Al-Hallaj Quotes on Knowledge
Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (c. 858–922), the Persian Sufi whose celebrated ecstatic utterance "Anā al-Ḥaqq" ("I am the Real") led to his execution at Baghdad in 922, gave early Islamic mysticism its principal martyr and one of its most discussed epistemological figures. The framework treats the highest religious knowledge as the experiential annihilation of the egoic self in the divine reality on whose name the mystical aspirant has fixed attention, with the consequent first-person utterance not a metaphysical thesis about the identity of creature and Creator but the direct expression of the contemplative state itself. The reception of al-Ḥallāj across the subsequent Sufi tradition — through ʿAṭṭār, Rūmī, and Ibn ʿArabī — is itself a major thread of Islamic philosophical theology.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Al-Hallaj:
“I have seen my Lord with the eye of my heart.”
-
“I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart . He said, "Who are you?" I said, " I am You. " You are He Who fills all place But place does not know where You are. In my subsistence is my annihilation; In my annihilation, I remain You.”
Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (1978) by Steven T. Katz, p. 92; four centuries later the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart would make a very similar assertion: "The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight , and one knowledge , and one love . | Variant translations: | I saw my Lord with the eye of the heart. I asked: Who art T -
“Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (1978) by Steven T. Katz, p. 92; four centuries later the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart would make a very similar assertion: "The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight , and one knowledge , and one love .”
I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart . He said, "Who are you?" I said, " I am You. " You are He Who fills all place But place does not know where You are. In my subsistence is my annihilation; In my annihilation, I remain You. -
“I saw my Lord with the Eye of my heart, And I said: Truly there is no doubt that it is You. It is You that I see in everything; And I do not see You through anything (but You) . As quoted in "Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj" at Sidi Muhammad Press”
I saw my Lord with the eye of my heart . He said, "Who are you?" I said, " I am You. " You are He Who fills all place But place does not know where You are. In my subsistence is my annihilation; In my annihilation, I remain You.