Truth, essence, knowledge and light

by Paul Cudenec | Nov 25, 2024

Being criticised or insulted by your political enemies is not too difficult to cope with – after all, you do not really care what they think of you.

More difficult is to be taken to task by those you feel are – or at least ought to be – on the same “side” as you.

I had this unsettling experience in 2020 when so-called “comrades” decided that I was beyond the anarcho-pale for opposing the state-corporate system’s Covid narrative and repression. [1]

Subsequently I have often been frustrated by those within the new freedom movement who, having correctly seen that fake climate-based environmentalism is being deployed by the globalist tyranny to tighten its control, go on to dismiss real pro-nature and anti-industrialist thinking as part of the same agenda.

How can they not see, I ask myself, that there is nothing remotely “green” about the future proposed by the system?

Klaus Schwab of the WEF has written two books calling for a Fourth Industrial Revolution, [2] with the “innovation” of transhumanism and the digitalisation of our lives being at the very centre of the criminocratic creed.

As I keep having to repeat, in the same way that the Nazis harnessed Germans’ love of nature and traditional living in order to gain support for their hyper-industrialist project, so are their 21st century successors merely using the rhetoric of “sustainability” to advance the same life-destroying project.

Another area of ideological confusion surrounds the perennial philosophy which forms an important part of the organic radical outlook.

There are some opponents of the global system who have noticed how it has infiltrated and captured traditional religions and seems to want to replace them with a new worldwide uni-religion.

They therefore assume that anyone searching for universal truth behind the world’s faiths must be colluding in this scheme.

Again, this is to misunderstand the nature of the globalist system.

In the same way that its “environmentalism” is necessarily fake, since it aims to continue destroying the living world in the pursuit of profit and control, so must any so-called “religion” that it cooks up also be fake, since its aims and methods are entirely incompatible with any good and authentic human belief system.

What sort of “religion” could be built on an obsession with material wealth, with superficial appearance, with control of others and total disregard for their well-being, with lies and manipulation?

The criminocrats’ “religion”, no matter how they package it, could only ever be an inversion of real religion, a mockery and corruption of the spiritual and ethical values that should be at the core of all the world’s faiths.

It is bad enough to think that some people might fall for this scam and sign up for an ersatz one-world cult, but even worse to think that others, while rightly rejecting it, might fall into the trap of imagining that any quest for universal truth, shared ancient wisdom and ur-spirituality can automatically be thrown out with the same bathwater.

It is in this context that I want to talk about a fascinating book recently given to me by a friend in England.

Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination by Mehdi Amin Razavi [3] explores the thinking of the 12th century Persian Sufi philosopher Shihab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi, also known as Shaikh al-ishraq or the Master of Illumination.

I can almost see certain people jumping up down in agitation at this point, so I will quickly stress that, having lived and taught 900 years ago, Suhrawardi had nothing to do with Adam Weishaupt’s Rothschild-linked Bavarian “Illumaniti” and indeed, as Razavi notes, there is no indication that they were in the least influenced by, or even aware of, his work. [4]

I will go further into what Suhrawardi meant by “illumination” later, but first I want to point out some strange parallels I have noticed between him and Ludwig Klages, the German anti-industrialist thinker whom I recently profiled. [5]

These are strange in that Klages was outspokenly critical of the Greek and Eastern metaphysics which Suhrawardi espoused and one would perhaps not expect to find that they had much in common.

However, all thinkers genuinely seeking the truth, by whatever path, will inevitably come closer together as they approach their target and certain similarities are undeniable.

First of all, it seems that Suhrawardi, like Klages, has somewhat disappeared from cultural view, in the West at least.

As I explained, for Klages this was very much connected with false accusations that he was close to the Nazi regime in his native country.

In the same way as academic Paul Bishop takes time to address and refute this allegation, Razavi writes that “it is necessary to respond to the criticism of some scholars who have regarded Suhrawardi’s works as having been strongly influenced by nationalistic sentiments.

“They have gone so far as to accuse him of belonging to the Shu’ubiyyah, a Persian nationalist movement of the third century A.H.

“This intellectual movement was led by a group of Persian poets, philosophers, literary figures and scientists reacting to the Arab oppression of Persians”. [6]

Razavi adds that it has been argued that Suhrawardi’s ishraqi school provided the philosophical framework for this stream of Persian nationalism, in the same way as Klages’s thinking, and the Romantic/Wandervogel anti-industrialist movement as a whole, is claimed to have paved the way for Nazism.

And while Klages’s reputation has been tainted by an alleged connection to Adolf Hitler’s regime (which in fact explicitly condemned his Lebensphilosophie), Suhrawardi’s was affected, in the West, by his association with a bogeyman of his own time.

Razavi explains that he was affiliated to Malik Zahir, son of Saladin, who famously spearheaded the Muslim military effort against European armies.

“Although Suhrawardi was not favoured by the Saladin, he nevertheless may have been viewed by the Christian West as a court philosopher at a time when Muslims and Christians were involved in the Crusades”. [7]

“Not favoured” is something of an understatement, in fact, since Saladin ended up having Suhrawardi put to death! [8]

Writes Razavi: “At a time when Christians and Muslims were engaged in a bloody war, Suhrawardi’s message of unity was perceived to be a dangerous and even a heretical doctrine”. [9]

Like Klages’s, Suhrawardi’s philosophical approach proved particularly incompatible with the mindset of the West.

Seyyed Hossain Nasr (pictured) has observed that during and following Suhrawardi’s life, the West was “concerning itself with the domain of rationalization”. [10]

As a “philosopher-mystic”, [11] his thinking did not fit into the box of that particular worldview, combining as he did rational and spiritual elements, although he remained influential in Persia/Iran and the Indian sub-continent.

Klages, another “philosopher-mystic”, is similarly out of place in a modern world in which the domination of dry “reason” has left no room for mystery and soul, and he is often accused of promoting “irrationalism”.

There is also an echo of the 12th century desire to “confront Arab supremacy with the revival of the pre-Islamic Persian culture and religious values” [12] in Klages’s 20th century desire to confront Judeo-Christian supremacy with the revival of pre-Christian and pre-Judaic European culture and religious values.

Indeed, since the Arabs are a semitic people, Persians such as Suhrawardi could, like Klages, have been accused of literal “anti-semitism”.

However, in the same way as Klages was surrounded and admired by Jewish fellow thinkers, so was Suhrawardi surrounded by a circle of friends in Syria, an Arab country, and indeed “wrote most of his treatises in Arabic”. [13]

Perhaps what they had in common was an anti-imperialist yearning for cultural and spiritual authenticity – the primary sourcing of people’s shared sets of beliefs from their own cultures rather than from those of alien overlords of whatever variety?

In any case, there was nothing narrow about either of their approaches. One of several fundamental differences between Klages and the National Socialists was that he was interested in all forms of paganism, while they were only interested in the German variety.

Likewise, explains Razavi: “To accuse Suhrawardi of nationalism is to misunderstand him completely.

“The school of illumination which he advocated argues for the universality of truth to which everyone has equal access, provided they are willing to undergo the process of purification and illumination.

“Suhrawardi would argue that truth is not an exclusive property of Persians, nor of anyone else, and to argue as such is contrary to the spirit of the ishraqi school”. [14]

Like Klages, Suhrawardi rejected the dualism that maintains that mind and body are two different and distinct entities which interact with each other.

“Suhrawardi argues that this distinction is a superficial one”, [15] notes Razavi.

And a still more substantial connection between the two men’s outlooks can be found in their shared emphasis on archetypes.

Klages called them images or primal images (Urbilder) and also saw them personified as souls or gods.

Suhrawardi, influenced by the Zoroastrian tradition, used angels to describe this same archetypal world. [16]

Razavi says: “For example, he identifies water with the Mazdean angel Khurdad, fire with Urdibihisht, vegetables as Murdad, and minerals as Shahriwar. These angels and many more are the archetypes…” [17]

“The lordly light which exists within the soul of every man is represented by Gabriel, the archetype of humanity (rabb al-naw’ al-insan), which Suhrawardi identifies as the “holy spirit” (ruh al-qudus), equating it with the spirit of the Prophet Mohammed”. [18]

“Having argued that angels are independent realities in the world, he then follows an Ibn Sinian scheme to say that angels are also representations of man’s inner forces that have been externalized.

“The externalization serves as a spiritual map of the inner guides. He who learns how to follow them properly will be led to the heart of the ishraqi doctrine, that is, ‘To know everything, one has to first know himself’. [19]

“Knowledge of the self and self-knowledge therefore are necessary conditions for anyone in his spiritual quest who seeks certainty”. [20]

At the core of both philosophers’ thinking is the notion of essence.

This has been declared doubleplus ungood by contemporary thought police, with a narrowed-down political interpretation of “essentialism” implying racist or sexist beliefs about a rigid human nature.

But the metaphysical understanding of essence is something else entirely and gives underlying meaning to a world that the modern mind considers random or even absurd.

Razavi sets out the argument developed by Mir Damad (bust pictured), one of the successors to Suhrawardi’s philosophy.

“It is apparent that an existent being does not only exist by virtue of its own existence but because of its ‘essence’ (mahiyyah).

“Now, either the essence precedes the existence in the order of creation or vice versa…

“Mir Damad concludes that the essence of an existent being must be the principal element, since it is inconceivable to have an existent being which is made up of pure existence (wujud) and no essence”. [21]

In my 2016 book Nature, Essence and Anarchy I take a similar line by equating essence with possibility – the possibility of something existing must “precede” (though not in linear time) its physical existence.

There clearly must be the possibility of a dog or a cat existing in order for any particular dog or cat to exist.

As Ananda Coomaraswamy writes: “The impossible never happens; what happens is always the realisation of a possibility”. [22]

However, modern Western thinking abandoned this wisdom and instead regarded notions of “cat” and “dog” not as essences but as mere categories applied by the human mind to describe groups of similar entities.

As I set out in Nature, Essence and Anarchy, this formed part of “the movement of society away from the appreciation of abstract ideas or principles, and towards a limited, purely physical, definition of reality”. [23]

This is presented as movement towards scientific enlightenment, but in fact is a step towards modern stupidity and darkness.

“There is no such thing as the essential reality of something. There are no universal principles beneath the surface of physical reality.

“Human beings are nothing more than flesh-and-blood machines, whose behaviour is ‘constructed’ and can be ‘programmed’ into them.

“There is no such thing as ‘spirit’, because it cannot be scientifically identified or measured. The natural world is not a living being, but a resource to be exploited.

“The only possible world is the one we live in. Industrial civilization is the only destination at which humankind could ever have arrived.

“The continuation of that industrial civilization is the only possible future open to us. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool or charlatan”. [24]

While Klages’s philosophy is a reaction against our descent into industrial ignorance, Suhrawardi was of course writing before that process got under way – it is perhaps only in the subsequent lack of interest in his work that we see its influence.

However, even in his day he was aware of the need to preserve and recommunicate what he called “ancient wisdom” (hikmat al-atiq). [25]

Razavi explains that “he saw himself as the reviver of Sophia Perennis” [26] – placing him close to the tradition of sophiology which I recently discussed. [27]

He synthesized the philosophies of Aristotle, Plato and Plotinus with Sufi wisdom and the intellectual intuition of the ishraqis, [28] adding in various elements from Persian and Egyptian traditions in “an attempt to unify various schools of wisdom in order to demonstrate the universal truth that lies at the heart of all divinely revealed religions”. [29]

“Suhrawardi considers himself to be the unifier of what he calls ‘al-Hikmat al laduniyah‘ (Divine Wisdom), a tradition that begins with Prophet Hermes (Khidr) and has persisted throughout time in various forms”. [30]

I was particularly intrigued to see the mention of Khidr, the archetypal religious/mythological figure who lent his nickname to my 2017 book The Green One [31] and who represents both divine nature and human understanding of that vital force.

The idea of light was, of course, central to Suhrawardi’s illuminationist philosophy.

The ultimate and divine light permeates layer by layer into the material world and is, in fact, the basis of our essential “I-ness” if only we can strip away the veils of falsity in order to see it.

Razavi formulates Suhrawardi’s thinking thus:

“1. God is light. 2. “I-ness” is light. 3. “I-ness” is God. 4. He who know himself, knows God”. [32]

This kind of knowledge has come to be called “knowledge by presence” (al-‘ilm al-huduri), he explains. Very much part of the Sufi tradition, this relates to “a special mode of cognition which attains knowledge directly and without mediation, thereby transcending the subject/object distinction”. [33]

Says Suhrawardi: “A thing that exists in itself (al-qa’im bi’l-dhat) and is conscious of itself does not know itself through a representation (al-mithal) of itself appearing in itself”. [34]

For him, any “attributes” we possess – including our lower self, the nafs of the personal ego, act as blockages to the divine light.

While the aim of spiritual seekers is to purify themselves so as to block the light as little as possible, the opposite is true of those who follow the path of Evil.

Suhrawardi’s philosophy draws on the Zoroastrian concepts of Good (the benevolent god Ahuramazda) and Evil (the malevolent god Ahriman).

Explains Razavi: “For Suhrawardi, just as light has degrees of intensity, so does darkness”. [35]

“In Suhrawardi’s world of suspended forms (suwar al mu’allaqah), there are also perfect forms of evil which he identifies with darkness”. [36]

The presence in the world of an individual, or a group of individuals, motivated by self-interest, greed and the pursuit of power would therefore amount to a blockage of the divine light.

It would become visible as a shadow, an absence of illumination.

Any attempt by this group to pass itself off as a channel for the light – such as by inventing a pseudo-religion – would be doomed to failure as its shadow would so clearly represent an inversion.

Those with direct, intuitive, knowledge of themselves, and therefore of the light, would simply know that they were dealing with deception and darkness.

So, in conclusion, I find Suhrawardi’s thought, as presented by Razavi in this book, to be a useful source of inspiration.

Firstly, I have the sense that he was really searching for metaphysical truth with all his intellectual and intuitive strength, stretching his mind and his heart to the utmost to understand and know the source of the light within and beyond us.

Secondly, living as did nearly a millennium ago, he was that much closer to sources of ancient wisdom than we are today.

It is as if he had one foot in the past of Greek, Persian and Egyptian gnosis and the other stepping out towards the future, with his outstretched hand clasping a precious scroll of inherited universal knowledge that he is inviting us to take from him and communicate to 21st century humankind.

As the darkness of modern Evil increasingly blocks every last chink of divine light from penetrating this degraded world, we certainly have great need of Suhrawardi’s timeless illumination!

[Audio version]

Subscribe to Winter Oak

[1] Paul Cudenec, ‘Anarchists against freedom!’
https://network23.org/paulcudenec/2020/04/26/anarchists-against-freedom/
[2] Paul Cudenec, ‘Klaus Schwab and his Great Fascist Reset’.
https://winteroak.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/fascism-rebranded23web.pdf
[3] Mehdi Amin Razavi, Suhrawardi and the School of Illumination (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997). Thanks Ibraar!
[4] Razavi, pp. 141-42.
[5] Paul Cudenec, ‘Life philosophy: beyond left and right’ and two subsequent essays.
https://winteroak.org.uk/2024/10/14/life-philosophy-beyond-left-and-right/
[6] Razavi, p. 146.
[7] Razavi, p. 140.
[8] Razavi, p. 2.
[9] Razavi, p. 3.
[10] Seyed Hossein Nasr, ‘The Spread of the Illuminationist School of Suhrawardi’, Islamic Quarterly 14, no 1 (1970), p. 118, cit. Razavi, p. 141.
[11] Razavi, p. 150.
[12] Razavi, p. 146.
[13] Ravazi, p. 147.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Razavi, p. 40.
[16] Razavi, p. xx.
[17] Razavi, p. 46.
[18] Razavi, p. 82.
[19] Suhrawardi, Opera Metaphysica et Mystica 1, edited and introduction by Henry Corbin (Tehran: Institut d’Etudes et des Recherches Culturelles, 1993), p. 70, cit. Razavi, p. 83.
[20] Razavi, p. 83.
[21] Razavi, p. 125.
[22] Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, What is Civilisation and Other Essays (Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1989), p. 70.
[23] Paul Cudenec, Nature, Essence and Anarchy (Sussex: Winter Oak, 2016), p. 127.
[24] Cudenec, Nature, Essence and Anarchy, pp. 127-28.
[25] Razavi, p. xv.
[26] Razavi, p. 6.
[27] Paul Cudenec, ‘The Spirit of Sophia: wild air and wisdom’ and two subsequent essays.
https://winteroak.org.uk/2024/09/12/the-spirit-of-sophia-wild-air-and-wisdom/
[28] Razavi, p. 6.
[29] Razavi, p. xv.
[30] Razavi, p. 52.
[31] Paul Cudenec, The Green One (Sussex: Winter Oak, 2017). https://winteroak.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/the-green-one-1.pdf
[32] Razavi, p. 92.
[33] Razavi, p. 102.
[34] Suhrawardi, Opera Metaphysica et Mystica 2, edited and introduction by Henry Corbin (Tehran: Institut d’Etudes et des Recherches Culturelles, 1993), p. 111, cit. Razavi, p. 103.
[35] Razavi, p. 32.
[36] Razavi, p. 43.