User:Kotdivuar/Vuslat (Concept)

Vuslat is one of the central concepts in Islamic thought. Sufi schools and especially Rumi attribute key significance to vuslat. The oneness of God is one of the unifying themes in Islam; it is often referred as tawhid. Some scholars extend that unifying idea to all creation, and view individual existence as temporary departure from one seamless whole. That temporary departure is laced with longing for reunification. Rumi has the most potent language in this regard and described the re-unification as a euphoric, blissful affair. As such, vuslat is both the manifestation and the proof of oneness of all existence. Rumi’s translator into English, Coleman Barks, describes this as “our original state is nonbeing, nonexistence, and we spend much of our time trying to break free of matter, free of mind and desire, back into the deep region of being and nonbeing we are at the core”. Barks also calls attention to Shams Tabrizi, Rumi’s fellow, who wrote:

“I, you, he, she, we,

In the garden of mystic lovers,

these are not true distinctions”

Other creeds and philosophies

Islam and its sufi interpretations are not the sole creed in the interrelational nature of existence. Ubuntu in Southern Africa, for example, is built around the belief that “I am because you are” and Desmond Tutu has been explicit in juxtaposing that interrelated understanding of being human with the Cartesian starting point of “I think therefore I am”.

Several Eastern creeds have an epistemology and ontology commensurate with vuslat. Dhyana and upeksha entail the highest form of knowledge as the knower and the known and even knowledge merging into one. The notion of such a fusion being possible is as bold as vuslat, and begs the follow-up question on where else such non-Cartesian worldviews have existed and still exist.

Anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Joseph Heindrich have argued that the mainstream Western idea of an individual as an atomistic entity whose ties to others and to nature are secondary to who s/he is, is not shared by many others around the world, and is, in any event, a recent novelty. One can argue that the One, as described by Plotinus, sounds very similar to Rumi’s account of vuslat.

Their warnings seem important as one ascertains the validity of vuslat and other similar propositions. With climate change and global public health as formidable manifestation of our interdependence, vuslat and other such worldviews deserve an revaluation.