonplace had not exactly gone from her form and face: the robe had taken it up, as a great composer takes up a folk-tune and tosses it like a ball through his symphony and makes of it a marvel, yet leaves it still itself. A ‘pert fairy’ or ‘dapper elf,’ a small though perfect sprightliness, stood before them: but still recognizably Ivy Maggs.”

Next chosen, for Camilla herself, is “a long slender thing which looked like steel in colour, though it was soft as foam to the touch. It wrapped itself close about her loins and flowed out in a glancing train at her heels. ‘Like a mermaid,’ thought Jane and then,‘ Like a Valkyrie.’” This garb shows her inner nature as a spiritual warrior.

“‘This wouldn’t do at all,’ said Camilla, walking down the long row of hanging splendours, herself like a meteor as she passed against that background of purple and gold and scarlet and soft snow and elusive opal, of fur, silk, velvet, taffeta, and brocade.”

They’re seeking something for Mrs. Dimble, an academic wife and childless mother-figure to the students. “Something quiet,” she says. “I’m an old woman and don’t want to be ridiculous.” But she gets the exact opposite. Like Jane, the protagonist who thinks her own costume is “a little fussy,” she receives what her companions choose, not what she’d have chosen for herself.

“It was of that almost tyrannous flame colour which Jane had seen in her vision down in the lodge, but diffidently cut, with fur about the great copper brooch that clasped the throat, with long sleeves and hangings from them. And there went with it a many-cornered cap.” When Mrs. Dimble asks, "Am I awful?” Jane tells her, “Aweful, in the old sense, is just what you do look.”⁴

In the introduction to Atom from the Sun of Knowledge, “Four Steps and Seven Levels,” Shaykh Nur al-Jerrahi describes and interprets a young girl’s revelatory dream. “When Rahima was taken to the fourth floor, the fourth level of consciousness, she was amazed to find a brilliant palace—marble floors, high ceilings, large gilded mirrors, beautiful antique furniture, precious ancient vases, and other works of art.

At this point in the recounting of the dream, I began to realize that certain mysteries of the spiritual path, which remained vague to me, were about to be displayed in simple, dramatic imagery. All who were present entered a mild state of ecstasy, a gift of the fourth level.”⁵

I said above that these spiritual treasures do not usually take an earthly form. My miraculously appearing brass bed was an exception. The bed I was sleeping in was a huge, blocky nightmare with all the charm of a mausoleum.

I’d hated it on sight, but furniture shopping in 2012 was a revelation of ugliness. There were no better choices. Before we moved I’d had a brass bed for years and loved it, and at some point I resolved to find another one.

This turned out to be virtually impossible. The old-fashioned ones were nowhere to be found and the new ones were spindly and weird, not at all the same. I’d reached the point where I was considering buying one from India—can you imagine the shipping hassles?

Then I attended one of Shaykha Fariha al-Jerrahi’s Divine Names sessions on Zoom. The Name that day was al-Ghani, “the source of all being and the source of all ecstasy. It is an indescribably rich container, a treasure house of all existence.”⁶

A day or two later I found, with ease, the perfect, old-fashioned brass bed offered by a man whose grown daughter no longer needed it. The cost was about $125 and the drive took 45 minutes.

Again in the Dawr al-’Ala, Ibn al-Arabi writes, “Oh, Allah! You who are Ever-Living, Self-Subsisting! In You I establish my protection: shelter me with the shielding, protective sufficiency and safeguarding, the reality and proof, the stronghold and security of In the Name of Allah.”

How do we square the circle of these Qur’anic and multi-religious promises, of these treasures and assurances, with the agony we see all around us in these devastating times? Oddly, the quote below addresses this question for me.

“THE OLD WORLD IS DYING, AND THE NEW WORLD STRUGGLES TO BE BORN:
NOW IS THE TIME OF MONSTERS.” — Antonio Gramsci

Right now, in a time of fires, floods and genocide, right after a (to many) frightening U.S. election, we’re certainly seeing monsters everywhere. So this quote might seem an odd place to find comfort, but I do. Because inshallah, God willing, these may be the birth pangs of a new and better world. After the travails and sufferings. After the time of monsters.

So, those are the treasures, a few examples. Now back to the first Qur’anic quote. Ma sha Allah. La hawla wa la quwatta illa billah. “There is no power and no strength except with Allah.” The word here often translated as strength is interesting, because it means the power to do, the power to accomplish.

While writing this, I received a final gift, one of the small spiritual gifts called karama. Making a quick translation check, I found this. “La Hawla wa la Quwwata Illa Billah, which means ‘There is no power nor strength except with Allah’. It is one of the most beloved and closest speeches to Allah, and it is a treasure from the treasures of Paradise.” I rest my case.

1. Muhyi-ad-Din Ibn al-’Arabi, The Prayer for Spiritual Elevation and Protection, translated by Suha Taji-Farouki.

2. Stewart Edward White, The Road I Know. This follows The Betty Book (1937), Across the Unknown (1939), an The Unobstructed Universe (1942). The speaker is his wife, Betty.

3. The domain of King Arthur

4. C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, Chapter 17. Book three of The Perelandra Trilogy, all of which are well worth reading.

5. Shaykh Nur, a.k.a. Lex Hixon, was a spiritual guide and lineage holder in Islamic Sufism and Zen Buddhism, author of eight books on the mysticism of many faiths, and my own initiator and beloved guide. His 30-year urs (wedding day with the Beloved, ‘death’) is marked this weekend by the opening of the Lex Hixon Center for Contemplative Studies (Lex Nur Hixon y apertura del Centro de Estudios Contemplativos).

6. Meyer, Hyde, Muqaddam & Kahn, Physicians of the Heart: A Sufi View of the Ninety-Nine Names of Allah, p. 71