Intoxication
As quoted in Kashaf-al-Mahjub, “Intoxication” and “rapture” are terms used by spiritualists to denote the rapture of Love for God, while “sobriety” expresses the attainment of what is desired – the union (p.185). Intoxication reflects the excess of longing and extremity of Love, while sobriety indicates the soundness of one’s state of spiritual relationship with God (p189).
Sobriety and Intoxication are two attributes of Man, and man is veiled from his Lord until his attributes are annihilated.
Intoxication is of two kinds:
1. With the wine of affection (mawaddat) aroused by realizing the “benefit,” object-oriented, tends to subside.
2. With the cup of Love (mahabbat) recognition in awe of the “benefactor,” it’s a cognitive state that subsists.
Sobriety is also of two kinds:
1. Sobriety in heedlessness (ghaflat) is the greatest of veils. Intoxication in one’s own thoughts & desires
2. Sobriety in Love (mahabbat) is the greatest of revelations. Realization of The Truth – Intoxication.
Hazrat Ali Hujwary has declared, “Perfection of the state of the intoxicated man is sobriety” (p.185). He has argued, Intoxication is to fancy one’s self annihilated while the attributes subsist, and this is a veil. On the other hand, sobriety is the vision of subsistence while the attributes are annihilated; this is actual revelation.” (p.187)
Mansur al- Hallaj the classic case
A person overcome with rapture (ghalabat) may not have the power to express himself correctly; besides, the meaning of the expression may be difficult to comprehend, so people mistake the speaker/writer’s intention and repudiate, not his real sense but a notion which they have formed for themselves. (P.152) They may be rejected vehemently by the audience as lunatics or heretics.
Mansur al-Hallaj had a strong ecstasy and a lofty spirit. His high intellect would say things incomprehensible to the common, and his vagrant soul would take him from one door to another in an insatiable quest for learning. He had been unable to satisfy his own self or the common or intellectuals of his time, and his end was bitter. He is an icon of an intoxicated votary of Sufism. He was all but Intoxicated, spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally. Shibli has said, “Hallaj and I are of one belief, but my madness saved me, while his intelligence destroyed him.” (P.151)
Abu Yazid (ra) and his followers have preferred Intoxication (sukr) to sobriety. They have argued that sobriety involves equilibrium and fixation on certain human attributes, and human attributes are the greatest veils between man and God.
According to him, “intoxication involves the destruction of human attributes, like foresight and choice, and the annihilation of a man’s self-control in God, so that only those faculties survive in him that does not belong to the human genus, and they are the most complete and perfect.” (p. 185)
It is the promotion of man’s passivity and killing his initiative, completely disbanding human reason and logic.
Intoxication is evil
Junayd (ra) and his followers prefer sobriety to Intoxication. They firmly held the view that “intoxication is evil.” Intoxication involves the disturbance of one’s normal state and loss of sanity and self-control. Whether one seeks subsistence or annihilation, the verification principle cannot be reached unless one is sane. Intoxication blinds and the phenomenon takes super hold. It means that people begin to appreciate the feelings and mental state produced by Intoxication, and the original goal of union with The Truth is compromised. Being overpowered by such psychological and physical states is also a phenomenon that should be controlled.
Real Intoxication is not acquired.
Abu Yazid Bastami would argue that any amount of human effort may go in vain, unable to acquire rapturous longing for God and the Intoxication of Love. It is the gift God Himself bestows on the chosen few (P. 184).
This state is not permanent, and some people, in the urgency of experiencing it again and again, may start using hallucinogens. Drinking wine is also considered a major instrument of getting intoxicated. Wrongly so because it creates human dependence and several other harmful consequences. Thus, drinking to a level of Intoxication does not serve any real purpose. Yahya b. Mu’ad, had warned Abu Yazid in one of his writings to him. “The man of sobriety is he who is unable to drink even one drop, and the man of intoxication is he who drinks all and still desires more.” (p.187) Some believe that listening to certain Music (Sema) and dancing (whirling) may help to acquire such a state. They think that to awaken an inner self, one has to put the wakened self (five senses: hawwas-e-khamsa) to sleep. Here, one hazard lies: a state becomes the goal rather than a means to some ulterior end – spiritual transformation.
Intoxication and sobriety are both the same
Sobriety and Intoxication resemble each other when the end is reached, the vision of The True One. It is the path where true mystics tread and become baseless, a source of difference (ikhtilaf) on the way and an intruder (tufayli) when the Sultan of Truth manifests its beauty. Because both boundaries are joined, one leads to another, and the painful feeling of separation persists through a relative existence. In union, all separations are negated as the poet says:
“When the morning star of wine rises,
The drunken and the sober are as one.”
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