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The forum was attended by an audience of around 30 people. Unfortunately, Jane Clark was unable to give her talk, but kindly sent a written version which was read by Elizabeth Roberts and is copied below. Keith Hammond joined the panel of speakers in place of Jane Clark. 

Part One with Keith Hammond MA
Keith was a lecturer at the Univesity of Glasgow for twenty years and has now retired. He is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Law, Glasgow University. His research is on the one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, focusing on the positive contribution of international law in moving the discourse forward. He is also a strong supporter of Syrian refugee rights.

Jane Clark
Edinburgh, 16^th October 2015

I am going to speak today as a follower of the great shaykh of the Islamic mystical tradition, Muhyiddin Ibn al-‘Arabī, who lived in the 12^th–13^th century. I am not myself a Muslim, at least in an outer sense – meaning that I am not a formal convert to the faith – but came across the ideas of Ibn ‘Arabī nearly forty years ago in courses run by the Beshara Trust, which is a non-denominational educational context. Ibn al-‘Arabī’s works are foundational texts on these courses, but others from different traditions – Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism etc – are also included, with the aim of drawing out the essential, unitive wisdom of humanity. Since then I have gone more deeply into Ibn al-‘Arabī’s writings, and take them not only as a source of ideas, but also as a guide to living a spiritual life, finding in them a highly practical wisdom which is compatible with that expressed in other spiritual writings, such as the Baghavad Gita or the Buddhist sutras.

•   I am not actively engaged in anything that one might call “social activism” – unless one counts the signing of countless on-line petitions and financially supporting an ever-growing list of groups such as Greenpeace and Amnesty, food-banks, disabled charities, etc.  But I work as a support tutor for people with specific learning difficulties – conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, autistic spectrum disorders – which gives me a fairly intensive engagement with people suffering from various kinds of difficulty and discrimination, and with the institutions that they can have problems with. And my daughter is a really committed social activist who works for a very conspicuous campaigning organization, and is out there almost every weekend at the moment on some sort of march or mission, and we have lots of discussions about the issues that arise from this kind of engagement.

•   One of the themes which Ibn al-‘Arabī develops at great length is that of the complete or realized human being – al-insān al-kāmil; the person who has completely fulfilled and brought into expression their potential to be a human being. This includes, of course, our spiritual nature, and relationship with our spiritual source – which one could called God, or the One, or the Mind, as in Buddhism; Ibn ‘Arabī’s most frequent word is the Real, or the Truth (al-ḥaqq). But it also includes all our other faculties – the bodily faculties like hearing, seeing, etc; our psychic faculties such as imagination, and our intellectual faculties. And this means that the conception of the spiritual life has to include consideration not only of our relationship to an interior, ineffable reality, but also our relationship to our family and friends, our community, our workplace, and to the world as a whole.

•   In fact, in this tradition, the ultimate aim of the spiritual path is to live what one might call an “ordinary human life” within society – although along the way there might be certain periods when it is necessary to withdraw from worldly life for the sake of development. The difference between the realised human being and the non-realised person, whilst they might be living side by side and outwardly be engaged in many of the same activities, is that for the insān al-kāmil the spiritual perspective predominates in their understanding of what the world is, and what is happening around them, and so it informs everything that they do. There is a saying in the tradition: “To be in the world, but not of the world”. The “not of the world” indicates the capacity to be constantly centred in the reality of the spirit and not be blown hither and thither by events and the difficulties which constantly rain upon us in this life – the capacity to maintain remembrance of the eternal in the midst of the ever-changing flow of the “stuff”.

•   Although we might be all too aware of not having achieved the full realization indicated by the concept of insān al-kāmil, it seems to me that anyone who has committed themselves to the spiritual life is in this position of having a foot in two camps – in the world, and in that which is “not of the world” – to the extent that we have integrated into ourselves what we learn through spiritual practice. And that it is in this capacity that we are most likely to be of use to people. It is clear to me that there are issues about campaigning activities which are directed towards specific political or economic outcomes, in that they are directed towards one outcome rather than another. Thus, even though the cause might be in itself extremely worthy, there can be repercussions which cause further problems or even exacerbate the underlying causes of the problem. We know, for instance, from half a century of experience with western charitable agencies such as Oxfam, that even the simple and heartful giving of food aid to starving peoples can have unfortunate consequences, undermining the long-term development of a country’s economy, supporting corrupt regimes, etc. Even my daughter finds contradictions between her two main causes – animal rights, which leads her to demand an end to the exploitation of animals for food and clothing, and environmentalism, which leads her to demand the setting up of sustainable economies and an end to the despoiling of the Arctic for the sake of fossil fuels.  This is because, for instance, if you are not going to wear leather or fur to keep you warm and dry, then you have to wear man-made products which are derived ultimately from oil. This faces us with dilemmas when undertaking such actions. Closer to home; the support for food-banks, which is something which I myself am a little involved in, is an obvious compassionate action which in our present situation seems to me essential when people are actually not able to feed their families. But it is also true that by doing this, we are propping up the system and allowing the government to avoid facing the consequences of their actions; so perhaps our energies would be better focused on political action? This is the kind of discussion we find ourselves having.

•   This is not to say that we should not engage in these kinds of activities, but merely to point out that there are no universal principles that one can apply in deciding what kind of activity we should be engaged in. It is all a matter of the knowledge that one has of the situation, and what intimations are given about what we in particular should be doing.  But there are some things that I think are universal – ie which always apply, whatever the situation – for someone who is committed to a spiritual path.

•   Firstly, the ever-present necessity to act with compassion. For Ibn ‘Arabī, as within Buddhism and Christianity, compassion is the main the function of the human being. In fact, he sees it as a cosmic function, in that it is through the realised human being that the Divine compassion pours down upon the world; he or she is a kind of conduit – or, in the Sufi terminology, a drainpipe – through which God’s mercy flows into creation. And when we consider action, the ideal situation, which we are obliged to strive for, is that this compassion has to touch every level of being and relationship. It is has to touch the quality of our relationships as well as the overall aim of the action. Thus it is not right to be providing food and shelter for homeless people, which is of course a compassionate action, if the people are at the same time demeaned or ill-treated at a personal level in the course of receiving help.  And it is not right that we should be compassionate and caring in our work or social life, but ignore the needs of our family and friends. This is a very big theme in the Sufi tradition from which Ibn ‘Arabī writes; we say, charity begins at home, and the Sufi tradition completely concurs. Our first obligation is always to what is closest to us, and this, far from being a selfish point of view, is actually quite a big challenge. It is not to be interpreted as it being OK to give yourself and your family excess to what you need when others are starving, but challenges one to really consider what one might mean by a just measure; what is it that is due to a person? And of course, it is often harder to confront that which is intimate to us because it involves us confronting something about ourselves.

•   One aspect of this which comes up a lot in my own work, but also in all work with other people, is the need to really engage with the people one is working with and listen to what they say, what they are and what they need – to give them acknowledgement as people with their own potential for wholeness and autonomy, not just sufferers or failed people who need help. At a global level, this kind of ‘non-listening’ results in things like countries sending food aid in forms which cannot be eaten by the people it is intended for – wheat to people whose diet is corn – because there is no understanding of their real needs, and no acknowledgement that they are equal to us in humanity with the full range of tastes, desires, etc that we have. In my own work, I find that I am often the first person that my students can actually tell about the experiences that they have had – even if they are quite old; I work mostly with university students from 18 upwards, but some of them are mature students in their 30s, 40s or even 60s, with late diagnosis. Their experience of their disability has often been dismissed by a host of parents, teachers and even partners, and the simple fact that I will listen and say ‘yes, it is like that, what you say is true’, is a really important part of their learning to overcome their problems.  Sometimes we have to go further and start lodging complaints to show that we really believe them, but usually the mere fact of validation is enough.

•   This leads on to another thing that the Sufi tradition really emphasizes, and which is the theme which is explored in the numerous stories about the way that people treat beggars. And this is the need to avoid a situation where we think that we are doing something for someone else, or that wecan do something for anyone else. So if we think that we are rich, or have riches, and that we give those to someone else, then we are, in Sufi thinking, falling into a grave error. For the reality is that we are all poor before God: we possess nothing of our own which does not belong to Him, and we are all in some way sufferers or failed people who need help. Therefore, in dealing with people who seem to need our help, we must remember that they are not really “other” or different from us, but serving only to remind us of our own essential condition. One of the nice traditions that Ibn ‘Arabī brings is that when one of his saints gives to a beggar, God intervenes and puts in His hand between them. Thus the person gives to God, which is the correct order of things, and then God gives to the person, which is again the correct order of things. Thus the person is protected from any kind of pride or self-congratulation in their action.
Jane Clark  16/9/2015