44. The Tree of Duplicity in the Orchard of Oneness (2)

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From a single person, Adam (peace be upon him) has now become two. When and how this occurred is not made clear in the Qur’an, although it seems, from this narrative at least, to have taken place after the act of naming that reproduced the duality of heaven and earth in all things.

“Adam” is definitely masculine, but there are many verses that de-emphasize this ‘masculine bias’ by referring to the first human as a soul, which in Arabic is feminine. Here is one example:

A similar grammatical inversion of genders is evident in Q4:1 and Q39:6. Rather than portraying the division of the sexes as a power struggle that can only be adjudicated by a constantly frustrated stress on equality, AL-LAH wants us to identify with each other – man with woman and woman with man – as engaged in a common cause, from a common origin.

Together, they inhabit the Garden, a place of fertility, abundance, and diversity-in-unity. It is the ecosystem of absolutes whose synergy expresses the beauty and grandeur of the Kingdom of GOD in organic form. What is and what ought to be are intertwined in harmony. In this Garden, no absolute is at odds with another; there is no conflict, rivalry, injustice, or suffering, and therefore no need for restraint or denial . . . with one grievous exception.

Duality or multiplicity in things is, in itself, not a problem. If I say “hand” has many meanings – a bodily appendage, power, care, and creativity, for example – my saying so does not make me deluded or dishonest. But if I say “hand” with the intention of concealing “foot”, or to signify an act where there was none, or intend by “hand” a material, measurable feature of GOD Whose Hands are incorporeal and beyond our power of conception, then I am lying, either deliberately or in error, and the shadow of duplicity has borne its evil fruit in the luxuriant undergrowth of the Garden.

Duplicity is a latent or potential quality of any duality. This is because maintaining unity-in-duality is not effortless, unlike the Unicity of GOD, Whose every act is effortless because His Being and His Act are One. Rather duality requires an act of will, namely the affirmation of unity, i.e., faith, to keep its coherence and overcome inconsistencies. But that which must be held with effort can be sundered with effort, or dissipated by lack of effort. Iblis was willing to exert himself against Adam and all humanity (Q15:39), while Adam (peace be upon him) lacked that resoluteness (Q20:115).

Corresponding to the devil’s place among humanity is the one forbidden tree in the Garden. Contrary to the standard Biblical narrative from Genesis 2:9, this is never referred to in the Qur’an as “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. It is simply the tree that represents denial of GOD or GOD’s Command – an arboreal cognate of Iblis himself. Just as he was a lone rebellious figure among countless hosts of obedient angels, so is ‘his’ tree but one tree among a virtually limitless forest of fruitfulness. If that tree stands for all that is opposed to GOD, figuratively speaking, then man must take a stand against that tree. No matter how many its promoters and cultivators might be, we must never forget that in GOD’s Kingdom the tree of defiance is so vastly outnumbered by the groves of gratitude that a true seeker of GOD’s Grace need never feel cramped by its growth or tempted to taste it.

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Iblis is the proper name of one individual devil, or satan, while Shaitan is the generic name for evil forces. One could say that, just as Adam (peace be upon him) was the progenitor of all humans, so is Iblis the primordial father of all Shayatin, the plural of Shaitan. The shift in designation suggests that Iblis may not have been personally involved, and that this fall from the Garden was not immediate; who knows how much time Adam and Hawa spent in the Garden before they had to leave it? In any case, the passage of time is not an issue here, nor is the particular means whereby Satan achieved his aim. That story is narrated elsewhere, e.g., Q7:20-22. But here we at least need to know what satanic element was it that made them leave the state in which they were.

Despite the duality that their creation represented, they enjoyed the freedom, freshness, and fruitfulness of a state in which opposites complement, entice, and fertilize one another. This was the beauty and bounty of being one-in-many when that multiplicity enhances the attractive power of the One. All of Reality is like a tree – one life drawing sustenance from below and above, from without and within, and producing an abundance of entities – branches, flowers, and fruits – that all reproduce in miniature and confirm the fecund truth of their source.

Wherever the Garden of the Real exultantly reveals its capacity for contrast and attractive opposites there is, however, one growth that must result – the unreal. For every ‘yes’ there must be a ‘no’, for every ‘Why?’ a ‘Why not?’ This is the produce of the void, implicit as a gap in the distinction between any two things. Creation is from the void – “There’s His Hand, where you are nought” – and thence comes its downfall. This is the mystery of the necessarily unreal, which Satan exploited to invent a semblance of reality – the lie. The secret of the heavens and the earth is not only the power of naming them truly; it also includes the power inherent in false names, in evil wearing the garb of good, in the name that has nothing behind it but the intent to deceive. The result, of course, is misunderstanding, division, and enmity to one another. The harmony and beauty of the Garden, in which words and meanings were as one, is forgotten in a long and miserable series of compromises with falsehood and injustice, and a seemingly endless struggle for dwelling and provision.

As I said before, Reality is verbal – what GOD says it is. But Unreality is verbal too. Satan’s job is to contaminate the one with the other, to confuse honesty with lies, until we accept that all names are ‘only names’ and that only tangible objects – the things that brute force and technical magic can produce – are true. When names are used indiscriminately, or laden with false meanings (as we see in modern advertising or can read in Orwell’s 1984), then my previous assertions, that words are things and things are words, sound nonsensical and meaningless. In that frame of mind, when we finally turn to the Qur’an for guidance, we get nothing more from it than words.

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In the Garden, humanity enjoyed a profusion of luscious, weighty meanings, ready to hand and clear to see on the trees of goodly words. With their acceptance of a lie, however, the outgrowth of these words became tools by which Satan could lead them to concealment and shame.

Notice here how it is the leaves of the Garden, not the forbidden tree, that were used for concealment. In the service of falsehood and deception, any truth will do.

Yet the original purpose of words is never lost to mankind, however much Satan and his minions may strive to hide it. The creative power of naming remains, and even its corruption testifies to that enduring power. Allied to that creativity, moreover, is the capacity to heal, to reunify, and to bridge the gap between Ultimate Meaning, namely AL-LAH, and the words, both true and not quite true, that make us who we are. With certain blessed, GOD-given words or phrases, we recall the Garden where we began, allowing us to turn back (the Arabic meaning of repentance) and taste His Mercy again. It is by His Mercy, after all, that Reality came to mean not only the Speaker, AL-LAH, but what was realized by His Speech – our own true selves.

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