Responding to the Cosmic Chorus: A Meditation on the Ecological Visions of Islamic and Hindu Theologies

Mortal dooms and dynasties are brief things, but beauty is indestructible and eternal, if its tabernacle be only a petal that is shed tomorrow…Inter arma silent flores [“In times of war, flowers fall silent”] is no truth; on the contrary, amid the crash of doom our sanity and survival more than ever depend on the strength with which we can listen to the still small voice that towers above the cannons, and cling to the little quiet things of life, the things that come and go and yet are always there, the inextinguishable lamps of God amid the disaster that man has made of his life.

Reginald Farrer quoted in: Barry McDonald, Seeing God Everywhere: Essays on Nature and the Sacred (World Wisdom, 2003), 294-295.

The COVID-19 pandemic embodies an intriguing synthesis of two modes of human-to-human encounter, which we often regard as sharply opposed: namely, relationality and distance. On the one hand, we have been made acutely aware of our deep connection with all the world’s inhabitants – so much so that the repercussions of a virus at a specific site have rapidly ramified throughout the global body. All societies have had to “host” this viral visitor, and struggle to adapt their quotidian patterns to mitigate its harmful effects. There has prevailed an implicit, if not always articulated, sense of universal kinship – we are all “in” this together, and all our lives are variously touched in vivid ways. At the same time, the pandemic has required us to adopt rigorous modes of social distancing – indeed, precisely to preserve the fragile filaments of our interconnectedness and to protect the vulnerable in our communities, we may have had to temporarily quarantine ourselves from others. In these milieus, then, distancing is not an anti-social stance, but precisely the affirmation of a social concern.

In this essay, I take this somewhat paradoxical nexus of relationality and distance as a theological moment to reflect on certain spiritual articulations of ecology, where the compass of connection extends beyond the human world to enfold all created beings. In exploring this anthropo-cosmic affinity, I traverse the terrains of Islamic spirituality and aesthetics to elaborate a vision of the universe as flowing from as well as reflecting its divine creator, and as thus saturated with the sacred. I then bring these ecologically evocative motifs into dialogue with certain Hindu conceptions of the universe as joyously resonant with the divine melodies – as articulated distinctively in the writings of the Bengali poet-thinker, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). Both conceptual universes, I argue, employ the relationality-distance conjunction to illustrate our inhabitation of the world: the natural domain (including non-human beings) enjoys a genuine otherness and integrity, and yet, we are called on to recognize and embody our ineluctable union with this world of diverse creatures. In unfurling these theological tapestries, we will explore what it means to envision the world as perpetually addressing, speaking to, or even calling upon the human person, and how we may silence our internal chatter to heart-fully attend to God’s gentle invitation.

Islamic Iterations of Interdependence: Inhabiting a Universe of Praise and Prostration

The Islamic vision of the universe is structured by the leitmotif that all creatures are a shimmering ‘sign’ of God, who brings them into being and sustains their existence at all moments. The Qur’ān repeatedly urges its audience to behold these manifold signs (āyat), which are displayed in natural phenomena as diverse as the mighty mountains, the shifting seasons, and the humble honeybee. All things move in harmony with certain rhythms, fulfil certain functions, and accord with certain principles, and this delicate cosmic arraying could not have emerged purely by chance. Instead, the universe everywhere furnishes evidence of purpose and wisdom, and thus the finite points ‘beyond’ itself to an infinite creator. Elaborating this revelatory depth of the cosmic order, the Qur’ān questions, by appealing to a litany of creaturely marvels, those who deny the divine munificence: ‘Do they not ever reflect on camels – how they were masterfully created; and the sky – how it was raised high; and the mountains – how they were firmly set up; and the earth – how it was levelled out?’ (Qur’ān 88:17-20). Indeed, this attentiveness to the “extraordinariness of the ordinary” recurs throughout the Qur’ān, and the theological force of this concern with the details of everyday life, as Martin Lings put it, is to draw listeners to the ever-present traces of the divine splendour, ‘which they have always had before their eyes without seeing the wonder of them.’[1]

That material creation is thus suffused with the sacred is vividly expressed in the assertion of the Prophet Muhammad himself that ‘the whole of the earth is a mosque’ – in this world wherein God’s “face” is visible, as the Qur’ān affirms, ‘wheresoever you turn’ (Qur’ān 2:115), all is holy ground. In his meditation on what we might term the Prophet’s symbolic “unfurling” of the entire earth as the worshipper’s prayer mat, the Muslim poet-thinker Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) writes, ‘the Muslim’s duty is to reflect on the [divine] signs and not to pass by them “as if he is deaf and blind”.’[2] Iqbal is alluding here to Qur’ān 2:171, which asserts that those who reject the divine reality are devoid of wisdom, and are unable to hear, see, or speak in a God-attuned manner. Iqbal’s statement crucially highlights the sensorial quality of the human receptivity to the divine imprints in nature – indeed, the Qur’ān and the Islamic spiritual tradition (Sufism) invite the believer to hear the divine echoes reverberating through, and to see the divine light glimmering in, all things. We are called upon to open up our hearts to the shower of compassion that God sends forth as rain (Qur’ān 16:65), to marvel at the rhythms of day and night that endow our lives with an interplay of activity and rest (Qur’ān 36:38-40; Qur’ān 27:86), and to see in the abundance of the harvest season the One who gives life to all (Qur’ān 39:21).

In all these ways, the cosmos in the Islamic imagination takes on the status of a “book,” which imparts knowledge of both divine plenitude and divine proximity, when we learn to read its scintillating “signs” aright. Indeed, this rendering of the cosmos as God’s magnum opus is put forth by the Qur’ān itself – the Arabic word for “sign,” āya, also means “verse,” and this term is used by the Qur’ān to describe its own verses. The cosmos constitutes an intricate text which complements the scriptural text; both texts are intended to re-orient us to the truth by lifting the veils that ordinarily obstruct our perception of, and devotion to, the divine. Crucially, the āyat are also said to be present in one’s true self, setting forth a syzygy between the macrocosm (the universe) and the microcosm (the human self). As affirmed in Qur’ān 41:53, ‘We shall show them Our signs in the universe and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that this Quran is the truth.’ More generally, this verse elaborates a powerful triadic synergy between the created world, the revealed book, and the human person – all three signify, by serving as luminous mirrors for, the divine reality. Indeed, the disclosive powers of these three repositories of divine signs are deeply interrelated – such that, when we properly read the word of God, we return anew to perceive the self and the world as bathed in divine light. Again, our vision of the world as the resplendent self-disclosure of God refines our gaze to the subtleties of the divine word; and, finally, when we know our own selves truly, we also begin to inhabit the world as God’s devoted stewards.

In elaborating this triptych of divine disclosure, the philosopher Ahmad Milad Karimi writes that the Qur’ān reveals the beauty of God, and simultaneously reveals the beauty and wonder of creation. The verses of the Qur’ān must be interpreted in accordance with a refined perception of this vast cosmic beauty, for both these forms of God’s self-revelation are the warp and weft of which truth is woven. Karimi thus describes the Qur’ān as God’s “love letter,”[3] which bodies forth the plenitudinous divine compassion and bounty. Indeed, we may extend this description to the cosmos itself, which, like the Qur’ān, bears the love-laden signature of God. This inexhaustible fount of love is crystallized in the Qur’anic vision of a cosmos which is at all moments prostrating to, and praising, God. Thus, we read ‘to Allah prostrates whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth, of the moving creatures and the angels, and they are not proud’ (Qur’ān 16:49), and ‘Do you not see that everything that is in the heavens and the earth glorifies God, even the birds as they soar? Each instinctively knows their manner of prayer and glorification’ (Qur’ān 24:41). In elaborating this grand symphony of loving submission, the Qur’ān here foregrounds the particularity of all things – a motif reinforced in the Quranic assertion that all created beings worship God in their distinctive ways, albeit in a language that human beings do not comprehend (Qur’ān 17:44). Or, most human beings do not – in several well-known Hadiths, which are sayings of or about the Prophet Muhammad, it is affirmed that when the Prophet used to take pebbles in his hand, he could hear (even) them praising God, and those around him too were temporarily attuned to these vibrations of the sacred.

Hinduism and Hierophany: Hearing the Sacred Sounds of the Cosmos

What the Prophet heard in these moments of communion with the pebbles was a stream of sanctification which is always already reverberating through the cosmos, and to which, when the “ears” of our own hearts are alert and attentive, we too can “tune in.” This motif of the universe as suffused with sacred sound appears also across a range of Hindu religious traditions, which similarly highlight a “call-response” dynamism between the world and its divine foundation. According to certain Hindu texts which are rooted in Vedic scriptural templates, the fabric of reality is uttered into existence and is sustained through the repetition of the world-founding word (shabda).[4] The Maitri Upanishad (6.22) thus elaborates the concept of shabda-brahman, referring to the divine utterance which is “charged” with a world-generating momentum. In later yogic and theistic traditions, the term nada-brahman came to designate the primordial vibration which “sounds” the world into being, and which simultaneously resounds through the human heart. We have here a resonance with the Quranic interplay of the macrocosmic (the cosmos) and the microcosmic (the human person) – the shabda that flows through the boundless spaces of the universe is enfolded in one’s innermost being, much as in the Islamic imagination, the “signs” that radiate through the heavens and the earth shine forth also within oneself.

In these scriptural and meditative milieus, the sound that is commonly endued with generative and salvific force is the sacred syllable Om. To understand something of the vital power of this syllable, we may turn to the renowned poet-thinker Tagore, in whose writings the notion of the cosmos as streaming out in a divine call finds energetic expression. Tagore defines “Om” as God’s primordial “Yes” to the world – through this supreme attestation, which is not a one-time utterance but is constantly renewed through the cosmos, God creates and sustains allthings in existence.[5] When we, in turn, utter the Om as part of our meditative practice, we are reconciled to the truth that all beings, embosomed in the cosmic heart of God’s “Yes,” share the same divine origin and destination. Tagore elsewhere limns this image of God’s effusive creativity by presenting God as the supreme “singer” or “musician,” and the world as God’s ever-new work of art.[6] This musical metaphor foregrounds the divine proximity to the finite world – unlike other forms of art in which the final artwork exists independently of its creator (once a painting is completed, the painter withdraws his touch), the song is never severed from its origin.[7] Instead, the song pours forth in an unfettered manner and is ever ‘held’ in the singer’s breath. Echoing thus the Quranic vision of a cosmic chorus, for Tagore, the world is continuously vibrating in a silent, symphonic attestation to the eternal divine singer.

Tagore thus imagines the world as God’s melodious “gift,” which streams forth from the plenitude of God’s love.[8] Just as an artist’s work affords a glimpse into the inner world of the artist, so too does the finite world reveal its infinite source. However, much like the Islamic vision of a sacred world whose “signs,” though omnipresent, are often overlooked by us, for Tagore too, the world silently “waits” for our loving gaze and attentiveness. Tagore rather poignantly poeticizes this “waiting” as the world’s gentle “call” or “invitation” unto the human being; the world tenderly beckons us towards relationship by uttering the words:

friend, have you seen me? Do you love me? – not as one who provides you with foods and fruits, not as one whose laws you have found out, but as one who is personal, individual?

Rabindranath Tagore, Personality (Rupa & Co, 2002), 22.

To see the world in truth, to respond to the divine call pulsating through the fibres of existence, is to relate to the world beyond any transactional economies – it is, in other words, to renounce the utilitarian/instrumentalist gaze through which we normally view our environment, and let all things stand forth before us as the refulgent disclosure of God’s own “personality.”[9] We can witness the divine light most strikingly through the beauty of the world – which Tagore presents as God’s lilting melody, and even as God’s own “prayer” (prarthana).[10] Beauty, in its wondrous mystery, sends forth a tender greeting to us and yearns for our loving, delighted response. In this way, beauty possesses the gentle gravity of a “call” and “not a command,”[11] for our response to the invitation of the beauteous spring flowers cannot be elicited by force: we must be freely moved by beauty’s touch.

Indeed, because beauty is itself “unnecessary” to the world’s function and continuance, beauty most vividly embodies the non-transactional ethos which should characterize our relation with the world, and correlatively, with God. God is the primordial lover who entices us through the variegated forms, the vibrant colours, and the elegant landscapes of the world, and in a striking echo of Karimi’s description of the Qur’ān, Tagore describes this non-necessitated display of beauty as God’s “love letter” which we have not yet read.[12] This letter awaits our attention; it quietly calls on us to open the door of our hearts to the divine presence which suffuses all of creation. When we behold the tranquil beauty of the stars, there is a communion between the human person and the divine person, and it is through this personal encounter, for which the night sky restfully “waits,” that the stars are known and loved in their revelatory truth. Thus, Tagore asserts, whilst ‘the prosody of the stars can be explained in the classroom by diagrams…the poetry of the stars is the silent meeting of the soul with soul…where the infinite, prints its kiss on the forehead of the finite’.[13] Seen through the gaze of love, where this gaze effects a ‘meeting’ of the divine and the human, the finite beams forth in its true spiritual import as the self-revelation of the infinite beauty. 

Conclusion

What might this cosmic backdrop of a world perpetually speaking, uttering, “calling” upon the human person, mean for an embodied ecology? For Tagore, it meant establishing a school in a sylvan spot of rural Bengal, where children would learn under the vast canopy of the blue skies, and experience their innate communion with the created order.[14] In Tagore’s vision, by foregoing the mechanized routines and confinement to the classroom, and instead having the towering trees and fragrant flowers as their classmates, children are drawn into harmonious kinship with the natural world. Through this educational environing, children might relate to the flowing rivers not merely as necessary resources for human existence, but as living presences brimming with beauty. In the Islamic context, to respond to the world’s call analogously means establishing an “eco-mosque”[15] which is designed to uphold the Quranic mandate of stewardship inscribed upon human beings, and to follow in the blessed footprints of Islam’s most beloved human being, the Prophet Muhammad. By simultaneously imitating the gravitas of the Prophet’s footsteps and inhabiting the world with a creaturely lightness of being, we uphold the Quranic injunction to ‘tread on the earth gently’ (Qur’ān 25:63).[16]

While in both the Islamic and the Hindu worldviews which we have traversed, the cosmos ever resounds with the melodies of divine praise and harmony, humans are frequently out of tune. And yet, the finite order remains continuously energized by, and reflective of, its infinite creative ground – such that the omnipresent God is our supreme “environ-ment,” and our relation to the natural world bears truth only when it recognizes this divine milieu. Given the intricate homologies set forth by both traditions between the cosmos and the human person, we cannot harm the outer world without also harming our own selves – and when we enter into loving relationships with God’s fecund earth, we too become enriched. As the sunflower spontaneously turns towards the sun, so too are humans enjoined to direct their gaze to the divine face visible in all things, such that we might tranquilly and truthfully move in and with creation.

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References

[1] Martin Lings, Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (The Islamic Texts Society, 1991), 68.  

[2]  Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Stanford University Press, 2012), 103.

[3] Francis X. Clooney and Klaus von Stosch, How to Do Comparative Theology (Fordham University Press, 2018), 65.

[4] Guy L. Beck, Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound (University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 7.

[5] Medha Bhattacharyya, Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan Essays: Religion, Spirituality and Philosophy (Routledge, 2020),106-108.

[6] Rabindranath Tagore, Personality (Rupa & Co, 2002), 62.

[7] Rabindranath Tagore, Sadhana: The Realization of Life (Wilder Publications, 2008), 67.

[8] Tagore, Personality, 67.

[9] Ibid, 63.

[10] Rabindranath Tagore, “The Truth of Prayer,” Santiniketan Discourse (Accessed 12/03/2022). Translation by the Author.

[11] Tagore, Sadhana, 56.

[12] Ibid, 49.

[13] Tagore, Personality, 64.

[14] Visva-Bharati, “Santiniketan.” (Accessed 01/03/2022).

[15] Cambridge Central Mosque, “Environment.” (Accessed 02/03/2022).

[16] In a concrete enactment of this vision of the finite world as a sacred site, the Muslim is encouraged, following the practice of the Prophet (who is their exemplar of spiritual excellence), to pray on the earth, so that during the prostration, the symbolically highest part of the body (her head) is re-acquainted with the element of clay of which she, and all her fellow creatures, are made.

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© Hina Khalid, 2022.

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Cover Image: “Nature” by walmarc04 is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.