THE MESSIANIC PILGRIMAGE

I love stories, especially when the story communicates something deeper. A story I have just read and loved was that of Hayy Ibn Yokdhan by Ibn Tufail. In this story Ibn Tufail tells us of the secret birth Hayy and how to his mother gave him to the protection of God who took him to another island. There he was nurtured by a roe deer and grew to a young child living in relationship with other animals though no humans.

As he grows he controls his environment attacking the wild animals and using the skin of an Eagle as clothing. Sadly the roe deer who nurtured him dies and he learns of the pain of death. He learns to create weapons and to ride a wild horse. As he grows he contemplates and thinks on the different types of things he discovers: Solid, liquid and gas, animal, vegetable and mineral.

He learns of hot and cold, of fire and of how things change from hot to cold and cold to hot. As he grows to adulthood he contemplates wider still his island world with it’s water boundary and the wider heavenly bodies he sees at night. In that he thinks of how the finite and infinite are different pondering the motion of the sun, moon and stars. He perceives that their motion is spherical and how the whole heavens are interconnected.

Having thus assembled in his mind his world he then contemplates it’s creation.

Now, whereas it appeared to him that the whole world was only one Substance which stood in need of a voluntary Agent, and that its various parts seemed to him but one thing, in like manner as the bodies of the lower world which is subject to generation and corruption, he took a broad view of the whole world, and debated within himself whether it existed in time after it had been, and came to be out of nothing; or whether it was a thing that had existed from eternity and never wanted a beginning.

In respect to this matter, he had many and grave doubts within himself, so that neither of these opinions prevailed over the other. For when he proposed to himself the belief of eternity, there arose many objections in his mind with regard to the impossibility of an _infinite being_, just as the existence of an _infinite body_ had seemed impossible to him.

His conclusion to his contemplation is that there must be a creator, and a creator without bodily substance. This creator had to be all powerful…

So all this world is created and caused by this Agent out of time, whose command is, when he would have anything done: Let it be, and it is.

Hayy admires the work of the Creator and in his contemplation thinks how Creation points to the Creator. This encourages him to examine the senses: Hearing, sight, smell, taste and feeling. All of which he recognises to be physical, yet the Creator to be other. The Creator must therefore be infinite rather than finite.

So if we can find out anything which has an unlimited perfection, infinite beauty, brightness and splendour, that does not proceed from it, then he who is deprived of the sight and knowledge of that thing, after having once known it, must necessarily suffer inexpressible anguish, so long as he remains destitute thereof; whereas he that has it continually present before him, must needs enjoy uninterrupted delight, perpetual felicity, boundless joy and gladness.

This is like a journey into heaven for Hayy, but in returning to the temporal and physical world it is not long before another human called Asal arrives on the scene. Asal teaches Hayy to speak and in communication both realise they are given to contemplation considering the meaning of life and of the universe in which we find ourselves.

Now here the story develops as Hayy and Asal are rescued from the island and return to what we might call civilisation. How you might wonder are they received since both have now learned much of the world and its Creator. That I will not tell you… but here is the link to the book itself so you can read it for yourself. It is not a long read and I believe you will enjoy it.